I want to tell you about a group I'm a part of. This group comprises some of the nicest and funniest people you'll ever meet, all reading and geeking out together via social media in honor of the fabulous Geek Girl.

It all started with what I'll loosely refer to as a New York Times "review" of the first episode of George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones series on HBO. Suffice to say the reviewer was not a fan of the show or the genre, but the fact that she was the wrong reviewer for the material was only part of the problem; she also expressed a belief that women don't read/watch fantasy and that HBO had sexed the show up to appeal to females (eh, what?).  Fans of the show, the books, the genre, and the truth reacted to her bizarre assumptions and much hilarity ensued. In the midst of it all, the Geek Girls Book Club was born.

The club now boasts hundreds of members (male as well as female) on Facebook, Twitter (search for #GGBC) , and the club's blog. We've read a range of books from The Hobbit (inspired by the aforementioned hilarity) to Joe Hill's HORNS, and each has resulted in lively discussions on the Twitter hashtag and the Facebook page. (The club also spawned a spinoff group, Geeks United in Crafts, in which geek girls and boys share their creations.) 

In addition to talking books and all things geeky, we also discuss pertinent issues, like the periodic (and recently resurrected) criticism/rejection of "faux geek girls." Opinions vary slightly on that subject, but one thing is certain: the Geek Girls Book Club is welcoming and all-inclusive--you won't be asked to prove your geek cred in order to join our ranks.

A Game of Thrones is now in its second  season, and the New York Times still hasn't figured it out, but audiences have, and many viewers are learning what some of us have known for a long, long time: speculative fiction crafted by a storyteller like Martin  is not only fun and entertaining, it's thought provoking and heartbreaking and triumphant and, like all art, serves as a mirror in which we can examine and better understand what it means to be human. Whether you're a fan from way back or you're just discovering the wonders of speculative fiction, the Geek Girls Book Club is thrilled to have you. Come on over and join the fun.

One of us! One of us! One of us!


Resources:
GGBC on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/geekgirlsbookclub/
GGBC Blog: http://geekgirlsbookclub.blogspot.com/
GGBC on Twitter: Message @NikkiSticks to join the club; use/search on hashtag #GGBC to join the conversation

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March 17, 1982, thirty years ago this week, you showed up and changed the course of my life forever. You'd already been a presence for so long, a stranger inside me turning my 17-year-old body into something I didn't recognize, rippling my skin as you stretched and kicked (bruising the hell out of my ribs). But until I met you, I had no idea what the very fact of you would mean. I never imagined how your existence in the world would make me feel special, how your unconditional love would fill me up in places that had been empty all my life.  I didn't know how shocking it would be to realize that I'd brought a person into a world full of problems and I had no idea how to explain any of it to you much less protect you from it. I had no understanding of the the terror that would grip me when you were in danger, the rage that would fill me when someone mistreated you, the joy I'd experience watching you learn, the pride I'd feel seeing you succeed. 

Before you, I never knew what it was like to open a door and see someone smiling at me like I was the only person in the universe who mattered. And I never knew what it felt like to know--really know-- that I wasn't. For the first time there was someone on planet for whom I'd do, risk, or give up anything and everything. Someone who would give my life real meaning and purpose where before I couldn't see any.

In a very real way, you completed me.

I had no idea what I was doing, but you made it easy. You were born with a happy heart, full of love and humor and unable to lie or do wrong without quickly making things right. You were curious and self-sufficient. (I'll never forget waking up when you were about the age you are in the image to the left and finding you on the couch with a block of cheese and a steak knife carving out your own breakfast.) You learned with blinding speed. Colors, shapes, letters, sounds...when I briefly took a job "teaching" preschool at a daycare center, you taught the other children as much as I did. When you were two, my friends took hours of pleasure from pointing out letters in magazines so you could identify them for newcomers who shook their heads in disbelief. At age four, standing in an aisle of the bookstore your Grandmother managed, you sounded out a book title. After that, there was no stopping you.

