So it’s that time of year, and I spent last night at the Girls Write Now office writing letter to my nearest and dearest, telling them why I love GWN and that I’ve recently joined their Advisory Board and asking them to consider making a donation to help keep this amazing organization strong. To those of you who receive my letter, I do hope you might consider! And to those I didn’t have the guts to send letters to, you can always of course simply donate by clicking here, or by doing your regular holiday shopping through here. To learn more about the org, click here. And to read some of the girls’ writing, go here. To hear ’em read, click play above!

Thanks to Patti for the sticky hearts, and to Lauren for the beauty bag raffle. I love my polish I “won.”

And while I’m at it, just to spread the luv, thought I’d post a link here to feministing’s development campaign–they’re asking for donations to help them with technological upgrades. Remember, this is the blog that just won the Blogger’s Choice Award for Best Political Blog and is run largely out of pocket by some amazing young women who are changing the way we think and talk and connect around feminist issues online–and in the world.

Ho ho ho, and Happy 3rd night of Channukah to all!!!

My friend and personal hero Rebecca Wallace-Segall landed an op-ed in the Nov. 28 Wall Street Journal about the value of thought-based competitions–like the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards–in schools. In contrast to, say, um, sports, writing competitions aren’t valued. And they should be. Writes Rebecca, explaining the opposition and throwing in an interesting generational spin on it all:

“We don’t want kids to compete individually, put themselves in vulnerable positions as individuals,” explains a leading administrator. “They can compete within teams,” explains another. “So the focus is on community building rather than on personal value.”

But what about Sam’s sense of personal value? Aren’t human beings fabulously varied in their gifts and sensibilities? Excellent teamwork can be important, but is it the only admirable achievement? Should any school in the United States prevent broader acknowledgment of a young, creative mathematician?

Mel Levine, a professor at the University of North Carolina and one of the foremost authorities in the country on how children learn, believes the impact of the collaborative education movement has been devastating to an entire generation. When students are rewarded for participation rather than achievement, Dr. Levine suggests, they don’t have a strong sense of what they are good at and what they’re not. Thus older members of Generation Y might be in for quite a shock when they show up for work at their first jobs. “They expect to be immediate heroes and heroines. They expect a lot of feedback on a daily basis. They expect grade inflation, they expect to be told what a wonderful job they’re doing,” says Dr. Levine.

Rebecca founded and runs WritopiaLab, a community of young writers, ages 10-19, that revolves around a year-round afterschool writing center and intensive creative writing workshops. Every six months, participants chose to read their polished pieces at Barnes & Noble. I’ve been to these readings. These kids inspire.

And speaking of the Scholastic Awards, a shout out to all those girls over at Girls Write Now who won awards this summer! I’m heading to a GWN meeting tonight and can’t wait to hang with everyone. I made cookies and am carrying a plate of them around today, but I can’t guarantee that they’re gonna last….I’m baad that way.

Feminist historian Alice Kessler-Harris has an article provocatively titled “Do We Still Need Women’s History?” running in the Chronicle of Higher Education (which I can’t, ahem, read because I don’t have a dang subscription). But here’s a tease:

In the spring of 2007, the Organization of American Historians (the nation’s premier body of professional historians, teachers, and public advocates of U.S. history) asked me to take a look at what had changed in the profession with regard to the history of women and gender over the 100-year life span of the group. My findings would…

I’m guessing Kessler-Harris’ answer to the question is a resounding YES. But if any of you with subscriptions out there want to put me out of my misery, do share! Or, of course, I could just finally the bullet and subscribe 🙂

And speaking of Women’s History of course, which I for one adamantly believe we still need, in addition to traveling with an intergenerational feminist panel alongside some of my favorite feminist colleagues, [Shameless Plug Alert] I am currently booking speaking engagements solo for March 2008 (Women’s History Month) based on my book, Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild. If you are interested in bringing me to your campus or organization, please do get in touch soon, as my schedule is booking up! [Shameless Plug Ends]

Happy and Merry to each and all! Hannukah starts tonight, and I think we’re about to invest in our first joint menorah. It will NOT, however, look anything like this moose menorah here.

And speaking of holidays, while walking home from a synagogue function last night, Marco and I came upon this truck full of trees. Ok, so from an eco pov, maybe it’s not so cool that a forest was virtually imported on a flatbed. But it was amazing to see this truck, and I swear, it smelled soooo good, all the way home.

