Boys are like elastic bands. It doesn't mean that boys are made of elastic, which is a plus because nobody wants a boyfriend made out of rubber. On the other hand, if they were made out of rubber, you could save yourself a lot of time and effort and heartache by just rustling one up out of a car tire. Boys are different from girls. Girls like to be cozy all the time but boys don't. First of all, they like to get all close to you like a coiled-up rubber band, but after a while, they get fed up with being too coiled and need to stretch away to their full stretchiness. Then, after a bit of on-their-own strategy, they ping back to be close to you. So in conclusion on the boy front, you have to play hard to get and also let them be elastic bands.

Boys will be boys, that's what people say. No one ever mentions how girls have to be something other than themselves altogether. We are to stifle the same feelings that boys are encouraged to display. We are to use gossip as a means of policing ourselves -- this way those who do succumb to sex but are not damaged by it are damaged instead by peer malice. Girls demand a covenant because if one gives in, others will be expected to do the same. We are to remain united in cruelty, ignorance, and aversion. Or we are to starve the flesh from our bones, penalizing the body for its nature, castigating ourselves for advances we are powerless to prevent. We are to make false promises then resist the attentions solicited. Basically we are to become expert liars. (p. 65)

But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbell convenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. I discovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regular reading consisted of tabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that she smoked an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage cheese and Melba Toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-induced. The same source made it evident that she received V-letters by the bale. They were torn into strips like bookmarks. I used occasionally to pluck myself a bookmark in passing. Remember and miss you and rain and please write and damn and goddamn were the words that recurred most often on these slips; those, and lonesome and love.

We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving … We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins … We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive are our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers … We are the daughters of the feminists who said, “You can be anything,” and we heard, “You have to be everything.

It's not very easy to grow up into a woman. We are always taught, almost bombarded, with ideals of what we should be at every age in our lives: "This is what you should wear at age twenty", "That is what you must act like at age twenty-five", "This is what you should be doing when you are seventeen." But amidst all the many voices that bark all these orders and set all of these ideals for girls today, there lacks the voice of assurance. There is no comfort and assurance. I want to be able to say, that there are four things admirable for a woman to be, at any age! Whether you are four or forty-four or nineteen! It's always wonderful to be elegant, it's always fashionable to have grace, it's always glamorous to be brave, and it's always important to own a delectable perfume! Yes, wearing a beautiful fragrance is in style at any age!

This is for girls who have the tendency to stay up at night listening to music that reminds them of their current situation. Who hide their fears, hurt, pain and tears under the smiles, laughs and giggles on a daily basis. The girls who wear their heart on their sleeve. The girls who pray that things will work out just once and they'll be satisfied. The girls who sceam and cry to their pillows because everyone else fails to listen. The girls who have so many secrets but wont tell a soul. The girls who have mistakes and regrets as a daily moral. The girls that never win. The girls that stay up all night thinking about that one boy and hoping that he'll notice her one day. The girls who take life as it comes, to the girls who are hoping that it'll get better somewhere down the road. For the girls who love with all their heart although it always gets broken. To girls who think it's over. To real girls, to all girls: You're beautiful.

For a moment, there was silnece, and then at Brooke's nod, the rest of the Squad, minus me, chimed in. "Yes, sir."I said nothing. For one thing, I wasn't exactly keen on speaking in unison, and for another, I wasn't about to make any promises I couldn't keep. "Toby."I jumped in my seat. The Voice actually knew my name. And somehow, he had the freaky ability to ascertain that of all of us, I was the one who hadn't responded. "Do you understand?"I contemplated telling him what I didn't understand was his familial relationshiops, but stayed momentarily silent, causing everyone within a three-foot radius to kick me under the table at once."Ow!" I cleared my throat. "I mean, yes." I didn't throw the sir on the end, but apparently, that was good enough for the Voice. "Excellent. Report in tonight, and we'll have more information for you all tomorrow. And girl?""Yes?""Congratulations on the homecoming nominations. We're all very proud.

Girls mature faster than boys, cost more to raise, and statistics show that the old saw about girls not knowing about money and figures is a myth. Girls start to outspend boys before puberty—and they manage to maintain this lead until death or an ugly credit manager, whichever comes first. Males are born with a closed fist. Girls are born with the left hand cramped in a position the size of an American Express card. Whenever a girl sees a sign reading, “Sale, Going Out of Business, Liquidation,” saliva begins to form in her mouth, the palms of her hands perspire and the pituitary gland says, “Go, Mama.” In the male, it is quite a different story. He has a gland that follows a muscle from the right arm down to the base of his billfold pocket. It's called “cheap.” Girls can slam a door louder, beg longer, turn tears on and off like a faucet, and invented the term, “You don't trust me.” So much for “sugar and spice and everything nice” and “snips and snails and puppydog tails.