You always knew who you were and what you wanted. My friend Lisa loves to tell the story of one day when you walked out of your room wearing a pink frilly dress and carrying a little girly purse. There I stood wearing all black with spiky hair and I looked at you and said, "Where did you come from?" You loved school, loved to draw...when asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, you tried on a few possible professions, but before long was clear that you were a singer. I was a singer, too, and I wish I could take credit, but it was all you. You sang non-stop, you wrote your own songs, you put on shows for anyone and everyone. You created handbills and tickets and recorded radio programs on your karaoke machine. You called yourself "Crystle Blade." "When I get famous," you'd say, never "if." You assumed success and I didn't argue.

I didn't make it as easy on you as you did on me. I was depressed and self absorbed and angry and numb, and you learned to use your sense of humor to get us both through difficult times. You created costumes out of odds and ends--remember the underwear off-the-shoulder top?--and performed for me, and I laughed until I cried. You took on more than your share while I was emotionally unavailable, when my depression finally lifted and I could feel the things I was meant to feel I was so grateful to that medication for giving me back my relationship with you. 

At 13, you got your first instrument: a Squier bass purchased for $35 from my friend and co-worker, Nick. You never played it like a bass, picking and strumming it instead and turning it into a whole different instrument. Soon after, you formed your first band. You were the most adorable little punk-rocker I had ever seen. You shaved your head and dyed your fringe pink and put on a show in our backyard that caused the neighbors to call the cops. I was so proud.

About that time, I went a little crazy and decided we should move to Ireland. You were game, so we got matching tattoos, hopped a plane and had an adventure that was far more difficult than we choose to remember it. Broke and hungry in a shabby little flat, we dined on ramen and burgers and chips and played hand after hand of rummy while rain poured outside. Within a month we'd had enough and back to the USA we came, but life didn't get any easier for some time. And yet, despite my mistakes, the choices I would make differently now, you continued to thrive. And sing. And write. You wrote song after beautiful song, and I listened and sang the harmonies in my mind. For your 18th birthday I wrote lyrics and you wrote music for a song we called "Kafka's Sister." I can only remember the chorus:

It was an almost seamless progression from writing together to taking the stage as the lead and backup singers for our own band. Performing with you for seven years or so on stages all over Seattle and the Pacific Northwest was an experience words can't describe. We sang and fought and loved our way through three bands and two albums, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Singing with you is still one of the greatest joys of my life.

You're still singing, still writing songs. But overnight you've transformed your life into something else yet again. You turned an internship into a full-time writing position at a game company, joining what has more or less been the family profession for the past 23 years. Your first short story ebook comes out any minute on Amazon. You are a professional writer. I can't describe how proud that makes me.

I can not imagine my life without you. You make me laugh more than anyone I know. You're my proudest achievement, my confidant, my friend. You're the kindest, most compassionate person I've ever met. The world is a better place with you in it, and I'm thankful for the role I had in bringing you here and bringing you up. I wish I had known things I know now when they would have done you more good, but I'm thankful for the things I did know. I'm thankful for the things I went through so you didn't have to.

You transformed me from a lost teenager into the mother of someone I now want to be when I grow up. Thank you for that. I love you, my dottir.

Signed,
Your Mom

Here's Jessie performing an original song, "He Took the Dog."

This week, in our first Super Girl Twitterview (live on Twitter at #GESG), Molly Lewis chatted with us for over 90 minutes about music, doubt, role models, labels, trolls, princesses, trust, and lots more.

I want to thank Molly for participating in this experiment and all of you who tuned in for your patience. Not only did I learn a lot about a musician I admire, I learned a lot about how to (and how not to) perform a Twitter interview. (I apologize to anyone who tuned in and was unable to follow  the conversation. I promise I'll do better next time!)

Here, without further ado, is the Storified transcript of my conversation with Molly Lewis. Enjoy!

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This week--on Leap Day! (Wednesday, 2/29)--in our first ever Girl, Empowered "Super Girl" interview, we talk with singer/songwriter/musician/video producer/super girl Molly Lewis on Twitter. (We'll post the interview here on GE soon after.) 

Molly charmed me from the moment she took the stage and began to play at w00tstock 2.1 in Seattle, 2010. Her songs were intelligent and funny, her voice authentic and sweet, her ukulele chops amazing. When I bought my first uke a few months later, it was at least in part due to that performance.

