As doctors, we see girls every day who have the same questions you do. And we see lots of girls and even women who have gotten some really wrong answers! No, your period will not stop when you go swimming. Yes, you can get pregnant the first time you have sex. No, you are not gay if you look at a naked girl in the locker room. Girlology is about giving you the straight, true facts about your body.
We also treat patients who have made healthy decisions about sex and relationships and others who aren’t so happy with the decisions they’ve made. We want you to be happy with the decisions you make! Girlology is about helping you figure out what’s important to you so that you can make decisions you will be pleased with for a long, long, long time.
Girlology is about helping you figure out a lot of things that matter— your body, your relationships and sex. It may sound scary but it’s not.
Girlology is about periods and body parts “down there.” It will help you decide how you feel about sex and sexual things. It will help you understand guys and learn how to speak up for yourself. It will help you talk to parents and other adults and gain their trust. Girlology will also teach you how to understand your friends’ and family’s values and decide what is important to you. All in all, it’s about gaining the confidence you need to develop a special type of “Girl Power!”
We’ve Got Girl Power!
Every school has them: girls who have a special sort of Girl Power. We bet you could name a girl right now who has it. She’s the one other girls trust with secrets, guys respect and teachers count on.
She may not be the prettiest or most popular, but you can’t miss her. She talks, thinks and acts in a way that shows everyone she’s confident in who she is and the choices she makes. She’s just plain different, but it’s a good kind of different!
So how did she get it—this Girl Power? Did it show up wrapped in a nice, neat package on her sixteenth birthday? Was it magically revealed to her in a fantastic dream? Did her fairy godmother wave a magic wand and Girl Power descended in a cloud of pixie dust? Nope. None of the above.
The cool thing about Girl Power is that it’s in every girl. That includes you, me and the girl sitting next to you in science class! But you’ve got to discover it, respect it and grow it. When you see a girl with strong Girl Power, you can bet that she’s been growing it since she was a preteen. You can do the same thing, and there is no better time to start than now!
Let’s Get Started!
Girlology is about finding that special Girl Power and showing you how to let it do its thing. First you will need three sharpened #2 pencils, two clean erasers, 10 pieces of wide-ruled notebook paper . . . just kidding! Girlology is nothing like a school assignment or a test. It’s meant to be read at your own pace. Pondering is encouraged!
Remember we told you that there are some things that will just happen to you because you’re a girl, and other girl things you have choices about? Well, we girls are going to talk about both in this book. We are going to challenge you to make decisions now about what choices you will make in the future. When you decide what is important today, you can make promises to yourself that you can stick to as you get older. These promises you make to yourself are important promises to keep!
We Need to Talk
When it comes to sexual things, you are going to want to talk about them. And everyone is going to be telling you something about sex. Here’s where your Girl Power comes in—it’s up to you to decide who can be trusted with your thoughts and feelings and who you can trust to give you good information. You will find out that some people want to tell you things about sex for your good, and other people want to tell you things about sex for their good.
All right, let’s start with the “for your good” crowd. These are usually people like your parents, your family, doctors, nurses, religious leaders and teachers. Close friends can also be great, especially when it comes to sharing your thoughts and feelings, but they may not know all the facts about sexual things.
As for the “for their good” crowd, these people want to sell you stuff, persuade you to do what makes them feel good or show off. They are usually advertisers on TV and in magazines, certain movies and TV shows, and some friends or boyfriends.
The trick is to listen to people who can help you decide what is important to you and good for you—people who can help you decide on values you can stick to for the rest of your life.
How you think and feel about yourself, your body, sex and sexual things are important stuff. You need to ask questions and get real answers. You need to share your feelings and know they will be kept private. And you can only do this with someone you trust. Girlology will help you decide who is worthy of your trust.
But It’s Kind of Embarrassing
Lots of things you read in this book will be good things to bring up with your mom, your dad or another trusted adult. Think those adults are clueless? Hopeless? Completely and utterly out of touch? Well, you’ll be surprised to know that they were not dropped on this planet as adults. They actually had to go through the same stages that you are going through to become sexually mature. And while that may have happened in the “dark ages,” most of them really do remember a lot about it.
Think your parents will be embarrassed by sex talk? They might be. You might be. But we promise that the more you talk about it, the easier it will get—for you and for them.
Puberty We don’t really talk about puberty a lot in this book because most of you are already in the midst of it or well beyond the beginning stages. Just to give you a definition, puberty is the time during a girl’s or guy’s life when they are becoming more adult- like in their body, including their appearance and their thinking. The word puberty comes from two different Latin words. One is pubertas, which means “adult-like,” and the other is pubescere, which means “to