He said, I won't have one of those things in the house. It gives a young girl a false notion of beauty, not to mention anatomy. If a real woman was built like that she'd fall on her face.She said, If we don't let her have one like all the other girls she'll feel singled out. It'll become an issue. She'll long for one and she'll long to turn into one. Repression breeds sublimation. You know that. He said, It's not just the pointy plastic tits, it's the wardrobes. The wardrobes and that stupid male doll, what's his name, the one with the underwear glued on.She said, Better to get it over with when she's young. He said, All right but don't let me see it.She came whizzing down the stairs, thrown like a dart. She was stark naked. Her hair had been chopped off, her head was turned back to front, she was missing some toes and she'd been tattooed all over her body with purple ink, in a scrollwork design. She hit the potted azalea, trembled there for a moment like a botched angel, and fell.He said, I guess we're safe.

In the past few decades quite a few people have suggested -- citing most often the offence of impossible proportions -- that Barbie dolls teach young girls to hate themselves. But the opposite may be true. British researchers recently found that girls between the ages of seven and eleven harbor surprisingly strong feelings of dislike for their Barbie dolls, with no other toy or brand name inspiring such a negative response from the children. The dolls "provoked rejection, hatred, and violence" and many girls preferred Barbie torture -- by cutting, burning, decapitating, or microwaving -- over other ways of playing with the doll. Reasons that the girls hated their Barbies included, somewhat poetically, the fact that they were 'plastic.' The researchers also noted that the girls never spoke of one single, special Barbie, but tended to talk about having a box full of anonymous Barbies. 'On a deeper level Barbie has become inanimate,' one of the researchers remarked. 'She has lost any individual warmth that she might have possessed if she were perceived as a singular person. This may go some way towards explaining the violence and torture.

المصريون يعيشون في خديعة نفس مزمنة .. البنات يلبسن شيئا ضيقا فاضحا متظاهرات بأنه حجاب و أنهن شديدات الإيمان .. والأولاد يلبسون بدلة تدريب يطلقون عليها ترينك متظاهرون بأنهم رياضيون .. وهم أهلكهم التدخين والبانجو

This one had come to me, though, picked me out. I thought she was trouble from the start. I don't read minds and I can't see the future, but call it instinct or experience, something was prickling my spine.You could call it something else, if you wanted: adolescence, hormones, lust. Being seventeen. That doesn't go away, however long you practice."Hullo," I said politely, warily.She was long and slim and very neatly put together, dark hair tumbling over denim, old worn black jacket and jeans that somehow hadn't faded into grey. They probably didn't dare. Right from the start I saw a focus in her, a determination that must go all the way through, like the writing in a stick of Brighton rock. In another world, another lifetime, I thought she'd have raven-feathers in her hair, a bear's tooth on a thong about her. She'd be the village shaman, talking to spirits, and even the headman would be afraid of her, a little...Seventeen, I told you. She was devastating to me, she was sitting at my table, and I couldn't afford her. Not for a minute.If I'd stood up, if I'd left, if I'd run away...Nah. She would just have come after me. Faster, fitter, and on longer legs. What chance did I ever have?

دختر سياسى، بهتر از پسر سياسى است. مردان، انگار كه براى حضور در معركه ى سياست به دنيا مى آيند؛ اما زنان، بر اين ميدان منّت مى گذارند كه پا در آن مى نهند. هر جا زنى به خاطر عدالت مى جنگد، آن جا عطرى پيچيده است شيرين و شورانگيز و بهشتى.

Since you haven’t got a name,” he said. “I guess you can pick one for yourself. Would you like to pick one for me to write down?”She stopped rocking and looked at him. “I can do that? It’s legal and everything?”He smiled. “It’s a free country again,” he said. “At least in theory.”She nodded. “And when I pick a name it can be any name I want?”He nodded.“What’s your name?”“Victor,” he said. “Vic, for short.”“Okay,” she said, leaning forward and taking the pad from under his large thing hands. “How do you spell that?”He spelled it and she wrote it down. Her handwriting was perfectly small and legible. “Can I be Victor, too?” she said, looking up from the pad.He smirked. “It’s a boy’s name,” he said. “You’re a girl. You have to add an i and an a to the end if you want to make it a girl’s name.”She looked down at the name she had written and added the letters i and a to the end. “Victoria,” she said, passing the notepad back to the cop.“Hello, Victoria,” he said, smiling, taking the pad and pen back and presenting his hand for a shake. “It’s nice to meet you, officially.

Όταν προτιμούνται τα αγόρια από τα κορίτσια, τα συμπλέγματα κατωτερότητας στα κορίτσια είναι σχεδόν αναπόφευκτα. Τα παιδιά είναι πολύ ευαίσθητα και ακόμα και ένα πολύ καλό παιδί μπορεί να πάρει μια ολότελα λαθεμένη κατεύθυνση στη ζωή εξαιτίας της υποψίας του ότι προτιμούν τους άλλους.