Anita Naik - How to Be a Girl: The Common Sense Guide to Girlhood

www.waylandbooks.co.uk

also by Anita Naik

Teen Life Confidential: Texts, Tweets, Trolls and Teens

Teen Life Confidential: Self-Esteem and Being YOU

Teen Life Confidential: Queen Bees, Drama Queens& Cliquey Teens

Teen Life Confidential: Sex, Snogs, Dates and Mates

Teen Life Confidential: Periods, Zits & Other Bits

Bras, Boys & Bad Hair Days

The Quick Experts Guide to Safe Social Networking

COCO CHANEL, FASHION DESIGNER

H ow to be a girl? It should be so easy shouldnt it? Just go out there and be yourself. Most of the time, thats how it is. Its fun and its exciting and its more than great to be a girl. Except that as you get older you start to notice that girls also have a lot of unfair pressure put on them. It can seem as if the world believes your worth is based on your looks rather than your abilities, and that your main job in life is to keep working at improving your imperfect body. Then there is the pressure to be girl perfect: to have lots of friends, have hundreds of followers on Instagram, get your quota of likes on Facebook and still do amazingly well at school! It can be exhausting and sometimes make you feel that being a girl is too much like hard work!

Ive been an agony aunt for teenage girls for over 20 years and I can see from my inbox and postbag that never before has there been so much pressure on girls to look and behave in a certain way. The emails and letters I get tell a story of girls who feel under pressure. Girls who are tired of being told to worry about everything from their weight to their hair, to body parts you never even knew existed. Girls who feel under pressure to be pretty rather than smart. And girls who feel boxed into a corner at home and at school just because they happen to be a girl.

These girls are the reason How To Be A Girl came about. This book is about the very opposite of telling you what you have to be. Instead, its a book about showing you how to be happier, more secure and confident. Its about finding solutions to things that get you down, feeling positive about your body and standing up to the inevitable pressures of being a girl.

Most of all, its about finding the courage to discover your voice (you know, the big loud one that people might tell you to lower). For that reason its scattered with tips, top role models to inspire you, advice to boost your self-esteem and ways to get informed. All so you can become 100% glad to be a girl!

anita x

GRAZIA MAGAZINE

H ow to be a girl is such an obvious thing isnt it? So obvious there shouldnt even be a book about it. Just like being a boy: you should be able to get on with what you are doing and be the kind of person you want to be.

The problem is that the expectations and pressures on girls are increasing, so that although we live in a world where there are many opportunities for girls, some girls are being made to feel insecure about themselves. Instead of feeling excited by the opportunities open to them, many girls feel worried: worried about how they look, worried about how many friends they have and worried about how smart they need to be.

Being a teenager is a challenging as well as an exciting time, so its normal to feel a bit uptight sometimes. What isnt acceptable is the criticism of those who try to do things their own way. So whats a girl to do? Well, the answer is to think about what being a girl means to you. Do others (friends, parents, people you dont know) dictate who you should be? Does the fact you have a spot on your nose utterly ruin your day? Or does a mean comment stop you from feeling good about who you are? If so, its time to refuse to let others tell you what you can and cant be. It sounds impossible to do, but this book will show you how to handle these issues and more!

Stereotypes are everywhere. Most are just silly, like the idea that people who wear glasses are clever, or girls with blonde hair are ditsy. Clearly, those cannot be true. Some stereotypes are more subtle, but they can be so strong that they can: (1) Stop you from doing the things you want to do (2) Make others judge you unfairly and (3) Push you in directions that you may not want to go in. For instance, you may avoid answering questions in class because you dont want to be stereotyped and made fun of for being a geek or a nerd, or perhaps you didnt join the football club because kids at school think football is only a boys sport. Or maybe youre feeling the pressure to be interested in boys before youre ready, just because everyone seems to assume that all girls of a certain age can think about is boys and dating.

Unfortunately, girl stereotypes can start early in life. Ask your parents what you were like as a baby and they may well use words like sweet, gorgeous and princess. Think about the toys you played with when you were young. Was there an emphasis on pink, princesses and Barbie dolls? Toys might seem like harmless fun, but child development experts now believe that toys aimed at girls (unlike toys for boys, which are often about engineering, building and adventure) encourage girls to focus too much on their looks, clothes and appearance.

Even stereotypes that seem as if they are compliments can be a problem! When girls constantly hear comments like girls are arty and creative, girls are good at reading, or girls are quieter, more helpful and better behaved than boys, it can stop them from daring to take risks, be adventurous and be loud and wild!

And of course, you cant escape from this world of stereotypes by turning on the TV. The images you see of girls on screen are too often painfully stereotypical even on kids TV where girl heroes are often shown as princesses, playing with cute animals or self-sacrificing mothers. It can sometimes feel as if there are stereotypes telling you what girls should be all over the media!

It also pays to acknowledge any preconceptions about girls that you may have. Do you believe certain things about what it means to be a girl? What are you bringing to the party in terms of rules and stereotypes for your friends and other girls?

Finally, if you want to break free of the stereotyped image of a girl who cant do anything without a boy then try not to fall for the endless girl as a victim stories, songs and myths that tend to play a big part in fiction, film and television. This doesnt mean you have to give up what you like watching or reading just look at broadening the scope of what you choose, so to give you a more balanced view of life. So, for example: