Cleveland Area Midget Football: Girls Need Not Apply

So let me get this straight:

A woman can run for U.S. president and nearly capture her party's nomination.

A woman can become a four-star general.

A woman can sit on the Supreme Court.

A woman can beat the men in autoracing.

But a 10-year-old girl can't even be given the opportunity to try out for the midget football league with her male peers because of her gender?

According to news reports, a Cleveland area midget football league told a girl that she cannot try out for football and suggested that she should become a cheerleader.

Football League President Thom Duffy told The Star Beacon: "If I want to go down to the Y and join the girl’s swim team, what will they say? That’s what annoys me . . . There are other sports, like softball, that are for girls. You always get someone — I’ve seen plenty of rabble-rousers . . . Don’t try to come in and disrupt an organization because of what it’s doing.”

Yeah, those girls demanding to get an equal opportunity. They're such pains, huh?

Image credit: MyFox Cleveland.

Summer Books: Dangerous Boys/Daring Girls

School's out in most places, which means, across the fruited plain, one plaintive whine will be heard every hour or so, "I'm booorrred!"

An easy way to answer that whine: Toss 'em a pocket copy (hot off the presses) of the best selling books The Dangerous Book for Boys or The Daring Book for Girls and tell 'em to go play. (Just keep your ears on alert for words like, "slingshot" and "bow and arrow.")

I asked my twin 10-year-olds -- a boy and a girl -- to go through each book and highlight what he or she liked or disliked. The results were posted in an interview on the Picket Fence Post.

Image credit: Daring Girls web site.

Daring Book for Girls: Author Q&A

Earlier this year, the book, “The Dangerous Book for Boys” made national best seller lists. Its call for boys to start being precocious, uncoddled and un-bubble-wrapped resonated with many parents who are loathe to slip into the role of helicopter parents.

But while many of us took comfort in seeing a book filled with instructions on how to do traditional activities for boys spotlighted, there was definitely a question left hanging: What about the girls? Authors Miriam Peskowitz and Andrea Buchanan teamed up and filled the void, publishing, “The Daring Book for Girls.” The two kindly answered some questions about the book and why it’s important to give girls back their girlhood.

Meredith O’Brien, blogger: So the book, “The Dangerous Book for Boys” was a rousing success. Made best seller lists. Garnered national media mentions. Did you feel like the girls needed a book of their own so they could live on the “dangerous” side of life as well? Why did you put this book together?

Miriam Peskowitz, co-author: Absolutely! When we saw, “The Dangerous Book for Boys,” we had two responses: Cool book, and where are the girls? Twenty-first century girls need a book to guide them through the years of girlhood.

Andrea Buchanan: Yeah – and while there are certain things in the boys’ book that our daughters loved and wanted to do, girls have a history of their own, and we wanted to honor that.

O’Brien: While flipping through this book, it brought back a treasure trove of memories for me, memories of slumber parties (chanting, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board”), playing Chinese jump rope and four-square on the playground, making a “God’s eye” at camp. Was a lot of this fueled by nostalgia?

Peskowitz: No, we’re not nostalgic types. Including those memories was fueled by our conviction that the traditions of girlhood matter, that these are important things that should be remembered and passed on. Sometimes the things girls do, like Chinese jump rope, are seen as marginal, while things boys do, marbles, for example, are tagged as retro and important. Some of that old girl stuff is incredible, and it was fun to include it with all sports like basketball and darts, and with all the activities.

Buchanan: Some of the entries were a trip down memory lane, but many of those topics were brought starkly into the present as we looked at girls today and how they play. Hand-clap games, for instance, I never taught my daughter how to do them, and yet she knows. Girls on the playground still play these games, so even though they seem nostalgic to us, they’re still relevant and important to girls today.

O’Brien: What’s your favorite activity in “Daring?”

