My first-grade teacher, Miss Simm, would pass out in shock if she knew I felt this way, but, I think Mother Goose should go get stuffed! Why? Because she's a goofy old bird who has absolutely no idea what girls are made of, whether they're little or otherwise. Give me a break - SUGAR? SPICE? (I have a feeling she's talking about something sweet and light, like cinnamon.) And then of course, there's that nauseating EVERYTHING NICE. I think that it is time to get realistic about this girl recipe thing. After all, we're not in nursery school anymore, are we?

The three new ingredients I propose are . . .

SASSINESS
Sassiness is similar to sugar in many ways. First of all, a cookie with sugar sprinkled on top is much more likely to get noticed than a plain old boring cookie. Which one do you think most people would reach for? Sassiness does the same thing for a girl - it makes her interesting. But a lot more interesting than being disgustingly sweet. Gets her noticed too. And real girls have lots of opinions and thoughts that need to be heard. Traditionally, sassiness can either mean being pert and sprightly OR rude and impudent. We're talking both meanings here. What fun would a girl be if she didn't surprise you now and then with a little something you weren't expecting?

SPICE
Let's keep the spice, but let's, as they say on TV cooking shows, bump it up a notch. We're talking cayenne pepper here. That's the stuff that can make your chili or salsa hot, hot, hot! This kind of spice is important for a girl to have. She needs to be able to zing with the best of them. Her spicy blast might express annoyance, irritation, or maybe even compassion or affection. The point is - a girl needs to know how to be intense. There is nothing blah about being a real girl.

NOT ALWAYS NICE
I think of this as the permission ingredient. It's a lot like baking power, baking soda, or yeast. It enables a girl to grow. You don't learn about life or how to DEAL with it unless you give yourself permission to get upset, make mistakes, say stupid stuff, and sometimes be way more aggressive or assertive than Old Mother You-Know-Who ever imagined a girl would or could, possibly be. She'd have you spending all your time trying to be sweet and adorable. Sweet and adorable are overrated.

But what DO real girls think that girls SHOULD be made of?

It's almost as bad as the goosey, frill-covered, quiet, little, goody-two-shoes, the old nursery rhyme wants you to be. Check out this excerpt from the amazing book, Odd Girl Out, that talks about how a group of surveyed girls describe the ideal (and non-ideal girl) . . .

. . . the ideal girl was physically perfect, a Caucasian Barbie doll: bone thin, tall, pretty, blond, blue eyes, big boobs, good teeth, clear skin - in other words, what you'd expect. . . . what these girls also find perfect is not just a flawless body, but also an indirect, middle-of-the-road character. For them, the ideals girl's true perfection was her ability to hold herself back from the world, expressing herself through manipulation.

The non-ideal girl is mean, opinionated, and pushy. She is egocentric and selfish. She is not the sweet girl everyone wants to be around; she is unhappy and insecure. She is not social. She is not in control of her emotions. She is moody and hard to get along with.

I don't know about you, but I'm real, and I definitely have lots of the characteristics in the non-ideal description. Who decided that girls shouldn't ever be unhappy, or insecure, or that they should ALWAYS be in control of their emotions? If you buy into this goose doo-doo, I suggest you rent the movie, The Stepford Wives. It's a horror movie about a town where they replace all the women with robots that act and more or less look like the description of the ideal girl above. Did you catch that - it's a HORROR movie? That's what life is when you are expected to act like a robot - a real HORROR.

You can hold on to your Mother Goose books if they give you warm memories of being little, but make sure you remember that real girls are NOT simply sugar and spice and everything nice. Real girls are wonderfully complicated and complex human beings with a full range of emotions, feelings, and actions. Next time someone expects you to be anything less than human, reach down, pull out a little sassiness, spice, or something not so nice and tell them to "Get real!"