I assume she'll include step one to living your dreams, having a rich well known musician for a father.

HAHAHAHA!!!

Well, once a woman hits their late twenties, Hollywood dumps them and the marketing machines lumber over to the next teen sensation. So, this is more or less the midpoint of her life.

What's wrong with looking back at the first inspiring half of your dream-building career before you are officially over the hill?

What better way to inspire young girls than to tell them "Build your dreams fast like me, because pretty soon, no one important will care about them or you."

On the somewhat less cynical side, if she actually writes and rewrites the thing herself, and she's emotionally honest instead of sickeningly positive nonstop, and she's a decent writer, and she acknowledges that her dreams were a hell of a lot easier to achieve given her particular circumstances, then I think it could serve as an okay example for young girls who like to write, and an okay alternative to reading about Lohan and Hilton and Spears'ses for girls who wouldn't be reading otherwise.

The most depressing thing is that it's possible that a really awesome book by a noname author won't get published because this book got picked up. Maybe she'll publish a yearly edition, just to keep us up to date on recent dream-building projects.

This is twice as depressing when you are an author yourself, working hard to improve your craft...and knowing that whatever pile of junk she dumps on the populace at large, her book is going to sell like crazy.

Speaking of rewriting, my first sentence should be "...once a woman hits her twenties." I'm gonna go give my message board ghost writer a nice long lecture about subject verb agreement. That guy is so overpaid.

MA, I sense some scepticism. Do you think any of the big name celebrities write their own stuff? I mean the ones that aren't still teenagers.

a 1,000 word essay on 'how i got to be a success."

Who the fuck cares what she thinks?? She's fifteen! Fifteen-year-old girls are idiots! It doesn't matter if she's not sickeningly positive, if she attempts to be honest, if she's a decent writer: She's fifteen! I'm the smartest person I know and I was a complete retard when I was fifteen!

I was pretty dull at 15 too (still am), but I've been lucky enough to teach some extremely bright and talented 15 year olds, boys and girls. I'm not saying any sane adult would care to read their memoirs or anything, but there might be some 11 or 12 years olds that would find them fascinating.

But I see your point. A decent 15 year old writer is still no competition for actual professional adults, which is one of the many reasons actual professional adults will actually write and edit this book.

amanahyo, I'm not at all sure this is better than Hilton, Lohan, et. al. Not as slutty, just as shallow and ditzy.

Competent female role models? What are these odd things of which you speak?

I think Lisa Simpson, Buttercup of the Powerpuff girls, Spongebob's Sandy, and Shego from Kim Possible make okay role models... for the under twelve crowd (Dora's not too shabby either). When it comes to real life celebrites with mainstream teen appeal who get a lot of media attention... I'm drawing a blank. Natalie Portman maybe? Nah, she's almost 30, obviously too old and out of touch.

I know-- Nat is amazing: she is this generation's Audrey Hepburn in my mind (personality, not level of success) when she is not listening to George Lucas.

But you've installed a failsafe in your reply: "real life celebrities with mainstream teen appeal who get a lot of media attention." Who gets a lot of media attention? The tabloid artists like Hilton et. al. And who determines mainstream teen appeal? The media and who they pay attention to.

So who's to blame? The media and reality TV for dumbing down and whoring out American womanhood. The role models are out there; they just aren't paid attention to.

When my daughter was a tween, her role models were female sports stars, and I think they were a far better choice than Barry Bonds or Michael Vick would have been for a boy. Brandi Chastain and Mia Hamm, for example, are intelligent women who worked hard to succeed without needing huge contracts to motivate them. Fast forward 10 years, and my daughter turned out all right.
I'll admit she was/is a pretty big fan of Lisa Simpson as well.

All in all, as great as it would be for our girls to look up to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Marie Curie, I don't think the serious role models look that good on a Teen Beat cover.

i was a total nerd at 15...and a pseudo-nihilist sarcasm-toting left-wing self-imposed loner, too. oh yeah, and a total nerd.

as for the role models, my sister, who's 16, loves joan baez and patti smith and ugly betty. yup - she's a nerd, too.