Peskowitz: My favorite changes every day. Today’s is “Lamp, Lantern, Flashlight.” It’s all about electricity and making circuits. It uses some D-cell batteries and a small light bulb, a stretch of copper wire and some electrical tape. I had fun with this because electricity is so mystifying. When I worked on this chapter, I learned a great deal about circuits and batteries. Electricity isn’t a traditional girl thing, now is it? But my older daughter and I like doing these kinds of projects, and one of her babysitters, a young woman named Rachel, used to bring the makings for various electrical activities when she came over.

Buchanan: It’s hard to pick just one favorite! The tiny chapter on learning how to whistle with two fingers was very fun to research and practice (if possibly a little annoying for anyone around me listening to my attempts at perfecting a piercing, cab-hailing whistle).

O’Brien: The entries seem like a blend of general knowledge (explaining the Bill of Rights, Robert’s Rules of Order and a section on state capitols), and information that emphasizes girl power, like the section on famous queens of the ancient world, female world leaders and how to be a spy. What were your criteria when selecting what activities you included in the book?

Peskowitz: Great question. We tapped into the big question, "What should a girl know?" and we sought out answers that nobody's had before. The book's eclecticism is great. We really like the surprises of the mixture. We had fun combining things that usually don't come together, like the rules of bowling next to a story about an ancient queen, or yoga next to silly pranks like making fake blood and short-sheeting a bed. There are lots of different girls out there, and we wanted "Daring" to feel like a home for all of them.

Buchanan: We both really just love knowing stuff, and we think girls do, too – it's empowering to know how to do things, and it's empowering to know information, history, facts, and interesting, sometimes obscure bits of lore. We tried to compile a really wide-ranging selection of chapters so that every girl could read the book and discover something she hadn't known before.

O’Brien: What’s been the reaction of your own daughters?

Peskowitz: They love it.

Buchanan: My daughter already tagged the book with post-its, noting which pages she likes best (no surprise, the only vaguely sporty chapter she's into is tag!). She's tremendously proud of the book -- but she was really annoyed that we hadn't included "Because of Winn Dixie" in the chapter on, "Books That Will Change Your Life"! We got into a nice discussion of what books mean to people because of that.

Three for Thursday: Grapes, Judy Blume and School Parties

Item #1: Uttered in My Kitchen

Uh-oh. A grape fell in my pants.

(Sadly, this was not uttered by myself or The Spouse in a moment of wry, naughty fun.)

Item #2: I Must, I Must, I Must Increase My . . .

. . . reading list for the summer.

In addition to the material I must read for work purposes, a book arrived in the mail the other day that made me feel all girlish inside: Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume. It’s a collection of 21 essays from women of a certain age (like my thirtysomething age bracket) about the influential role Blume books played in their childhoods.

These books were instrumental in my life. For example, my two best friends in grade school and I formed a club similar to Margaret’s in “Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret.” Although I cannot recall if we actually did the breast increasing exercises (“We must, we must, we increase our bust.”), I know that I did plead with my mom to take me out to the local department store — Steiger’s — for my first grow-with-you bra, even though I didn’t really need it.

That seems so innocent now, and unlike today, where there are thongs in girls’ departments.

Item #3: End of School Madness

I keep getting confused. Whose end-of-the-year school party is on Friday? Jonah’s or Abbey’s?Is it at 9:30 or 9:45? (For Casey’s class party, which was held earlier this week, I signed up to bring juice boxes, and found myself posting reminder notes everywhere so I wouldn’t forget.)

And I think I’m supposed to pick up a Box o’ Joe from Dunkin’ Donuts for the party tomorrow morning — for one of those two kids’ classes — but I have to find out the correct time because nothin’ will tick off parents at a lively end-of-the-year class party than havin’ the person bringing the coffee to be tardy.

At least I did remember to mail my contribution for the teacher gifts to the “room parents” last week so they can made a grand presentation at the parties. And I already wrote the thank you notes for the teachers saying that I appreciate them for not killing or maiming my children during the school year. Sent them in the kids’ backpacks today.

