Celebrity Speak's Contagious Influence, Like, Ya' Know?: Three Excerpted Interviews with Zooey Deschanel, Lena Dunham, and Caroline Kennedy

It should be a party drinking game. Take a drink when you hear a celebrity say “like,” “ya’ know,” or “I can’t even!”

Turns out, the same celebrity role models that influence the way we look and act, also influence the way we speak.  Even those we admire most are riddled with verbal crutches – like, um, ya' know, whatever, ah, so, I mean, I can’t even!

These disfluencies are contagious and most everyone I know in Generation X, Y and Z is guilty of the "like, ya' know" syndrome. But, in order to present our best selves, we should speak to mpress.  

With this is mind, here are three excerpted interviews with Zooey Deschanel, Lena Dunham and Caroline Kennedy.

Zooey Deschanel

I love singer/songwriter and “New Girl” actress Zooey Deschanel, but this interview made me think, maybe she should be renamed the “Like Girl”?

Hollywood Reporter, Sept. 12, 2011, on writing the theme song to “New Girl.” 

There were theme songs I had like in mind as like inspiration, like, I love the theme from Welcome Back, Kotter. John Sebastian wrote that, from The Lovin' Spoonful. I really like love that sound, so I like wanted something upbeat that really felt like a theme song. Like the theme song from Mary Tyler Moore felt really like upbeat and like gets you ready for a show about someone who is um ya’ know taking on a um like a new um life.  So, um so yeah, so that a was basically my ah, my inspiration, musically, um I wanted something uplifting and then when we went in to produce it, we sort of thought like we wanted to have like a Lovin’ Spoonful type of feel to the production, so ya…

Growing Up Female & Social - Part II: What Teens Wish We Understood

Our parents had it so easy…a letter was theirs to be sneakily read, a phone call, to be eavesdropped.  But we live in a world of pinging secret text messages. Codes, acronyms and apps never to be translated – or even known.  It’s another shift.  A new vocabulary with apps that are missing vowels (tumblr), and acronyms that are meant to leave us out of the story (PIR: Parent in Room).

Where is Benedict Cumberbatch (a.k.a. Sherlock, Alan Turing) when you need him?

Welcome to the new reality.  But what feels like a tidal shift to us, is just a new software update for our teens.

When I bring up teens and social media with my friends, we share the eye roll; the heavy sign; the shaking of the head.  And, inevitably, one of us gives voice to the old lament – the refrain of generations past, “What’s to become of kids today?”

In this, “Growing Up Female and Social - Part II,” I reveal my Digital Daughter Ambassadors answers to what they think we don’t get about social media and what they would like us to know.  

Growing Up Female and Social – Survey Says…

Digital Daughters

It’s 2015, and our kids are 'gramming, texting, Snapchatting, tweeting and streaming.   

The distracting noise level on social channels is amplifying while the length of thoughtful prose is diminishing.  

Don’t despair…

Social media and its octopus-like tentacles that reach out and poke our kids – cajoling them to “like,” “follow” and “post” – are intimidating, and worrying, especially when new apps crop up like weeds.  But when I looked to my Digital Daughter Ambassadors (DDAs) – tweens, teens and young women from around the country – to get insight into how they were managing with the proliferation of ways to communicate (text, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+, Tumblr – and face-to-face), I found a lot of wisdom.

My very unscientific questionnaire of  “Growing Up Female and Social” is just an ear to the ground.  But I am already hearing echoes, and they offer important insights on what a diverse group of girls, my DDAs who hail from New York to Pennsylvania, Maryland to Minnesota, California to London, England - really think about social media, how they use it, and why they love it so much.

Here are some initial insights from the questionnaire, showing our girls to be wise to both the downfalls and upshots of social media. 

Top 10 Female Role Models AND Communicators of 2014

As the year wraps up, we are rich with pop-culture rankings including Vanity Fair’s 10 Sexiest Captain Hooks, Paste Magazine’s The 15 Best Monkeys and an annual favorite the Top 10 Worst Celebrity Role Models, which includes the likes of Rhianna, Miley Cyrus, and the Kardashians and their trend-setting ability to put appearance, money, promiscuity, and ego above substance, smarts, charity and accomplishment.

Turns out, these same celebrity role models have a powerful impact on the way young girls and women speak; the way we present ourselves to the world.  And, as has been my 2014 mantra, we need to empower girls and women to find their own authentic voice; to…like, umm, you know…. stop hedging, using fillers, and speak with confidence and conviction.