But when I watched Molly's music videos, I fell in love. She's known to many as SweetAfton23 on YouTube, a channel with 73 video uploads as of this writing. Many of these are songs, and others are "vlogs" (video blogs for the uninitiated). My favorite is An Open Letter to Stephen Fry. When the Harvard Secular Society honored Fry in 2010, they invited Molly to perform it for the man himself.

We'd love to know where Molly got the strength and confidence to take a YouTube channel from zero to 32,000 subscribers. YouTube, Molly says, can be a supportive environment for creative people, but then there are the flamers and the trolls. We'll ask Molly how she handles all of this, what it takes to put yourself out there in front of the world creatively and personally, and more. 

From her blog (Molly was born on Thanksgiving day 1989):
My dad used to tell me that “the whole Thanksgiving thing” was kind of dying out, and year after year people would sit around the turkey going “well, this is lame, what are we supposed to be thankful for?” But then I was born, and everyone went “MOLLY’S HERE!” and Thanksgiving was saved.

To learn more about Molly, check out her primer.

Join us on Twitter this week on Wednesday, 2/29 at 6pm Pacific time. We'll be using the hashtag #GESG. Questions? Use the Contact page or comment below.

UPDATE:
Read the transcript of our interview with Molly!

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Girl, Empowered was born of a whirlwind of inspiration over a very short period, and sometimes I wonder whether I've effectively articulated what we're trying to do here. One important thing we're doing is raising awareness of how empowering girls, through any and all means, helps not only individual girls, but society as a whole.

Our first "How To" article, Alarm Bells, Dirt, and Other Girl-Power Tools, focused on encouraging girls to listen to their inner warning systems as well as finding something they are passionate about, and some readers worried that we had overlooked education as a critical factor in empowering girls. We haven't. Education is at the heart of our empowerment philosophy and of our efforts to empower the girls we sponsor, and I plan to write more about it. Today, though, I saw a video that summed it up for me.

Produced by blogger Gabrielle of ItOnlyTakesAGirl.com, this film succinctly and powerfully conveys the reasons we decided that when we sponsored a child, that child would be a girl (which would lead us to eventually sponsor three more girls, which would eventually lead us to start this website). 

When girls go to school, they marry later and have fewer, healthier children. For instance, if an African mother has five years of education, her child has a 40 percent better chance of living to age 5. A World Health Organization study in Burkina Faso showed that mothers with some education were 40 percent less likely to subject their children to the practice of genital mutilation. When girls get educated, they are three times less likely to contract HIV/AIDS.  (Newsweek, September 2008)

Here's another video from The Girl Effect that shows how in one generation a girl can break the cycle of poverty in her family.

Based on what I've read and heard, educating girls, especially in girls growing up in third-world countries, seems to me like the single most important thing we can do not only to empower individuals, but to reduce world population, poverty, and disease and improve the quality of life for millions. But while education is important, is it enough? Photographer Johannah Reimer thinks maybe it isn't. Check out her Kickstarter project, which asks that question, among others.

While women in Kerala have been endowed with the benefits of an education—literacy, autonomy, and a sense of pride, they also live in a society that has been characterized by divisions of caste and gender for thousands of years. The data illuminates that something is drastically wrong here. How empowered are these highly educated women? Can we measure empowerment? If women are living in a patriarchal society, can education help to dispel some of the gender stereotypes for both men and women? 

We look forward to Johannah's conclusions. Meanwhile, here at Girl, Empowered, we'll keep talking about all the ways we can empower girls all over the world. We're proud to be a part of a global movement to change the world one girl at a time.

Resources:
It Only Takes a Girl
The Girl Effect
United Nations Girls' Education Initiative
Berhane Hewan
World Education
Educate Girls Globally
Rethinking Girls' Empowerment and Education

We got a letter from Leslie the other day. (No new photo this time). It looks like it was delayed by six weeks or so. Leslie lives in Chile, which is in the southern hemisphere, so Christmas happens in the middle of summer.

Dear Ms. McKenna,
I tell you that I am doing well in school and I had to take the SIMCE test at the end of the year and I will go to the pool. Christmas is coming soon and my birthday and I am going to be on summer vacation. I am deeply thankful to you for all the things which I have received from you. Some schoolmates are going to move to other schools and maybe I am going to have the same teacher as last year.