I just need to remember that I have a parent-teacher conference with Casey’s teacher this afternoon . . . and that Abbey has soccer practice tonight, where I’m assistant coaching. Does Jonah have a baseball game, where The Spouse is assistant coaching? Casey’s game, where The Spouse is ALSO assistant coaching, was postponed the other day due to rain, but I don’t know if it’s been re-scheduled.

Please pardon me while I crawl back into bed and pray for the school and athletic year to be over so we can put an end to all the parties, practices and games, and I can spend the summer trying to work from home while the kids harass me that they’re soooo bored.

E-mail Meredith

(Image from Amazon.com.)

A Gilmore Farewell

I officially declare today Goodbye to the Gilmore Girls Day.

In honor of strong female characters with wit and wisdom, I’m tossing out all nutritional recommendations, bedtimes and parental dictates and will let my three kids watch the series finale of the “Gilmore Girls” at 8 p.m. We’ll dine on Chinese take-out with chopsticks (or at least I’ll use the chopsticks, the kids will just stab the “Chinese chicken fingers” with the chopsticks), have oodles of candy and they’ll stay up ‘til 9. And, it’s very likely that I’ll cry, particularly while looking at the yellow daisies I’m planning to get (a nod to the last episode of season one).

Bad, bad mommy am I.

Want to prepare for tonight’s sniff-fest? Here are a bunch of links about the sad conclusion to new installments of the independent gals with an affinity for quoting Dorothy Parker and playing Bjork (Courtesy of the TV Tattle folks):

• The Boston Herald details the best 10 episodes.


• The Washington Post quotes Kelly Bishop, who plays Emily Gilmore, as saying the finale is “disrespectful” to the fans.


• Newsday celebrates the verbose witticisms of the gals.


• A Contra Costa Times ode to how the show brought mothers and daughters together.


• The Chicago Tribune has seven good reasons why the show is adored.


• The Toronto Star on how the show has allowed mothers and daughters to see one another as flawed, but loveable, whole people.
  

Well, I’m off to buy daisies and tissues.

E-mail Meredith

(CW image.)

Proud Young Women Standing Up to Bullies

I watched this morning’s press conference at Rutgers University featuring the women’s basketball team that overcame all manner of obstacles in order to make it to the national championship game. The 10 young women – not a senior among them – were on stage in the hot, scrutinizing glare of the national media.

Were those women there to celebrate their achievements? Is that why the media were clamoring to speak with them? Sadly, no. The students were there to address the revolting, sexist and racist comments a national media figure made last week which denigrated them, and, by extension, all young women.

The student athletes described how, in what should have been a triumphant weekend following the championship game, they were hounded relentlessly by members of the media calling them, following them and harassing their families all because a pair of reprehensible talk show bullies decided to take aim at them and call them names.

These young women, along with their impressive coach, didn’t take the insults passively. They bravely stood up to those talk show bullies and said they weren’t going to sit silent in the face of such egregious broadsides.

If I were the mother of any of those players, I would’ve been so proud of their cool in the face of such intense attention. As the mother of a daughter who lives in a society where women are judged mercilessly on every aspect of their lives, I was so very thankful that they stood up for what’s right because they stood up for not just themselves, but for all women, and for my daughter, an 8-year-old aspiring athlete.

We need to stand up to bullies. And fire them. MSNBC and the CBS radio station that employ Don Imus should do the right thing. They should put the ratings and potential profits from Imus’ show aside. And show him the door.

UPDATE: MSNBC has fired Imus and will no longer simulcast his syndicated radio program. Good for them. You could tell by the fire in NBC anchorman Brian Williams’ eyes last night, during the nearly 10 minutes he dedicated to this story, that he was ticked off. I only hope CBS Radio displays similar stones.

And for those who scream freedom of speech . . . Imus has every right to stand on the street corner and say whatever he wants to say without the government restricting his speech. He doesn’t, however, have a First Amendment right to say whatever he wants on the radio. Or TV. The station owners get to make those calls.

E-mail Meredith