Smart Girls at the Party

You may have heard some buzz about the new online program Smart Girls at the Party, from former SNL star Amy Poehler. It’s a web-based TV show profiling and celebrating pre-teen girls of achievement.

Writer and women’s activist Marianne Schnall interviewed Poehler for Huffington Post, where Amy explains the program’s genesis:

The idea came out of us wishing we had a time machine so we could go back to the younger versions of ourselves and let them know it was gonna be ok. We wanted to do a show that we would have wanted to watch at that age. And we knew we wanted to have a dance party at the end. We basically started with the dance party and worked backwards.

Girls have to fight against a lot of the same stuff we did growing up...peer pressure, exploitation, etc. But what worries me the most is this trend that caring about something isn't cool. That it's better to comment on something than to commit to it. That it's so much cooler to be unmotivated and indifferent. Our culture can get so snarky and ironic sometimes and we kind of wanted Smart Girls to celebrate the opposite of that.

Watch some episodes with your daughter or stepdaughter and listen to what she thinks about them. Then, share her thoughts—and your own—in a comment below.