So, for this 2014 wrap up, I thought it was time to offer our girls a “best of” with 10 impressive female role models who also happen to be articulate, clever and inspiring.   

I want to grow up to be just like all of them.

1). Tina Fey. 

“If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important rule of beauty which is: who cares?

Comedian, actress, writer, producer and dedicated mom Tina Fey was not only the third female winner of the Mark Twain award in 2010, but also the youngest ever.  In her 2011 bestseller “Bossy Pants,” she nails it with her, “A Mother’s Prayer for her Child,” offering hilarious and well-heeled wisdom on raising a daughter.  She is a formidable presenter, and will again be with her sidekick Amy Poehler (another of my picks) leading the ceremony at this year’s Golden Globes.   

Insta-Fame or Insta-Shame: The Instagram Game

* This story was contributed by Amanda H. Cronin, my own Digital Daughter.

Illustration by Koosje Koene

A few days ago, I was scrolling through my camera roll when I came upon a photo that I had taken about a year ago. I was supposed to be doing my homework, but it was #throwbackthursday so I simply needed to post something. Seven minutes had passed and I was still cropping, brightening, and saturating the image to look vivid and professional. By the time I hit the “share” button (after spending a minute or so coming up with a clever caption and location), I had spent fifteen minutes posting a picture on Instagram. And I was proud of it.

Do you have an Instagram account? Odds are, yes − and you are one of the 75 million people that use the app daily. According to recent stories from CBS News, techcrunch.com, and TIME Magazine, Instagram is the most popular form of social media and is gaining popularity every day. There are myriad reasons for its wild success, but there’s one clear frontrunner: the connection users feel to others. 

Posting “Like a Girl” – P.L.E.A.S.Z. Think Twice

Run like a girl.  Talk like a girl.  Throw like a girl.  Post like a girl?

The pro-female advertising movement that has been attempting to empower us with ads like Pantene’s “Don’t Be Sorry, Be Strong and Shine,” Always’ “Run Like a Girl Campaign,” and Goldieblox's “You are Beauty, and Beauty is Perfection,” got me thinking…(as did CNN Digital’s Kelly Wallace great piece on girl empowerment ads in which I was happily quoted.)

How do our gender roles play out when we ourselves control the medium – or the app as it may be?  Is there any real stereotype to what girls tend to post on their social channels?   And with that, what would it mean to “post like a girl”?  

It seems that girls are biologically wired for social media.  We are more expressive (just look at our frequent use of emoji’s J  ) and willing to share and reveal more about our personal lives.  But with our Instagram and Facebook addictions, are we posting images that portray us being less than empowered, or just too self-involved?  (Note to self… maybe I shouldn’t I have posted that pic of me snuggling with my new puppy?) 

Just as I was mulling this over, Natashe Hinde of the Huffington Post wrote a story exploring what guys think we pose like on Instagram. Natashe was inspired by a social experiment conducted by Witty + Pretty's Ashley Hesseltine where she asked guys to replicate girls’ most common Instagram poses.  The results: “The I’ve Just had a Pedi,” "Fashion Blogger” (#fblogger), "The #OOTD (outfit of the day), "The Gym Selfie," and "The 'Girls' Night Out' Shot.”  The guys do look ridiculous.  But, I guess that is the point.

The “100 Club” – More “Likes” Equals More Popularity Points

Your daughter comes home from school declaring that she wants to be part of the “100 Club.”  You are thrilled as you think she is talking about her academic aspirations, but after further discussion you discover that she is instead anxious about her popularity on Facebook/Instagram, and desperate to ALWAYS get at least 100 “likes” on her posts.  You...

a) Admire her goal at achieving popularity on social networks.

b) Decide that you too would like to be part of the “100 club” and ask if there are adult members?

c) Sit her down and talk to her about the fleeting, meaninglessness of popularity in general, and on Facebook/Instagram in particular.

d) Get rid of her Facebook/Instagram accounts.

Another conundrum faced by our digital daughters.  

As girls enter their tweens and teens, friends become the end-all, be-all of social life.  And, when you put smartphones - and the social networking channels that ride on their backs – in the mix, you enable a powerful, sometimes insidious, level of social phenomena.  Yes, social networks are great when they facilitate new connections, a sense of community and empowerment, but the angst that can ensue when it comes to a post with a mortifying lack of “likes” and that awful feeling of being left out, can turn a girl inside out.