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"One of the main things I didn't want to do was sound like a scolding parent. Y'know? No one wants to read that book. And no one should write that book," says Mayim Bialik matter- of-factly while her glam squad beautifies her for the day. "It wouldn't be sincere for me to say like, Don't have sex till you get married, 'cause: A. It's not going to work for everyone. And it's really not appropriate for the culture that we live in, where that's not a reality for some girls, a lot of girls." Mayim is talking about her new book, Girling Up: How to Be Strong, Smart and Spectacular. It's a sunny May morning. I am in Mayim's hotel suite as she's getting camera-ready. Minutes before we meet, she had posted an Instagram photo of her in Central Park captioned: "How about instead of doing press I spend the entire day in the park? Kidding [to her publicist]. I'm walking back to the hotel with your bagel." I'm glad that she decided against that initial urge as I wouldn't be sitting, or sliding down, the chair across from her. "We're going to give you the most difficult chair to do this in," Mayim laughs as I involuntarily slide back. Penguin approached Mayim with a book idea based on an article she'd written for her website GrokNation about the boundaries she discussed in being a late bloomer and playing one on TV. Mayim took the idea further, deciding it should cover the entire female experience. Girling Up, which fuses her Ph.D. in neuroscience with personal anecdotes, is basically a guide of what to expect as you're growing up —which she has coined as girling up. Mayim doesn't tell her young readers what they should or shouldn't do, but presents them with options. "The general idea was to give knowledge on a lot of different perspectives without having judgement about people making decisions." Girling Up covers everything from chromosomes and hormones to dating, eating disorders, mental health, and sexting. "A lot of girls aren't getting that information and aren't kinda seeing all sides of it before engaging in a lot of these very modern interactions, so the book really needed to reflect that as well." Extremely informative, I found that I was relearning stuff that I had forgotten about, especially the XY- chromosomes lesson. "Yes, I've heard this from many female reporters. You're not the only one," she says with a big smile. I wish there was a book like this when I was growing up. "That's also what I'm hearing. There really wasn't, y'know? For me either. Also, I had a mom who was very, very shy and didn't talk about this stuff, so a lot of this was learning as I went, as many of us do." She talks about coping with stress, and provides some helpful ideas like mediation. To cheer her up, she refers to a folder full of pictures of cats and monkeys. "I didn't want a book that had pretentious and expensive solutions to things, because I feel that doesn't make it approachable, so what I did was literally talked about the things that I do as a person that you can do on your own… I think especially when you're going through heartache or difficulty in school or if your parents get divorced – all those kind of big things— it can feel like you need some big solution and you need something large to shift. But I think the human experience is a lot of small shifts that can cumulatively be helpful." Girling Up is very relatable, even if you're not a teen, especially when the extraordinarily smart-successful- actress mentions that even she breaks up her Instagram feed fraught with perfect people with inspirational quotes. "It really didn't occur to me when I started engaging more in the world of social media, which is honestly part of my job, if I were a teenage person I wouldn't want to do that. That would be devastating for me. My kids don't have phones yet 'cause that sounds like a crazy world to get into," she laughs. "When I look at everyone else's happy pictures and what everyone's posting. It can feel crummy. So yeah, even simple things like adding in an account, I think I mention Think. Grow. Prosper. that has positive quotes, it makes it better and breaks up all the: Oh, happier than me. Prettier than me. Skinnier than me. More successful than me with: You're OK exactly where you are. