It’s ridiculous – a girl steps out, goes dancing, gets her hair cut, decides to spend the summer in Italy and it’s a scandal. A chap does it and no one bats an eyelid.

Women the world over suffer restrictions.

What if the parents, from the beginning, taught both children to cook Indomie? Cooking, by the way, is a useful and practical life skill for a boy to have—I’ve never
thought it made much sense to leave such a crucial thing—the ability to nourish oneself
—in the hands of others.

I have become very aware how under-represented are the stories of the underprivileged and undervalued. Our records are, in general, very male and if not always the material of the rich, certainly (for obvious reasons) the material of the literate.

That was part of being a girl--you were resigned to whatever feedback you'd get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn't react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they'd backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.

They are afraid to read out loud, fearful of being thought stupid or foolish or — what? I ask them. Girlish? Boring, says one Megan. (Which Megan? I can’t remember.) This is a terrible fear, I know — this fear of not being interesting — of being trivial, not special. It is almost as great, I think, as their fear of standing out and being special.