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Name: The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence: Simmons, Rachel: 9780143117988: Books - Amazon.ca
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Rachel Simmons

The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence Paperback – Illustrated, Aug. 31 2010

by Rachel Simmons (Author)

4.4 89 ratings

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Bestselling author of Odd Girl Out, Rachel Simmons exposes the myth of the Good Girl, freeing girls from its impossible standards and encouraging them to embrace their real selves

In The Curse of the Good Girl, bestselling author Rachel Simmons argues that in lionizing the Good Girl we are teaching girls to embrace a version of selfhood that sharply curtails their power and potential. Unerringly nice, polite, modest, and selfless, the Good Girl is a paradigm so narrowly defined that it's unachievable. When girls inevitably fail to live up-experiencing conflicts with peers, making mistakes in the classroom or on the playing field-they are paralyzed by self-criticism, stunting the growth of vital skills and habits. Simmons traces the poisonous impact of Good Girl pressure on development and provides a strategy to reverse the tide. At once expository and prescriptive, The Curse of the Good Girl is a call to arms from a new front in female empowerment.

Looking to the stories shared by the women and girls who attend her workshops, Simmons shows that Good Girl pressure from parents, teachers, coaches, media, and peers erects a psychological glass ceiling that begins to enforce its confines in girlhood and extends across the female lifespan. The curse of the Good Girl erodes girls' ability to know, express, and manage a complete range of feelings. It expects girls to be selfless, limiting the expression of their needs. It requires modesty, depriving the permission to articulate their strengths and goals. It diminishes assertive body language, quieting voices and weakening handshakes. It touches all areas of girls' lives and follows many into adulthood, limiting their personal and professional potential.

Since the popularization of the Ophelia phenomenon, we have lamented the loss of self-esteem in adolescent girls, recognizing that while the doors of opportunity are open to twenty-first-century American girls, many lack the confidence to walk through them. In The Curse of the Good Girl, Simmons provides a catalog of tangible lessons in bolstering the self and silencing the curse of the Good Girl. At the core of Simmons's radical argument is her belief that the most critical freedom we can win for our daughters is the liberty not only to listen to their inner voice but also to act on it.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Books
Publication date

Aug. 31 2010
Reading age

18 years and up
Dimensions

13.92 x 1.47 x 21.39 cm
ISBN-10

014311798X
ISBN-13

978-0143117988
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Review

“An invaluable guide to girls and those who want to help them.”—Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia

“Every mother who wants to raise an authentic, courageous girl will be grateful for the clear-headed guidance that Ms. Simmons provides. When parents ask me for a great book about girl psychology, I am going to recommend The Curse of the Good Girl.”—Michael Thompson, Ph.D., coauthor of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“If you are a parent or an educator and want to know what stops girls from reaching their full potential and what you can do to make sure she does, please read The Curse of the Good Girl. My deepest hope is that girls realize the importance of what Rachel is saying to them and incorporate it into all of their relationships.” —Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabees

“Simmons is at her best when she helps girls understand that until they know and risk what they really feel and think, they cannot be true leaders.”—Lyn Mikel Brown, author of Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketer’s Schemes

“Simmons' trenchant cultural critique becomes an essential primer for raising and nurturing healthy resilient girls. An indispensible read for parents, educators—indeed, anyone who cares about young girls!.”—Michael Kimmel, Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook author of Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men

“Rachel Simmons has perceptively laid out the current state of teenage girls in American society. As exciting as their futures can be, some of the same challenges that have held back women's success are still to be found in this newest generation of young achievers. The question is: who will reverse the trend permanently so young women can not only aspire to the same goals as their male counterparts, but will not get shut down along the way by either girls or boys.”—Cathie Black, President of Hearst Magazines and author of Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life)

“An amazing array of clear practical strategies for all adults dedicated to raising savvy assertive girls. A must read—again and again—for everyone who cares about girls.” —Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, author of The Big Disconnect

“If you care about girls, you will want them to be influenced by the ideas and practices in this outstanding book.” —Maurice J. Elias, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Rutgers University and author, Emotionally Intelligent Parenting

