I've been thinking a bit lately about beauty and how hard it is to be a girl - still - in a country that is continuously pressing certain idealized images of female beauty upon it's teenagers. (Heck, on women in general.) I'm just so tired of photo shopped magazine covers and botoxed starlets and the annual collection of "look how skinny she is now" magazine covers. (Be afraid, kids - they are coming as part of our annual collective New Year's nightmare). We all know these pictures cause serious problems for young girls, scads of books have been written on the subject, and yet they just keep on being thrown out there like the zombie dreck from hell that they are.

I'm so sick of this.

If you are one of the lucky ones, you find a tonic for all this and you manage to make it through to adulthood without losing your mind (or your heart or your soul or your health). The first time I felt like I might actually turn out okay - like I could be beautiful - was when I read A WRINKLE IN TIME and discovered Meg Murray. Meg had hair that flew all over the place and was all elbows and knees and tall and never quite wore the right thing (or said the right thing) and she turned out to be powerful and strong and Calvin, wonderful Calvin, fell hard for her. That book was a lifesaver in junior high (when we all need such lifesavers) and has sustained me ever since.

So that's the question this time - tell me about the beautiful girls you have discovered. Are they in books or movies or music? I don't care - just tell me about them. We might not have a physical photo of them (like my Meg) but if they live and breathe and are visible through words then that is good enough. I want to give girls some actual beauty they can relate to and maybe make them feel a bit better about themselves in the process.

Neesha Meminger: "I'll do two films because, funnily enough, I watched two films over the holiday weekend that really fit this theme. One was the film Just Wright starring Queen Latifah and Common in the lead romantic roles. I was completely expecting not to love this one, but was hoping it would entertain enough for a lazy, belly-stuffed holiday evening. It definitely delivered on those levels, despite some *very* cheesy moments. But what I liked most about this film - which was a variation of the "boy is swept off his feet by dazzling, cultural-ideal-of-beauty gal, only to discover she's not as beautiful on the inside, then he falls in love with the girl-next-door" theme - is that the girl next door wasn't of the usual average, plain variety. She was a big girl, and she was totally okay with that. And while there was no overt dialogue around weight or size issues, young women watching would see that she was definitely the more attractive of the two women. Her size and weight were not rendered irrelevant in the film, but Latifah's character was comfortable and sexy and happy in her body. And that was what made her appealing. I also liked that they didn't demonize the other woman in the film. She had her flaws, but she was human and, in the end, clearly cared for her friend.

I love that a large, brown woman (even if she *was* Queen Latifah) was depicted as desirable and smart and savvy on the big screen. The film had plenty of room for improvement, but on that level, I was pleasantly surprised.

The next night, I watched Easy A. This film was not cutting edge in its portrayal of an alternative beauty ideal, but it was refreshing to see a young woman fight for control over her own sexuality. The characters are all supposed to be in high school, but both my spouse and I had a hard time believing that for various reasons. Still, the theme centered around concepts of promiscuity, adultery, women's sexuality in general, and religion/culture and its views of said sexuality (the title, Easy A, refers to The Scarlet Letter). I thought this film did a good job of depicting the madness that can ensue around the perceptions, labels, and misconceptions associated with certain behaviours, clothing, and choices young women make. I think this film would have been great for me to watch when I was a teen because it poked fun, and offered a critical look, at the reverence with which young women's sexual purity is sometimes viewed."

Sarah Stevenson: "When I was in middle school, I went through a good long 2-year stage of obsessively drawing fashions and fashion models. At the time, I wanted to be a fashion designer, and I painstakingly copied all the instructional pictures out of my Drawing Fashions book. I filled pages and pages with uniformly generic, tall and willowy women in some severely late-1980s-style outfits.

I was also already a comic book reader, though, being about 10 or 11 at the time, I mostly bought Archie comics. I remember how much I loved the continuing saga of Archie trying to get with both Betty and Veronica, and I loved the contrast in style and personality between the two girls. I even went so far as to make my own hand-drawn Betty and Veronica paper dolls so I could design my own clothes for them and see how they looked dressed up.

I'm not afraid to admit it, but I was a big Betty Cooper fan. I didn't think Veronica could compare, even with that gigantic closet of hers. I mean, Betty was cool, she was pals with all the guys, and she rode a skateboard! What's not to like? And she didn't take crap, except for the inexplicable soft spot she had for Archie. (I was always skeptical of that. He seemed like such a doofus.) She wasn't overly concerned with her looks, but she was charismatic, fun, smart and pretty. Everyone liked her because she was a nice person.

(Okay, you can stop laughing.)

I'll get serious now, because I think there's more to all this than just a random phase in my reading materials and career interests. In retrospect—oh, let's just go ahead and call it hindsight—I think that my fixation on drawing clothes gave me a sense of power over what was considered beautiful. In my drawings, I got to decide what was the height of fashion, I got to change the girls' outfits or appearances at will. I was the one in charge.

Still, like every girl, I was fed conflicting messages about beauty and appearances. In our society, beauty is often equated with, or is understood to lead to, power. Or, at the very least, wealth and popularity. Betty didn't fit that stereotypical mold, and because I already didn't fit the mold in a number of ways, I related to her. And I took heart that there were multiple ways to be beautiful, that you didn't have to be rich and gorgeous like Veronica to attract your Archie. (Though, again--why him? Anyway.)

I'd like to see more role models like Betty. Or like Brandi Chastain, the U.S. women's soccer player, whose beauty lies in her amazing athleticism and washboard abs, not to mention her advocacy for girls' health and self-esteem. Let's teach girls—not just the ones who are growing up, but the ones who've already reached adulthood, too—that we are in charge of ourselves and that there are many ways to be beautiful."

