How Girls Are Made

I am well past the target audience age for any of Mindy McGinnis' novels, but I keep reading them because they are still impactful to me. For one, I always wish there had been such stories available when I was a teenager. Also, I remain in awe of Ms. McGinnis's ability to repeatedly capture the dangers that teen girls face every day. HOW GIRLS ARE MADE is yet another example of that.

One of the reasons I read Ms. McGinnis's stories is that they remind me of the turmoil being a teenage girl entails. While society has most definitely changed since my teenage years, the roiling emotions and fierce pressure to conform and belong have not. Not only do I feel such reminders keep me feeling younger than my actual age, but I also believe they show more allow me to be more empathetic towards teenagers today. Improving your ability to be empathetic is something I've always found valuable, and I value it even more in today's fractured society.

Ms. McGinnis's talent lies in the fact that she makes it so easy to slip inside the minds of her heroines and feel those pressures all over again. HOW GIRLS ARE MADE may have three different heroines, but you become each girl as they take turns sharing their stories. While all of Ms. McGinnis's stories have some element that makes them uncomfortable to read, I found this to be particularly true of HOW GIRLS ARE MADE because what each girl is striving to achieve is not outlandish or extreme. Feeling loved, feeling feminine and desired, making their world safer for those that will come after them, making a difference, being seen - they are such simple desires. Yet, as we learn through each narrative, social media makes those desires almost impossible to achieve.

HOW GIRLS ARE MADE is an examination of social media on teenagedom. It is a condemnation of how easy it is to utterly destroy a young woman's self-confidence, to vilify another who is only trying to help her peers, and to devastate someone with low self-esteem. It only takes one comment or, in the case of low self-esteem, a lack of comments, to harm a teen's already fragile sense of self. We see how powerful social media has become as a reinforcer of social mores, and woe to anyone who does not conform. Ms. McGinnis also shows how easy it can be to use social media to manipulate the young and innocent, no matter how savvy they think they are to the inherent dangers.

Ms. McGinnis, in HOW GIRLS ARE MADE, presents a sobering image of what teenagers today face thanks to social media. I finished the book horrified by what she shares and more than a little thankful I didn't have to run the same gauntlet. There is no doubt that social media causes more harm than good these days, regardless of how innocent and fun it used to be back in its early days. HOW GIRLS ARE MADE shows that harm in stark imagery, highlighting that we need to do a better job of protecting all women from its dangers because no one else is going to do it for us. show less

Unsettling barely describes this book. I'm a big fan of this author and she sure doesn't disappoint in this book. You know right from the start that one of the three girls is dead by the end of the story, but Mindy does a stellar job of keeping the reader guessing and changing their mind as to who it was. Some might scoff at all the dark events affecting these girls, but everything that happens to them happens to teens of all sexes on a daily basis. Gripping, chilling, an excellent read.

i really enjoyed this take (even as some of it started to feel a little heavy-handed around the 3/4 mark, for a bit) on the lack of sex education and sexual literacy in our society, among both teens and adults. there is a hefty dose of reality in this, about teen life and the different kinds of abusive behavior and social media and rape culture, and it's well done and important. i was really surprised by the awful end of jobie's story and just didn't see it coming. very brave of mcginnis to write it this way. she manages to cover so much in such a readable and engaging way. an important book.

I love that this group of girls takes on trying to teach their friends about sex ed because the stuff they are learning isn't useful and doesn't answer their questions.
This was a tough read because the things happening to these girls are so real and they happen to girls and women everyday.
Although this is a fiction novel, this book reminds us to be safe online and in person when sharing information with strangers.