For years, Dr. Mayim Bialik has been challenging our notion of what it means to be a girl and woman.
In a world that has a clear bias against women in science, Dr. Bialik received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCLA. And in a world that presents few and stereotypical roles for women in television and movies, Dr. Bialik has a long history of playing norm-challenging characters. From her portrayal of a young, outspoken and ambitious CC Bloom in the movie Beaches to her role as Blossom Russo in NBC’s Blossom – a teenage girl living in a house run by men after her mother left to pursue a new life and career – to neurobiologist Amy Farah Fowler in CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, Dr. Bialik has been presenting us with a different perspective on girls and women for 30 years.
And now with her new book, Girling Up: How to be Strong, Smart and Spectacular, Dr. Bialik is continuing in this tradition – by challenging stereotypes and trying to tell the entire truth about what girls face while growing up.
There is a critical need for a different perspective. Too often, girls and women face cultural stereotypes that suggest what they can or should do, resulting in bias and discrimination, particularly in academic and work settings. And the effects are severe; not only does discrimination against girls and women result in worse physical and mental health, but also in lower pay and opportunity to be hired for jobs.
For Dr. Bialik, stereotypes against women are not an abstract concept, but rather they are hurdles that she personally faced early on both as an aspiring neuroscientist and actress. “The roles for women, especially in television and movies, have been fairly narrow for most of entertainment history. I grew up watching the sitcoms of the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and females were either the slut or the nerd – and there was nothing in between,” Dr. Bialik said. “We’ve come a long way, but our perception of women is pretty narrow. And women have been historically underrepresented in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) field for a lot of reasons.”
At the same time that girls and women face bias and discrimination in work and school, our culture over-emphasizes physical appearance. In particular, throughout history, random body ideals for women have been presented in culture, contributing to body image dissatisfaction among girls and women. In fact, negative views of one’s body are so pervasive among women that this is often referred to as “normative discontent.”
Dr. Bialik reflected on how she experienced having to compare herself to conventional societal norms of female attractiveness. “As an adult, I don’t look like a lot of women. I have ethnic features. I’m several dress sizes larger than your average actress in Hollywood … being a non-traditional looking female can be a challenge in a culture that really celebrates conventional leading ladies and attractiveness,” Dr. Bialik described. “I think part of that is having a broad understanding of how significant culture is. And how much notions of what is considered attractive varies by culture … One of the most confusing things, especially for young children, and for teenagers as well, is when their reality is not reflected by the adults around them.
“We’re not seeing entire truths presented to them.”
When culture emphasizes the importance of female attractiveness and presents a rigid concept of what is attractive, while also de-emphasizing the notion that girls and women can achieve at school and work, it can be difficult for girls and women to feel in control of their lives and self-concept. And so, Dr. Bialik wrote Girling Up as a way of presenting a fuller view of her experience growing up and the science of female development, in order to help girls and women gain back a sense of control.
“That was a goal of the book … to present all sides of a perspective – of growing up or ‘girling up’ as we called it – but also a lot of the more complicated aspects of growing up and in particular growing up female, with all of the challenges to body image, and our more modern progressive understanding of what it is to cope with things,” Dr. Bialik explained. “The general purpose of this book was to empower young women with information – having more information and understanding yourself as part of a whole.
“I hope that’s what young women and the people who love them will take away from this book – a full treatise on what it is to be female.”
As such, Dr. Bialik talks about a range of issues such as sexuality, menstruation and body image. “The notion for me was to present all aspects of what it means to process information – in particular, sexual information, romantic information. What is emotional intimacy? We’re growing up in a culture that is already wired to make us think – especially with women – there’s this certain way we should be,” Dr. Bialik explained. “Even something as simple as knowing how your menstrual cycle works and why, and what happens if it’s not right … Even the section on body image and the emphasis on breasts and things like that. I do mention that in the twenties, breasts were not in. I do mention that those things shift and fluctuate. And the idea is to be comfortable and understand that variability is normal in the female body. That’s actually something we have with the illustrations of the book. There are girls of every size, shape, color and variety represented.
“I specifically said I don’t want drawings of only skinny white people.”
Talking about difficult issues that are often ignored, and presenting a more full and complete explanation of how girls develop can be empowering – something that helps regain control from societal bias. “Those are sometimes some of the most empowering things that we can know about. A lot of those things in our culture in particular are pushed to the side. We shouldn’t see it. We shouldn’t talk about it. But that’s the general notion of this book – that when you know some things – whether it’s about your body, about dating, about the world, about the ways other cultures perceive stress – those are the ways that we know ourselves better,” Dr. Bialik said. “I wanted to take the focus off of, this is the society you’ve been thrust into – how do you adjust to it? I really want to focus on, this is the structure of how our society frames us, especially with women – and here’s what you can do to take back your control.”
Dr. Bialik hopes that rather than need to conform to stereotypes, girls and women celebrate their individuality. “Celebrating what’s special. … I share a lot of the experiences I’ve had in my life – divorce, death – it’s something as an adult I’m seeking to figure out, as an adult who doesn’t quite fit in with many other adults,” Dr. Bialik explained. “I think the notion of finding differences and being comfortable with what is special about you is so important.”
Girling Up is just another step in Dr. Bialik’s taking on these broader societal issues. In 2015, she established a website GrokNation, which has and will continue to address issues that young people face. And she hopes that more role models step forward to challenge societal bias and discrimination.
“Part of what I do not only as an actress who is a scientist, but also someone with a public platform … is to put a positive face on female scientists, and all of the amazing things that happen when you choose to live your life as a scientist,” Dr. Bialik described. “So I think the more positive role models we can have, and the more women who speak up about how they got into positions like that and what their life is like is important. And I think it’s important for us to have mentors and women we can look to to say, ‘You’re a scientist and you’re a mom? How did you do it? You’re a scientist and you work with animals? What does that look like?”
Ultimately, she’s optimistic that people are getting the message. “We are going to grow up and be in a world where we are half of the population. And the perspective that women have is unique, and should be fostered and cared for when we are young,” Dr. Bialik said. “With so much emphasis being on sexualization and clothing and dating and all of those things, it’s important to acknowledge that there is a very big world that women are going to be part of. When we grow up, we become women of the world. Then all of the decisions we make are impactful.
“And things that we do matter.”
