Life
Elizabeth Wurtzel Takes On the Curse of the Good Girl
If only niceness were teenage girls' worst problem.
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It’s always seemed odd to me that Lou Dobbs is a Harvard graduate, and downright ridiculous that Pat Robertson has a law degree at all, much less from Yale. They are both smart enough, and obviously successful. But both of them are incorrect or cacophonous—and embarrassing—much of the time. Elite institutions are not merely supposed to produce intelligent alumni—they are also supposed to teach rigorous thinking and create beautiful minds. Plainly, this is a mistaken notion on my part. Ever since the fancy schools started recruiting in the shtetl and the hood, elitism as a coherent narrative has declined to meaninglessness. It’s now perfectly Princeton to be, say, a fitness-equipment infomercial mogul, clever and determined but also, in some deeper way, crass and wrong.
I was forced to remember this because Rachel Simmons, the author of the really ridiculous The Curse of the Good Girl, happens to be a Rhodes Scholar, as is mentioned prominently on the back-jacket flap. In fact, her mission, which seems to be making teenage girls into solid women, is completely respectable unto itself. But her book is the sort of crap sociology based on pop psychology that a classical education is supposed to have taught her to view with a dimly critical eye. That’s what her editor and agent and publisher all must have thought when they ushered this book about teenage girls through the process as if it were a serious work of thought, when in fact it’s just obvious, unconvincing, and diagnoses exactly the opposite of what’s wrong with the kids today.
The book’s premise is pretty simple: Too many teenage girls, in an effort to please their parents and peers, don’t express their true feelings. “Where the truth is obscured,” writes Simmons rather sententiously, “assumptions will flourish.” The consequences of this quietude are enormous, according to Simmons: Repression leads to bullying or hysterical outbursts; keeping it all in results in depression and even suicide. Finally, if these girls make it to adulthood, they are lousy leaders and managers because they are aggressive or passive, instead of just being assertive.
When Carol Gilligan wrote about this same problem in 1982 in her influential and seminal In a Different Voice, she noted the way girls suddenly get shy and introverted at about age 11, how they go from being the best students in the class to ceding those positions to smart-alecky boys. These preteens seem to “lose voice,” as Gilligan put it. Then a professor at the School of Education at Harvard, Gilligan was documenting a real problem at the time, and her book rang true to an awful lot of us. Critics have since argued against Gilligan’s work—In a Different Voice was really about female morality and how distaff notions of right and wrong differed from male counterparts’—but her ideas have remained the reference point to this day.
Because Gilligan has done such solid work in this area, at least one problem with Simmons’ book is that it’s redundant. But truly, to catalog everything that’s wrong with The Curse of the Good Girl, I would have to go in alphabetical order. Among the goofier oddities are references to entirely new professions such as “brain scientist” (Neurologist? Neurobiologist? Neuropsychiatrist?) and “emotional intelligence expert” (this sounds like some sort of CIA analyst, but actually refers to an author).
But then it gets more troubling: Simmons’ research methods are unsound. Most of her observations are based on what she sees at the Girls’ Leadership Institute, an organization that Simmons founded, which is connected with no university or research institution that is peer-reviewed and accredited and which seems to mostly run camps and seminars and classes that train girls to avoid “losing voice.” Since the young ladies who attend the offerings of GLI are a self-selected bunch, mostly from good homes with loving parents who are concerned about their well-being, this group is hardly representative of what’s going down with teenagers. When Simmons’ girls “lose voice,” it’s a household emergency.
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Comments
How does good = bad?
By: reader2 | Fri, 09/25/2009 - 11:08
Since when is responsibility and maturity a bad characteristic, in anyone? While it may be true that teenagers are not allowed much adolescence anymore, the reviewers' examples and "analysis" hardly make such a case. Why on earth anyone would want their children to experiment with drugs, and think that doing so is a vital part of their adolescence, is beyond me. There are other ways to explore and express individuality - let's have an intelligent conversation about those, rather than reflexively knee-jerking that "I had so much fun doing drugs, poor poor kids today who can't!" Oh, and btw, as previous posters have pointed out, kids today have no problems accessing drugs, even the good girls in this article.
This book was not solely
By: shin | Thu, 09/10/2009 - 00:16
This book was not solely based on the experience of GLI participants. As I note in the introduction, "My findings are based on interviews and observations of Girls Leadership Institute participants and girls at a handful of public and middle and high schools I visited on the East Coast" (11). I go on to state that 20% of GLI participants are on scholarship, making what I observe hardly a problem of overprotected rich kids.
I should add that this book was never intended or advertised as a work of academic research. It is based on my experience as an educator.
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Manic Rage?
By: angry foo dog | Sun, 09/06/2009 - 13:47
This sounds like it was written during a manic rage. It is insulating and adds nothing in quality to double x. I'm really surprised it was published.
