Girlology Hang-Ups, Hook-Ups, and Holding Out: Stuff You Need to Know about Your Body, Sex, & Dating

To describe my life growing up as "sheltered" on a small farm in the Northeast would be an understatement. So when those "awkward" teen years hit, I was more clueless than Alicia Silverstone, especially when it came to boys. Sure, I knew "the basics" - how things worked anatomically -- but no one ever had a talk with me about what to expect from teenage boys or dealing with birth control or the natural mental developmental delays of teenage boys! Needless to say, I had a very rude awakening. If only something like Girlology had been around back in the `70s. The closest thing my mom could find, bless her 1950's-style heart, was that Pat Boone classic, "'Twixt 12 and 20." (`Twixt' is such a quaint little word, isn't it?) Unfortunately, sometime between the time it was published in the `50s and the time I got around to skimming it - please, do you really think that any respectable `70s teen was going to read anything by Pat Boone? - boys were probably, how you say, more horny? You know - free love and peace signs and feminism and all that. So the advice contained in Girlology: Hang-Ups, Hook-Ups and Hanging Out would have come in handy. It contains a lot of honest advice and answers to questions that you know teen girls have because, well, I remember having them as a teen girl. Especially the stuff that became really important once I was in college (I was a late bloomer) about going to the gynecologist, birth control, and, of course, S-E-X. The book is presented with each chapter describing a hypothetical scenario of teen girl life, such as boyfriends pressuring to have sex and body image issues that are then followed by Q & A's taken from the authors' interactions with actual teenage girls. Even though the authors are both doctors, it's not written in a clinical way - the answers are written very much in teen girl lingo and are extremely accessible. I hope I have the nerve to give something like this to my daughter in a few years. Perhaps it will have more impact than the walking-along-the-beach-talking-about-douche-and-other-girl things talk they used to show on the TV commercials. Knowing my girl, if I tried to have that talk there'd be plenty of eye rolling, exasperated sighing and the "Oh, MO-om," retort. As a mother of a girl, reading Girlology was a stark reminder about how things are as exponentially different between my girlhood and that of girls today in the same way they were massively different for my mother and my grandmother. I don't like the fact that in a few short years PunditGirl's need-to-know status on issues concerning boys and her developing body will be on high alert. But at least I've gotten a bit of a head start with Girlology.

Dr's Melissa Holmes and Trish Hutchinson have compiled a much needed guide to help teen girls manage the trying rights of passage in these challenging times. The book is easy to read and full of valuable information that is communicated in a straight-forward style without being judgemental. Very few physicians can balance a true sense of caring and technical expertise in the same book. As a practicing psychologist, I see just how misinformed teenage girls can be and how reluctant they often are to ask the essential questions they need accurate answers to. I highly recommend it.