I send you much love,
Leslie

Here's the original letter in Spanish: 

And a drawing from the back of the letter:

My daughter Jessie drew heart people when she was Leslie's age. I wonder why Leslie's smiling heart person is broken. It looks happy otherwise...

Read more about Leslie on her page. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates on Leslie and our other girls, and regular articles on empowering (and empowered) girls.

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Too often, it seems, girls and women with important things to say go unheard. Sometimes it's because we never find our voices, or we've been taught that it's not polite to argue. Sometimes it's because we've learned that women with strong opinions get labeled as "aggressive" (or worse) when a male counterpart might be called "assertive" under the same circumstances. Sometimes we're simply shouted down by louder speakers. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: the world is a poorer place when voices are silenced.

That's why I'm always so happy to find stories about girls and women speaking up and speaking out. Like Astrorice in our first Girl Power article, Girl Power Abounds, these girls and young women are using the power of their voices to change their world. 

Emily Rupp is a writer, singer, musician, actor, and director. A graduate of the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, Emily practices nearly all these talents as a member of the creative steering committee for Project Girl Performance Collective.

Most recently, Emily's directed and acted in "It's Been Arranged," a play about child marriage in developing countries written by its cast of collective members. The play was part of PGPC's "Voices Without Borders" series and toured nationally in 2011 as part the Unite For Girls tour with the United Nations foundation, Girl Up.


I asked Emily to tell us a bit about PGPC in her own words:

Project Girl Performance Collective reminds young women that they have a voice, and that it deserves to be heard. We give you the platform to say what you want to say, however you want to say it. As a performance collective, we strive to work together as a team and use our words to entertain, inform, and inspire. Women everywhere are programmed to silence themselves on certain issues, mostly because society tells us to keep it to ourself. PGPC empowers it's members to educate themselves on these issues and to use theatre as a way to educate others. Audiences everywhere leave our shows feeling inspired and empowered and almost always follow up with comments of praise on social media. Raising awareness on these vulnerable issues to men and women of all ages all over the word will lead to a future of more informed people and more equal treatment between men and women.

After reading Emily's words and spending some time on the PGPC website, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what they were all about. And I did, intellectually. Then I watched the following video of the PGPC "Girl Up" performance at TEDxWomen.

Now I get it. Wow.

You can follow Emily and PGPC on Twitter at @EmilyARupp and @ProjGirlTheatre. You can also find PGPC on Facebook.

When Adora Svitak was six, she got her first computer. By the time she was seven she had written 300 short stories and published her first book, Flying Fingers. In 2010, at age 12, she became the youngest person ever to speak at TED, the premier global conference for sharing ideas.

Already an old hand at public speaking (in 2005 she began promoting literacy by giving talks at schools around the US), Adora had the crowd wrapped around her finger as she chastised them (as "adults") for having the nerve to do so many silly things and call children "childish." Children, she pointed out, are dreamers, and the adults of the world--limited by their understanding of what's possible and practical--need to listen to those dreams. From her TED talk:

Kids can be full of inspiring aspirations and hopeful thinking. Like my wish that no one went hungry or that everything were a free kind of utopia. How many of you still dream like that and believe in the possibilities? Sometimes a knowledge of history and the past failures of utopian ideals can be a burden because you know that if everything were free, then the food stocks would become depleted and scarce and lead to chaos. On the other hand, we kids still dream about perfection. And that's a good thing because in order to make anything a reality, you have to dream about it first.

Watch it here:

Here too is a Mashable interview with Adora, who also has a website and a blog and recently launched Write With Adora, a magazine for "the collected works of the youth literati." You can follow her on Twitter at @adorasv.

Anjali Appadurai is a Davis scholar at the College of the Atlantic (COA) focusing on development economics and global politics. She's also a member of Earth in Brackets, a COA student group dedicated to finding international solutions to global problems.

In late 2011, Anjali attended the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa as part of a delegation of nine students. Her fellow youth delegates chose her to give the final Youth Statement to the convention membership, and she did not disappoint. Much like "The Girl Who Silenced the World for Five Minutes," Anjali captivated the UN panel and thousands of viewers with  her passionate speech.

