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“Girl World” Uncovered: A Review of Ginny Olson’s
Teenage Girls
By Ashley Pikel
It has been
said that when God closes a door, he always opens a window. When
the adolescent girl in your life slams her door, be thankful
that Ginny Olson’s Teenage Girls is your window into the
tumultuous but ultimately triumphant years of female adolescent
development. Olson’s Teenage Girls is an invaluable help
to parents and mentors of young women as well as
to the young women themselves as they
understand what is going on in their minds, bodies, social
lives, and souls during this unique time of change.
While
especially helpful to those in youth ministry, Teenage Girls
should be read by anyone with an interest in mentoring young
women.
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Teenage Girls by Ginny Olson.
Published by Zondervan/Youth
Specialties (2006).
240 pages |
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Each chapter
gives specific attention to teenage girls in the areas of
identity, body image, self-injury, dating, sex, family,
friendship, and emotional, cognitive, and spiritual development.
The pages are filled with first-hand research on adolescents,
and Olson adds margin notes with quotes, anecdotes, research,
and questions and answers from youth. Most interesting are the
voices heard from male youth pastors and counselors, revealing
what they wish they had known about young women before going
into ministry.
Every chapter
also includes a specific application entitled “The Youth
Worker’s Role.” Olson’s strategies and advice here are
particularly insightful and creative, and will equip youth
workers in beginning or continuing honest and empathetic
mentoring relationships with adolescent girls. If applied, these
ministry strategies have the potential to transform youth groups
or individual girls by offering them safer and healthier
mindsets as they grow with Christ and each other.
Unlike many of
the Christian books available in our church culture today, Olson
refrains from promoting the intellectually unexamined and
unchallenged argument that “God wired you this way; therefore
you must be this way, and if you’re not, you’re not a
biblical image of womanhood.” Olson’s research is well-supported
either by a reliable study or her real-life experiences with
numerous teenage girls. Her twenty years of youth ministry
leadership has provided a strong foundation of practical
knowledge, which guides her as co-director of the Center for
Youth Ministry Studies at North Park University and Theological
Seminary. Refreshingly, Olson explains gender difference without
undermining teen girls’ equality in image and role.
Olson has done
our “girl world” a great favor by writing this book. Teenage
Girls equips us to participate in the lives of adolescent
girls and assists them on their journey to reach their full
potential as strong and confident women in Christ.
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 Ashley Pikel
is a junior at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana,
where she is pursuing her degree in Christian
Educational Ministries and Biblical Literature. Ashley,
with a group students and faculty, founded a Taylor
University CBE chapter on their campus last year with
great success, and continue to educate the campus with
the much-needed message of biblical equality. Ashley
enjoys her job on campus as Christian Educational
Ministries Department Assistant, talking with friends
while chomping on taffy and chocolate, and dancing with
her dormitory wing as they try out for Airband (a
campus-wide lip-synching contest).
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