About the Author

Rachel Simmons is the author of The New York Times bestseller Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, the first book to explore the phenomenon of bullying among girls. Simmons works internationally with girls, parents, and teachers to develop strategies to address bullying and to empower girls. A graduate of Vassar College in 1998, Simmons won a Rhodes scholarship and attended Oxford University, where she began studying female aggression. Simmons is the founding director of the Girls’ Leadership Institute, a summer program for middle and high schoolgirls, and currently serves as a consultant to schools and organizations around the world.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Illustrated edition (Aug. 31 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 014311798X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143117988
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 245 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.92 x 1.47 x 21.39 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #387,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #659 in Child Psychology in Counseling
- #809 in Child Psychology & Development
- #809 in Developmental Psychology (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.4 89 ratings

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Rachel Simmons

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Rachel Simmons is the author of Enough As She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Standards of Success to Live Healthy, Happy and Fulfilling Lives, and the New York Times bestsellers Odd Girl Out and The Curse of the Good Girl. As an educator, Rachel teaches girls and women skills to build their resilience, amplify their voices, and own their courage so that they—and their relationships—live with integrity and health.

The cofounder of national nonprofit Girls Leadership, she is an experienced curriculum writer and educator. She is currently the leadership development specialist at the Wurtele Center for Leadership at Smith College, and is Girls Research Scholar in Residence at The Hewitt School in New York. Rachel has served as a national spokesperson for the Always #LikeAGirl and Keds Brave Life Project campaigns, and consults nationally on women’s professional development.

Rachel was the host of the PBS television special, “A Girl’s Life,” and her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Atlantic, Slate, and The New York Times. Rachel is a regular contributor to Good Morning America and appears often in the national media. Odd Girl Out was adapted into a highly acclaimed Lifetime television movie. Rachel lives in Western Massachusetts with her daughter.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

89 global ratings

5 star		68%
4 star		16%
3 star		7%
2 star		5%
1 star		4%

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Top review from Canada

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sparks

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 4, 2017

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AWESOME

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Jana Parkin

The best book I've read all year

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 15, 2014

Verified Purchase

I can't believe how on target Rachel Simmons is. I lead a girl scout group in Zurich and will be introducing the concepts of this book to the girls throughout the coming year and recommending all of the parents to buy this book. Building emotional intelligence is crucial to raising great kids. I wish I had known the things in the book when I was a preteen/teen.

16 people found this helpful

anna freund

interesting viewpoint

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 29, 2013

Verified Purchase

I am half way through this book now, I had to skip quite a lot of the repetitive examples when the author has put in conversations with her girls. Of course it is very American and some of the language is lightweight BUT have a highlighter to hand as you read through and you will be surprised at the hidden gems inside the fluff. I am 51 now and have slowly realised after 35 years of working that I have made no progression in my life and career because I was totally programmed to be a good girl. I was told it was good manners to let other people be first, I had to give up my seat to the stranger on the bus, let my classmates win at sport, let my sister have first choice in everything and be happy to have her clothes after she had outgrown them. At work I was used to train other people up who then were promoted over me, using my knowledge and guidance. So I'm going to fully recommend this book to anyone like me - and I hope that you too find something in here that will let you move away from being 'user-friendly' for every one else to being 'me-friendly' for your own peace of mind. Good luck everyone........

43 people found this helpful

Smart Cookie

Insightful but biased and limited.

Reviewed in France 🇫🇷 on March 14, 2017

Verified Purchase

This is one insightful book and there are definitely some good advices in it, but to me it terribly lacked depth and carried an overly simplistic view on the issue, I wonder too why in a book intended to help raising authentic confident and brave girls there's not a single chapter about fathers; believe it or not, some fathers do want to get involved, do want to know what it is they're doing wrong, and are responsible for some false ideas and assumptions girls develop. The book argues that the "Good Girl" myth drives girls to constantly seek perfection and since no one's perfect obviously they're bound to fail, what message would any girl(mother to be) get when she opens a book about raising girls and she realizes its main focus are the mothers only ?
I also kinda got the sense that the book was kinda promoting the "chill girl" ideal that's nowadays so widespread and has no other aim but making their male partners lives easier. I bought this book because I wanted some insights on how to perpetuate the importance of authenticity and realness to a young one with actions instead of words, how to teach a "Good Girl" that she can still be and feel free when she is loved ? That having an allergy to commitment and feeling trapped is not a label for "bad" but an emotion as any ? Our generation has been lied to about freedom and I feel like nothing has changed for the generations to be. What I got from the book is really light, I feel like it missed out on the core values of authenticity, self-respect and truthfulness to oneself.

