Last week Lainey and I were talking about our anxiety dreams: mine always revolve around math class. And this is because I’m painfully, embarrassingly bad at math. It’s awful. When out for dinner with friends, they know to calculate my share and tip because it takes me too long. I’m from the Barbie “math class is tough!” generation.
Winnie Cooper (real name: Danica McKellar) has just written a math book and not only is she extremely smart, but her hair is still really long and shiny too. For many men between 30-40, Winnie was the ideal crush. She was soft-spoken, sweet and literally the girl next door -- wholesome hormonal inspiration for teenage boys. The Wonder Years was so great, they should study that set to find out how not to screw up child actors. (And on a bigger note, why have 90s female stars – Alicia Silverstone, Mayim Bialik – become advocates for emerging parenting practices? It’s not a bad thing, but it’s interesting.)
Danica’s new book (her fourth) is called Girls Get Curves: Geometry Takes Shape. Yes, her FOURTH math book. An excerpt from Amazon: “master the core concepts of high school geometry, including congruent triangles, quadrilaterals, circles, proofs, theorems, and more!” God just reading this gives me heart palpitations.
Danica has a son, Draco (just under 2), and she’s obviously teaching him the ways of the smart people; she recites Pi (Pi!) to him and she’s teaching him the quadratic formula. What the f-ck is a quadratic formula?! I know many moms lose their sh-t over Gisele’s physical perfection -- she looks amazing during and after pregnancy -- but I don’t feel bad looking at Gisele because she is a supermodel, a genetic freak in all the right ways. I will never, ever (ever ever ever) come close to looking like Gisele, so it’s not something that I spend energy on. Danica, though, Danica definitely makes me feel bad. If her kid is learning Pi, my Jackson’s first words will be “Breaking Bad.” Imagine going to a playgroup with little Draco, who would quietly arrange numbered blocks while my son picks his nose and blows spit bubbles. This is far more shame-inducing than Gisele’s flat stomach and pain-free water birth.
Attached - Danica on The Today Show on Monday.