Correction
By: Bascombe | Sun, 09/06/2009 - 12:48
Ms. Wurtzel and/or Double X editors,
The term "lawyer" is reserved for someone who has passed a bar examination and been admitted to the bar of a state or the District of Columbia. A person who has not passed a bar exam cannot, by definition, be a lawyer. Since Ms. Wurtzel has not passed any bar exam, she cannot accurately be described as a lawyer. She is a law-school graduate, but no more than that.
Illogical, racist, and anti-Semitic
By: Ellid | Sun, 09/06/2009 - 10:52
It is hard to take Elizabeth Wurtzel seriously when she begins by decrying the alleged lack of class since "the fancy schools" began "recruiting from the shtetl and the hood" after giving as examples of unclassiness two elderly white men (one the son of a United States Senator!) who graduated from Ivy League colleges when there were still quotas on non-WASPs at elite colleges. Even worse, the use of loaded terms for European ghetto towns and poor inner city neighborhood implies that Ms. Wurtzel thinks that residents of such places (that is, the poor, the dark-skinned, or members of non-Christian religions) should not be allowed anywhere near the hallowed halls of Harvard or the sacred towers of Yale.
The racism, anti-Semitism, and just plain bigotry of this is appalling. It is also flat-out *wrong*. God only knows what Harvard was like when she was an undergraduate*, but when I was at Smith the school was focused on educating young women to be strong, independent, and prepared for anything, regardless of the color of their skin, socio-economic background, or religious background. This emphasis has only increased, and it's resulted in the most gloriously diverse class of Smithies since Sophia Smith's will was prorated.
Then again, Elizabeth Wurtzel doesn't have the most beautiful mind herself, unless one counts being fired from a newspaper job for plagiarism.....
*and has it ever occurred to her that it's only been about forty years since *she* would have been considered unacceptable at Harvard, producer of beautiful minds? Or didn't they teach self-awareness while she was an undergrad trotting about Harvard Square?
The shtetl and the hood?
By: eli | Sat, 09/05/2009 - 12:54
"Ever since the fancy schools started recruiting in the shtetl and the hood, elitism as a coherent narrative has declined to meaninglessness. It’s now perfectly Princeton to be, say, a fitness-equipment infomercial mogul, clever and determined but also, in some deeper way, crass and wrong."
No one is jumping on this one? Really? Elizabeth Wurtzel's fundamental thesis as to what ails America's elite institutions is... too much racial and ethnic diversity? No self-serving, basically thoughtless jerkoffs went to Princeton prior to "recruiting in the shtetl and the hood?"
I honestly don't understand why this isn't a horribly embarrassing statement to have made in public.
"If only niceness were teenage girls' worst problem."
By: dyinginlawschool | Fri, 09/04/2009 - 22:20
Must a book tackle the worst problem for a chosen demographic in order to be worthy of writing? This review strikes me as a reviewer being difficult for the sake of it. I'm all for difficult women, but have a good reason for it.
The biggest issue I have with this article is that it seems to forgo the "review" aspect in order to be controversial and tantalizing. I'd like to see if Ms. Wurtzel could actually review a book; if so, a scathing such as this might be more respectable. In other words, I'm not impressed, and I think Elizabeth might be better off writing books or studying for the NY bar exam.
10 more years on the couch for Elizabeth Wurtzel?
By: jcash | Fri, 09/04/2009 - 14:31
Wow. I don't think I've ever seen a review quite like this. I'm shocked it was actually published. This is not simply a "negative review" as some have previously stated. This is a vitriolic attack clearly motivated by intense, unresolved feelings on the part of Ms. Wurtzel. It is an embarrassment to Ms. Wurtzel and the editor of doubleX.
So let me get this straight
By: nagatuki | Fri, 09/04/2009 - 13:56
In response to a negative review of a book about "good girls," you're all commenting that it's "mean"?
Hahahaha... Does anyone else see the irony, or is it just me?
Sigh... Look, it's just a review. The book doesn't sound scientific (and the author says as much), and if you don't like sociology (IMO the science of making (or making up) observations and then writing it down to sell books), then you likely won't like the book. It's that simple.
Some of us want a more studied approach to life, and some want more general observations, but the critic is not "mean" for pointing out that this book is the latter, nor offering her own opinion that it fails to point out more detrimental issues in society (with which I happen to agree - I'm not pretending otherwise).
Conclusion is bunk
By: Fitzpatrick | Fri, 09/04/2009 - 11:13
So, here's the logic of this review: the book addresses a problem that used to be a problem, but isn't anymore because someone else already wrote about it. Plus, other kids have worse problems than this one, so teenagers qua teenagers no longer exist. And the same problem affects adults, so don't bother with the (non-existent) teenagers anyway, because we can't address their problems unless we address everyone's.
So was Wurtzel stoned when writing this? Besides the plenty of "plenty's" and the inane criticism of terms like "brain scientist" (which yields Google hits from the NYT and NPR, among many others), the utter lack of logic makes one wonder if there is a subtext of personal dislike. Or maybe it's just one of those days.