GIRLS, Ordinary Girls and Their Extraordinary Pursuits; by Jenny McPhee, Laura McPhee and Martha McPhee; Random House; 223 pages. $30.
You travel across America looking for ordinary girls and these are the kids you find:
A chess champion and some unicyclists.
An investor and two ballet dancers.
A barrel racer.
A pole-vaulter.
A left tackle
A Greco-Roman wrestler.
A girl with bone cancer.
You find Girl Scouts, 4-H farmers and Young Women for Change.
As you travel, you take a lot of photos. You do a lot of interviews.
Then you write a book called "Girls."
"Girls" is the joint effort of three sisters — Jenny, Laura and Martha McPhee. Laura is the photographer and Jenny and Martha the writers.
Question: Why did the McPhee sisters decide they needed to give the world these glimpses into the lives of girls?
Answer: Because they were girls themselves once, and they grew up in a family of five sisters and have always felt proud of each other and of their mother and grandmother. It appears they just wanted to celebrate.
The McPhee sisters offer this explanation in their book: "Now, as mothers ourselves, we are drawn anew to the subject of girlhood, wishing to understand how the experience of being a girl has altered in the intervening years and trying to discover what makes things right for girls, what makes them feel affirmed in their power and leads them to experience life in a full and complex manner.
"To a person, the girls we met had ambitions and believed that there were no limits on the possibilities. . . . Glass ceilings seemed not to have entered their thoughts. They talked of becoming pediatricians, FBI agents, astronauts, teachers, lawyers, brain surgeons, painters, poets, playwrights. They also believed these pursuits were entirely consistent with motherhood and family life. While their assumptions sometimes seemed naive to us, they were also encouraging. It impressed us that they saw the world as fully open to them, that the women's movement and the quest for equal rights had succeeded so completely when it came to influencing the beliefs of young women. Many of them knew that the situation was 'easier' for them than it had been for their mothers and grandmothers. . . . Quite a few were familiar with Title IX . . . but for most of them the word "feminism" (if it was understood as distinct from "feminine") was a slur or an epithet. . . .
"With one exception, the girls we talked with embraced being female. They were proud of their belief that they have every opportunity boys have, and then some. They talked about the fact that they could openly enjoy clothes and dressing up and shopping and the realm of the emotional. Whenever we asked the question, 'Do you like being a girl?' we were struck by the vehemence of the affirmative response."
If this book has a flaw, it's that the scope is too wide. In addition to the profiles of girls, the McPhees use a photo introduction, a written introduction and a preface — as well as lots of family photos and a raft of personal essays. The sisters also feature some women who are too old to be considered "girls." They also include a series of Halloween photos without any text.
The book's strengths overshadow its weaknesses, certainly. The photos are good, and it is a joy to learn about such diverse lives — about the Girls' Choir of Harlem, about a 7-year-old poet, about a 13-year-old movie star, about a Navajo girl who runs cross country and who refuses to cut her hair, even if it might help her time, because long hair is her tradition and her power.
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