Be Yourself and Other Bad Advice

Being a teen girl can be confusing and frustrating—luckily Meredith Walker created this guide to show how to dig deep, find what’s important to you, and use that authenticity to make the world a better place. Featuring a foreword from Amy Poehler!

Teen girls learn rules all the time, even if many of them go unsaid. Be yourself! But don’t be weird! Hustle hard—your future depends on it! You’re only young once—enjoy it! But no one talks about the life skill they need to navigate all those rules: how to think for themselves.  

As the co-founder of Smart Girls, Meredith Walker has spent years making ideas feel real, relevant, and approachable to young people. Now she’s written a whole guide devoted to helping teen girls discover who they are, feel their feelings, develop their confidence—and figure out what to do next. Compact, insightful, and full of warm wisdom, Be Yourself and Other Bad Advice is the perfect book for any reader letting go of the old rules to create a life that’s truly their own.
 

• “Friendly, down-to-earth coaching that addresses teen girls. . . . Throughout, the book contains practical, step-by-step advice and helpful tips, like self-affirmation phrases, while direct questions elicit reader engagement. Values like equity, compassion, fairness, and integrity underpin Walker’s approach. Her supportive, uncondescending tone includes mild touches of humor but avoids flippancy, helping the advice land without veering into lecturing or minimizing readers’ feelings. The clean, colorful layout and generously sized typeface support browsing. . . . A reader-friendly guide to knowing yourself.”
  Kirkus Reviews
• Cofounder of the Smart Girls organization (along with Amy Poehler, who contributes an introduction), former talent head at Saturday Night Live, and former producer at Nick News, Walker brings experience and humor to this guide for teen girls. A reaction to the overused phrase “just be yourself,” this book takes a deeper dive into self-exploration, encouraging readers to understand, think for, and appreciate themselves. Through topical, scaffolded chapters written in a conversational style, Walker urges girls to consider their emotional awareness, values, purpose over passion, learning from failure, the effects of social media, and more. For instance, with the concept of success, the author directs readers away from an idealized view to one that values exploration, gratitude, and good work. Guided, open-ended questions lead girls to take charge of their beliefs and attitudes on these topics. A culminating chapter encourages action, reminding readers they have the skills to say no, apologize, ask for help, and handle embarrassment. This sharp guide offers valuable support to teens and allows for continuing self-discovery.
  Angela Leeper, Booklist