Here's an excerpt:

The most stark betrayal of your generation’s responsibility to ours is that you call this AMBITION.
Where is the courage in this room? Now is not the time for incremental action. In the long run, these will 
be seen as the defining moments of an era in which narrow self-interest prevailed over science, reason, 
and common compassion.

There is real ambition in this room but it’s been dismissed as radical, deemed not “politically possible”.
Long-term thinking is not radical. What’s radical is to completely alter the planet’s climate, to betray the 
future of my generation and to condemn millions to death by climate change.

What’s radical is to write off the fact that change is within our reach.

You can watch Anjali's speech (including a mic check at the end) below. 

In a related video, Anjali Appadurai talks about Earth in Brackets. For more on Anjali, read the article from the College of the Atlantic about Anjali and her speech or follow her on Twitter at @anjaliapp.

Update:
We sent out a tweet to let people know that we featured them. Below is Anjali's reply:

The honor is ours, Anjali.

Riley is mad as heck and she's not going to take it anymore. On a recent shopping trip, she got fed up with all the pink and told the world what she thinks of the state of marketing in the US.

Companies who make these try to trick the girls into buying the pink stuff instead of stuff that boys want to buy, right? Why do all the girls have to buy princesses? 

Watch:

Girl, Empowered wonders what Riley thinks about the recent LEGO for girls controversy. Luckily, the adults in her life seem intent on letting her speak her mind. And I noticed her voice didn't shake a bit.

For most of Carly Fleischmann's life, people assumed she was retarded. They couldn't have been more wrong. Carly is autistic, and until she was eleven, she was unable to communicate the simplest thought except by pointing. Then one day she made a connection. She went to the computer and typed "help" and "hurt" and then threw up. Her parents, once they'd picked themselves up off the floor, finally got to know a stranger who'd been living with them for over a decade. Now that Carly had a voice, they learned that she was smart and funny and that she was as frustrated as anyone with her autism.

"It feels like my legs are on fire and a million ants are crawling up my arms," she typed in an attempt to explain why she sometimes makes strange noises and thrashes around or hits herself. When told that some "experts" believe that non-verbal people aren't capable of thinking, Carly's response was pointed. "I think people get a lot of their information from so-called experts but if a horse is sick, you don’t ask a fish what’s wrong with the horse. You go right to the horse’s mouth."

Watch the 20/20 segment:

Currently Carly is using her newfound voice in an unexpected way: by not using it. She's taken a vow of silence until 5,000 people sign her petition to create an "Autism-Friendly Talk Show Day 
For Autism Awareness Month." GE wishes her luck, not least because I want to hear more from this amazing girl. Follow her on Twitter at @CarlysVoice.

Each of these girls and young women inspires me and reminds me why I love what I do here at Girl, Empowered. I look forward to many, many Girl Power articles in the future, and hope you'll share your stories here and on our Facebook page. 

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It's time to talk about the how of it.

One of the most important things I ever did, aside from giving birth to my daughter, Jessie, was installing a set of alarm bells in her head when she was a little girl. Actually, what I did was tell her they were already there. I said that when she was on her own she should always listen for the alarm bells in her head that would go off and warn her when something was wrong. Whether it was a person, a situation, or a choice she had to make, she knew to listen for those alarm bells to ring when something inside her knew that things just weren't quite right. In other words, I told her to listen to her gut, and it not only helped her stay safe, it taught her to trust in her feelings. Jessie turns 30 in March, and she still tells me that her alarm bells go off from time to time.

I don't remember how I came up with the metaphor, but I knew from experience that the world was full of dangers and choices, and I knew that if she listened to her gut, she'd be a lot safer and stronger and better able to protect herself. There was a lot I didn't know, including most of the stuff below. Working on GE has helped me understand one of the reasons mothers often pine for grandchildren (or at least a reason I do): we understand so much more now than we did when our kids were born (hell, I was 17), and we want a chance to do a better job as grandparents—to do some good with all that knowledge. Plus, who doesn't love cuddling babies? 