For those of you celebrating Hannukah tonight, may all your latkes be just the right amount of greasey, and may your candles burn long and bright!

The 2008 program for the Council on Contemporary Families Annual Conference! You heard it here first 🙂

April 25 – 26, 2008
Family Issues in Contention
University of Illinois at Chicago

Sessions include:

Young People Hooking Up- Should We Be Worried?
Presider: Waldo Johnson, University of Chicago
Debra Tolman, San Francisco State University
Laura Sessions, Author, Unhooked
Paula England, Stanford University

Is Transracial and Transnational Adoption the Right Policy for Parents? Children? Society?
Presider, Andrae’ Brown, City University of New York
Ruth McRoy, University of Texas at Austin;
Adam Pertman, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
Jeanne Howard, Illinois State University;
Pamela Quiroz, University of Illinois in Chicago

Media Workshops:
How to get press coverage of your work
Virginia Rutter, Framingham State College
Joshua Coleman, Psychologist
Adam Pertman, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

Translating academic research into popular books and magazine articles
Kerry Ann Rockquemore, University of Illinois at Chicago
Pepper Schwartz, University of Washington

Writing Op Eds
Stephanie Coontz, Evergreen State College

What you should know about Blogging and Why
Deborah Siegel, Woodhull Institute (aka ME!)

And lots more. For more info and to register, click here.

Now here’s a guide to personal finance that tells it like it is.

In the introduction to their new book, On My Own Two Feet: A Modern Girl’s Guide to Personal Finance, Manisha Thakor and Sharon Kedar take the bull, so to speak, by the horns. In their words:

“Today, many women are choosing to marry alter in life or not at all. With divorce rates high, and given that women have statistically longer life spans than men, it is a basic fact of life that a high percentage of women will spend as much or more of their lives single than coupled. Therefore it’s unwise to think that Prince Charming is going to swoop in to solve your financial woes. In fact, it’s probably safe to assume that Prince Charming doesn’t have a clue when it comes to money, even if he acts like he does.”

These two savvy ladies (and Woodhull alums!) serve up oodles of insight on why so many women–and men–end up missing the boat on personal finance:

“It’s not that people want to make bad financial decions–its that they never learned the basics. Personal finance is not taught in most schools, and talking about money is still taboo in many circles. Parents often assume children will pick up the basics of personal finance on their own, and many parents don’t really have a grip on their own finances. As a result, millions of Americans simply do not know how to live within their means.”

I, for one, certainly would have benefited from some financial 101 coming at me at an early age. As a grown-up, I’ve had to play catch-up–and am still playing, and often feel like I’m missing the ball. But nuf with the sports metaphors. Just trust me. This book is a homerun. (Whoops–couldn’t help myself there.)

There’s much more about On My Own Two Feet here. And for bonus points, check out the Economic Literacy program over at Girls Incorporated and the Financial Literacy module from Woodhull that’s available through the Dove Real Women, Real Success Stories website. And pass it all on!

OK, I promise not to bride out on you (I did that once, sort of, ahem, already), but the contemporary name game fascinates me to no end. Clearly, women my generation who marry are at a different starting point. In 1975, less than 4 percent of college-educated brides did NOT take their husband’s last name, compared to 20 percent in 2000. Most of my girlfriends have kept their last names; a few hyphenate. I may hyphenate officially, but for sure I’ll remain Deborah Siegel in print. But anyway, as it turns out, according to an article appearing in the Times’ Style section yesterday, there are actually consultants now who will help modern couples figure out what to do about merging their names. Interestingly, the article notes that only children (c’est moi) and family business owners may be among women perhaps most concerned with losing their lineage by tossing their name. BTW, I love the article’s title: “To Be Safe, Call the Bride by Her First Name.”

The Daring Book for Girls intrigues me. As an author, I’m interested in how this book’s authors have developed their platform (that schmancy publishing industry term for everything that’s going to help a book become a phenomenon). Daring has a trailer, and a theme song. It has two brilliant authors behind it, one of whom has a Ph.D. in ancient history and religion (for all you academics out there) and both authors are savvy web entrepreneurs as well. The book follows on the heels of an already-proven bestseller. It is marketable not only to girls, but to their parents—Gen Xers like me, who were raised on Free to Be You and Me and are fed up with Princess Power. And most of all, the book’s premise is one damn good idea.

