“Who’s the true-blue you?”  “Are you best friend material?”

Open any magazine aimed at tween and teen girls, and questions like these are sure to appear in quizzes that pepper these publications. It’s not surprising that most girls love to take quizzes. Amid the emotional turmoil and physical changes of adolescence, girls crave help to figure out the “certainty” of who they are, especially in relation to their peers.

But many of the quizzes aren’t really helpful, with shallow questions that often trade on disrespectful and mean stereotypes about girls. And increasingly, quizzes focus on celebrities and shopping, leading a girl even farther from discovering insights into her unique personality. 

The good news is that there are fun ways for your girl to find out something more profound than whether she’s more like Paris Hilton or Jessica Simpson. Parents can participate as well, taking quizzes in tandem as a light-hearted way to open up parent-daughter communication. Getting to Know the Real You:  50 Fun Quizzes Just for Girls (Crown Publishing, 2002) is one such guide, written by long-time Girl Scouts girl-advice guru Harriet Mosatche and her daughter Liz, then 13 years old. Another pair of books, Psychology for Kids: 40 Fun Tests That Help You Learn About Yourself  (Free Spirit Publishing, 1995) and Psychology for Kids II (Free Spirit, 1998), lets girls and parents learn more about each person’s personality traits and behaviors, which can reveal problem areas in family communication.

Even when girls take magazine quizzes that may make parents cringe, the situation can prompt some illuminating conversations. Many girls are already savvy about the oversimplified nature of quizzes, yet prize their entertainment value. “I mostly take quizzes for fun,” says seventh-grader Eva, who enjoys doing quizzes with a group of friends and notices that “when we do them together, we all get the same answers.”  She is most drawn to quizzes that help her decipher friendships, and hates it when they are structured in ways that make the “right” answers too obvious, “like the ones where if I answer all Cs, then I’m a bad friend.”

You can point out the flaws in quizzes that reduce girls to silly stereotypes.  For example, one recent tween magazine quiz asks: “What's your personality? Are you a nature nut, funky chick, or a glamour queen?”  Chances are, your daughter is somewhere between none and all of the above.  “The ones that ask ‘What celebrity would be your best friend?’ – they don’t really matter.  I’m never going to be friends with Hilary Duff,” says Eva.  Be gentle in your critique—girls are thirsty for advice wherever it comes from—but remind her that when it comes to personality, there are no “right” answers.

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