Anyway...here are some girl empowerment tips that (along with her very own set of alarm bells installed by you) I think will help you empower the girl in your life. Some I've found in my research and others I've learned being a mother and being a girl. I hope you'll share yours in the comments section.

I think we all understand that too much tv isn't good for anyone. But the damage to girls happens on a number of levels. Television portrays women in many ways, most of which reinforce harmful stereotypes and/or set impossible standards. Television normalizes sexism by piping it into our homes 24/7 in ways we don't even notice. But our children do. Girls and boys alike learn from tv that women are of limited value in our society; that we are princesses, cougars, baby factories, and bitches, but not leaders.

Miss Representation, a documentary by Jennifer Siebel Newsom that aired on OWN in October 2011, looks at how media devalues women:
In a society where media is the most persuasive force shaping cultural norms, the collective message that our young women and men overwhelmingly receive is that a woman’s value and power lie in her youth, beauty, and sexuality, and not in her capacity as a leader. While women have made great strides in leadership over the past few decades, the United States is still 90th in the world for women in national legislatures, women hold only 3% of clout positions in mainstream media, and 65% of women and girls have disordered eating behaviors.

When you must watch tv, spend some time during or afterward talking about how the program portrays women, men's attitudes toward and treatment of women, and the message the program is sending (e.g., if a man abuses a woman, is that act ultimately validated or are we meant to understand that the act was wrong?).

From Gina Shaw on MedicineNet.com: 
The Girls Inc./Harris poll found that most girls feel that they don't see "themselves" on television, and that the issues they're concerned about--like divorce, making friends, drugs, and sexuality--aren't being addressed in a way that speaks to them. "Whether it's TV, magazines, or music, being media critics together offers a real opportunity to have good discussions about the messages girls are getting in their real world," Johnston-Nicholson says.

Let your daughter get dirty. Children need to explore the world around them and be physically active. Science, nature, sports, arts, and crafts--all these important parts of growing up entail getting dirty.

--Kathleen Odean, Children's Librarian

It turns out, dirt can be good for kids. Scientists believe that babies put things in their mouths (covered in all manner of crud) in order to build immunities. (Anyone who has had a baby knows that they do that—they put all the things in their mouths.) Further to the point, studies have shown that contact with dirt makes you happy. And finally, your daughter needs the freedom to explore as much of the world as possible so she can find the One Thing.

When I was nine, my mom bought me a guitar. By the time I was ten I could play it well enough to teach myself songs off the radio, and before long I was making up my own songs. We moved to a new house that summer, and I was quite a novelty among the neighborhood kids, who would sit in a circle around me as I played. I felt confident, and life was pretty good.

Then school started and I got "bussed." My district was overcrowded, so I rode each day from the school all my friends attended to another where I knew no one. I hated the school, hated my teacher, made almost no friends.

My mom met with a school counselor to discuss my intense hatred of everything Roberts Elementary, and the counselor suggested that, given my interest in music, I might like to join the Chorus.

Everything changed for me the day I walked into that room. Twenty or so kids and a teacher whose name I forget, and for a couple of hours a day, all we did was sing. All of us together. I had never had so much fun in my entire life. When the teacher learned I played guitar, he invited me to bring mine and accompany the group on some songs. I was in heaven.

I had found my One Thing.

There were ups and downs. Lots of them. But during those formative years I had One Thing I loved to do and knew I did well, and I'm convinced that it gave me an edge. Whether it's a hobby, a club, a sport, a craft, a volunteer opportunity...help the girl in your life find the One Thing that really makes her happy, boosts her confidence, and gives her that edge when times are tough. 

I could—and will, in the future—go on and on. Our society has made some strides in restoring women's rights and power, but there is so much yet to do to create a culture in which girls don't have to struggle in order to become strong, confident women. And we're going to do some of that work here, I hope. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with the thought that came to me as I wrote this:

I've decided when I have a granddaughter, I'm going to teach her to respond to compliments on her beauty by saying, "Thank you, but I'm more than just a pretty face." Maybe if she says it often enough, they'll remember to praise her wit, her humor, her intelligence, and her achievements. 

Maybe if she says it often enough, she'll grow up believing it.