Tanya Stone: "What a great question! I love that you turned this idea on its head. As soon as I read your question, an image of a girl popped into my head, along with a memory. This girl is only two years older than I am, and I was twelve when her movie came out--that perfectly insecure age. I was a tomboy and quietly jealous of my girlier friends Lisa and Gina, who I always thought looked prettier than I. But I wasn't interested in changing who I was. I didn't want to actually BE girlier, I just wanted to feel prettier. I was always scraping my knees on a tree or throwing on comfy clothes that could get dirty.

The movie in question was The Bad News Bears. I completely related to the character of Amanda Whurlitzer played by Tatum O'Neal, and loved her spunk. I also remember thinking that she looked just as cute in her baseball uniform as Lisa and Gina did in their fashionable clothes. Amanda and I had the same kind of hair, too. Nothing fancy, it was just hair. On our heads. Doing what hair was supposed to do. It didn't need to be longer, or curled, or styled. It was perfectly fine hair. I looked at Amanda and saw myself in her. It made me smile.

Now, I must add, this was before I had fully developed into my face. Translation: young Tanya still had a perky Tatum nose. As the nose grew, so did the insecurities. But there were things about myself I loved, too. Like my voice. I can sing. And lo and behold, I discovered someone else who can sing who shared my shnoz. Enter Barbara Streisand. Nose or no nose, she is beautiful. And so, I saw, was I."

Laurel Snyder: "Oddly enough, you know what book makes me think about beauty in a good way? Ballet Shoes. It centers on three sisters, who've been adopted by an old eccentric man. And the sisters are very very different from each other. Of course, most girls who love this book identify with one of the sisters in particular, but in any group of women, I always discover that someone identifies with each of them. I remember, as a kid, thinking that Pauline was the "best" sister, the prettiest and the coolest and the eldest. And I remember the day I found out a friend of mine identified with Petrova, who was more introverted, and liked to fix cars and wanted to fly airplanes, istead of be an actress. And it was a wakeup-- like, 'Oh! Not everyone wants to be the kind of person I want to be!' "

Simmone Howell: "In the beginning there were boys. It took me a while to find the girls. I liked survival stories, Huck Finn going down a river stories, treehouse stories. And then Enid Blyton charged our house. She said there were only two types of girl: plucky or prim. I knew which one I was. In The Famous Five, George lived with Uncle Quentin and Aunt Fanny on an island, and she could do what she wanted. Anne could tidy up a campsite but to me she was not beautiful. Jo March in Little Women was beautiful - and not just because she was Katharine Hepburn and not just because she cut off her hair. She was beautiful because she could hole up in the attic and write and no nice boy knocking would deter her from her purpose. Addie in the film Paper Moon was beautiful because she was a trickster - but she had a soft-side too. For a year I hid a box under my bed with keepsakes, inspired by Addie. Dicey Tillerman in Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voight was beautiful. She protected her brother and sister, she was resourceful, she worked with her hands and meted out the peanut butter sandwiches so no one starved. Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. Harriet the Spy. Dinky Hocker. Ramona. When you're young you don't stop to think about why you like something. Now I know it's because I recognised something of myself in these characters. They were inappropriate and unruly; they couldn't always be 'good'. There's a lovely line in a Silver Jews song that goes: "All my favourite singers couldn't sing". Similarly, none of my beautiful girls were 'beautiful'. (Except, of course, they were!)"

Beth Kephart: "As usual, you have me all twisted up. Because the truthful answer to this question is that I wasn't (and am not) beautiful, but I don't remember looking for a self-affirming beauty in traditional ways. I looked for, clung to, celebrated the beauty that arose from the act of simply being alive. I was very aware that I was doing this, even as an adolescent (hence the utterly autobiographical nature of Undercover). When I discovered ice skating, for example, I discovered the power of moving inside a song, and that power was beautiful to me. When I watercolored blank notebooks and wrote poems across them, I saw beauty not in the product, but in the process (I saw, I thought, I found a way of expressing life). I was the scuffed-knee kickball queen who walked through creeks barefooted and brought home stones and split them in the basement.... I just lived, is what I'm saying, and found beauty in being alive."

Cecil Castellucci: "I have to say that for me the moment that I knew that I was going to be OK and that I could look the way that I looked and that could be beautiful enough was when I saw Marion Ravenwood in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. Here was a woman who was all woman and moved through the world the way she wanted to, despite the times that she lived in and what was expected of her from society. She wore no make-up. She could drink a man under a table. She could capture an adventurer like Indiana Jones' heart. She could keep up with him. She was whip smart. Fearless. Capable. She could have dirt on her face, face a pit of snakes but also look nice in a pretty dress when given one or chose to wear one. She was comfortable in pants. She was comfortable in her skin. And she was sexy as all hell. I think for me, once I saw Marion Ravenwood, I knew that I could be beautiful as long as I just marched to the beat of my own drum. She was the epitome of beautiful and her kind of beautiful was what I wanted to be and I thought of as well within my reach.

And there were many others who were like constellations in my I-could-be-beautiful-sky. Like Myrna Loy in The Thin Man. Like Anne Eliot in Persuasion. Like Patty Smith and her skinny tie. Like Princess Leia and her plain white dress. "

[Post pics: Meg Murray as drawn by Hope Larson in the upcoming gn - I'm soooo excited about this!; Easy A movie poster; Brandi Chastain; Young Tanya Stone & young Tatum O'Neal; Ballet Shoes; Little Women - Katherine Hepburn as Jo in the back - this movie is fantastic! -; ice skates; Indy and Marion from Raiders of the Lost Ark and yes, Cecil is right here - Marion is magnificent!)