Danica McKellar: Smart is Beautiful
July 30th, 2007
Cheers to Danica McKellar, who played Winnie on The Wonder Years, for her new book, Math Doesn’t Suck. The 32 year old Danica told Newsweek that when girls see the antics of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, they think that being fun and glamorous also means being dumb and irresponsible. “I want to show them that being smart is cool,” she said. “Being good at math is cool. And not only that, it can help them get what they want out of life.”
The book includes tips to avoid mistakes on homework, ways to overcome test-day anxiety and profiles of three beautiful mathematicians.
Danica said that she wrote the book “to tell girls that cute and dumb isn’t as good as cute and smart.”
It’s a noble effort. We need more positive examples for our kids to follow. My only concern is that the type of people who want to act like Lindsay and Brittney aren’t the type of girls to pick up a book on their own.
It would be nice to see Danica in the supermarket checkout replacing the Weekly World News, which has called it quits for print circulation. I’m sure the spandex-laden Stuff-mart shoppers will find some other brand of 6th-grade-reading-level pop-tart mag to fill the void.