It is a beautiful autumn day as I take a few moments off to sit and write about the ACME Coalition Summit in Burlington, VT. The first speaker in the opening Plenary was Diane Wilson, author of the book “An Unreasonable Woman”. It is a great book that I encourage everyone to go out and read. She spoke well, as did Bill McKibben after her and Jerome Armstrong this morning. However, the session that really jumped out at me was “Expecting to Fly: Giftedness, Girls and Women, and Media”.

Lisa Goldman spoke about the paucity of positive role models for gifted girls. Being the father of gifted girls, I was particularly interested in the subject and sat in on the talk. There were a couple other sessions at the same time that I was really interested in as well, so I thought I would pop into Lisa’s session and then maybe catch a little bit of some other sessions as well. That wasn’t to be the case. Lisa had a great presentation that really grabbed me.

One of the first images she had up during her presentation was of girls from anime. While anime isn’t the domain sole of gifted girls, I know a lot of gift girls that really like anime. She spoke about multi-potentiality, the issues that many gifted girls face of being so interested in so many topics. I’ve thought a lot about this as I talk with Mairead about what she will be majoring in, which I believe is currently going to be Biology and International Relations. She spoke about the need for teachers to be better trained in consoling gift girls in their interests.

She spoke about gifted children having a keener sense of social injustice and how they can decode messages more fully, and as a result can be more greatly influenced by mass media. She spoke about issues of many gifted children often working better alone than in groups and how they can do great in elementary school, but the social pressures of middle school can be particularly challenging.

From this she spoke about the portrayal of gifted women in the media, the issues of body image and sexuality, the problems of gifted girl’s too often needing to hide their own giftedness, or surrender their giftedness for the sake of people around them. She cited Buffy, various women in Star Trek series, and Hermione in Harry Potter.

She asked where the great movies are providing positive role models for gifted girls. The examples that she came up with were Bend it Like Beckham, Tortilla Soup and Whale Rider. I haven’t seen Tortilla Soup, but I really like Bend it Like Beckham and Whale Rider.

As she spoke, I found myself thinking, “Some people look at what is and ask why. Others dream of what is not and ask why not.” So, why don’t we get more films with positive images of gifted women? Somehow, I suspect “Nerd Camp”, based on Burkhard Bilger’s article in the New Yorker isn’t going to add to the genre. Perhaps some of Lisa’s students, or some of the PEG communications major will take up the task.

I was pleased to hear her speak of her future research plans as well as her hopes to get gifted students putting material online. As a father of gifted girls, I know how unreasonable they can be, and how important it is to nurture and encourage them.

Time after time, Lisa talked about issues of gifted girls that I’ve run into dealing with my daughters. I look forward to hearing more of her work. If any of you know of films with positive role models for gifted girls? If so, please let me know.