Michelle

Useful but flawed imo

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 19, 2019

Verified Purchase

This is a useful book, but it has some issues imo.

As I read the book, my biggest takeaways were this:

1. Sure, you can address girl behavior one-on-one, but if the other girls around her aren't learning the same things, it's all sort of pointless in terms of mitigating girl conflict. People have to know these rules/principles/ideas for any one person to be successful in using them. We still don't have a common language or framework around conflict and interpersonal issues among girls, but we have a plethora of sexism and dysfunctional women raising girls who only know how to be mean. So I think the book has useful ideas, but good luck making a difference.

If your kid is the one who has it all figured out...they'll tear her down anyway. if your kid is trapped in the behavior described in this book...they'll tear her down too. Everyone's fodder for mean girls. No one escapes ime. You cannot win. The book doesn't really address this imo.

2. As I read, I realized so many, so so sooooooooo many moms act like tweens in large groups. No wonder I hate most moms. I can't take the group dynamics...the gossip, the backstabbing, the use of piling on to grab power. Too many adults are frozen in tween conflict patterns...they never learned better, and just my luck, they always run the PTA and carline...I cannot get away from them. Like, yo, I just want to decorate for the Halloween party, but noooo, we have to gossip and undermine everyone like crabs in a bucket instead (this is my life with school aged kids...over and over and over again. You could set a clock by it.). Even if the book doesn't make this connection, it helped me to, and actually I will now be working to focus my time and attention on things where I'm not running afoul of moms in the wild. I'm out and now I know WHY. Cool. I have other things to do.

3. My daughter and I don't argue as presented in the book. I didn't realize that may be unusual and was kind of surprised, but it renders large swatch of advice kind of moot. There were also examples of things I would consider emotional abuse between parent and child, which also didn't seem too relevant. It was hard to relate to some of this as a result. We seem to be in a different place.

4. There's no real discussion of how to defuse a bully. There's discussion of conflict but not what to do when the bully is whipping her proxies into a frenzy so they are lining up to kick your you-know-what. How do you defuse that stuff once it's gotten that far? Going to the 'authorities' doesn't work. I'm not sure this book has any answers.

5. I liked a lot of the conflict resolution stuff, the discussion of validating your daughter's feelings...there IS useful information, it's jut not necessarily able to turn the tide when only one person knows any of it.

While I'll reference this book as I parent my tween and I recommend it overall, it feels rather futile. What's the point of a girl being better when actually doing better relies on everyone being better in the same way? And most of the moms are just looking to cut a b?

I just don't think this book is enough to turn the tide. The author would likely have more impact developing social emotional curriculum for schools AND the moms who still handle relationships like tweens. Or perhaps a video class... a MOOC or something. This needs to be large scale if it's going to make an impact.

9 people found this helpful

Reader

Somewhat Helpful

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 2, 2019

Verified Purchase

I kept waiting to get to the "strategies/exercises" section which seemed to take awhile but once there, I found some useful information. This book had some good points along the way and I think it has the potential to be helpful to many (including finding your voice and conflict resolution), but it also misses the bigger picture - the how and why we've gotten to this point. The media - television, internet, news, social media, advertising, entertainment, our "systems" (education, healthcare, politics), and the search for "more" outside of ourselves is a place to start in order to find real answers. If girls, and humans in general, can get past the control system and realize they are being manipulated and that divide and conquer really is a strategy, maybe there's a chance for all of us. To thine own self be true. Kindness, empathy, a strong value system, spiritual strength, critical thinking, living with love - these are the elements that make strong girls and people. What are we emphasizing as important in our society? Real self-worth is intrinsic. I also think it's important to take into consideration cognitive functions - an introverted intuitive feeler is going to handle and process situations extremely different than an extroverted sensing thinker. This book doesn't take into consideration personality differences between girls, or people in general.

10 people found this helpful

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