I’d be green with envy if I didn’t personally know that the authors are women of stellar intention and integrity, not to mention generosity of spirit. Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz are the women who brought the parenting blogging circle MotherTalk into being and are responsible for bringing online visibility to a number of important books on women’s issues, and scores—perhaps hundreds now—of books by women. As the MotherTalk website says, “We love what we do, and really take our books and our authors under our wings.” And so, having taken their own book under their wings, it comes as no surprise that The Daring Book has soared. It hit the bestseller list on November 11, just a few weeks after it hit the stores.

What surprises me instead—and what I find intriguing—is the jaded critical reception the book seems to have inspired in some journalistic circles. Reporters and interviewers have loved to ask, with a lofty sniff of sarcasm, “What’s so daring about this book?” In a culture as overly saturated with images of toxic girlhood as ours, they ask, what effect can a wholesome activity book that mothers (or others) and daughters are encouraged to do together possibly have overall?

These critics have got a point—but only, I would counter, to a point. The popularity of the book among girls, I might venture, speaks for itself.

And what’s the lesson here for authors? Have a “high concept” idea that comes from a place of integrity, market the hell out of it online, and offer us all some semblance of hope. That last one—and you’ll forgive me for my lack of cynicism—is key.

These authors are no sell-outs or naive patsies. When NPR Weekend Edition’s John Ysdtie asked coauthor Andrea Buchanan on the air yesterday whether childhood itself is much different today, she had this to say: “In the 1970s, children had yet to be discovered as a powerful marketing demographic. Girls are schooled, at 8 years old, to think about their bodies, and the way they look, and the clothes they wear. Because girls back then were not marketed to as they are now, it wasn’t on their mind to think about these things until they were older.” Girls today are pressured to be grown-ups far sooner than we used to be. Nine is the new seventeen. There’s more focus today on doing activities not for activities sake, but to get into college. Girlhood used to be different. It used to last. “Part of what we wanted to do with this book,” said Buchanan, “was extend girlhood a little bit.”

Buchanan and Peskowitz are not nostalgic throwbacks. They are optimists who merely ask us to give daring a chance.

Regardless of which candidate you’re gonna support next November, you’ve got to admit that to wake up and see the word “feminist” on the cover of the New York Times this morning is itself a testament of the effect Hillary’s running is having on the presidential debate. I mean, this beats “soccor moms” and “security moms” hands down. The article, “Feminist Pitch by a Democrat Named Obama,” suggests that the Obama campaign is “subtley marketing its candidate as a postfeminist man, a generation beyond the gender conflicts of the boomers.” In other words, in the eyes of the postfeminist generation, the best candidate for women might be a man.

But the claim that younger women are less interested in Hillary than Boomer women are seems to go against what the polls are saying. As GWP readers know, I’m obsessed these days by the stats showing the generational breakdown of women’s support of Hillary. I posted back in September about how polls were showing younger women supporting Hillary more than Boomer women were. Has anyone seen the recent stats on this one? I’d be curious to hear.

Photo cred.

My piece on the Disney movie “Enchanted” is now up over at the Women’s Media Center. Here’s a little addendum to that piece, to leave with you with this weekend:

Everyone’s singing the praises of Amy Adams, who plays the fluttery protagonist, Giselle. I loved her performance in Junebug (where, as Roger Ebert reminds us, she tells her snake of a husband: “God loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to let you stay that way.”) And while Adams herself is entirely enchanting in Enchanted, truth be told, what enchanted me more was the two-minute JC Penney commercial from Saatchi & Saatchi that ran just before the film.

The Penney spot is called “Aviator.” John Lennon’s “Real Love” plays in the background as a bespectacled, determined little girl gets the ultimate revenge on the neighborhood bullies by transforming herself from local outcast to local hero by using her imagination and ingenuity. As AdWeek aptly describes it, the spot opens with her quietly drawing a picture about traveling to the North Pole on her porch when the boys of the ‘hood pelt her with water balloons. She runs inside to dry her picture with a blow dryer and then begins on a construction project. Riding her Big Wheel back and forth from a neighbor who supplies her with materials, she begins to build her “secret” project. The boys are soon intrigued and serve as her bodyguards. When she is finally ready to debut her creation, the entire neighborhood has gathered for the unveiling. She’s built a rocket-like “North Pole Voyager.” And the boys end up saluting her. The spot ends with the on-screen tagline, “Today’s the day to believe.” Ok, so it’s a gosh darn Christmas ad from JC Penney. But I’m telling you, it made me teary. See for yourself, above.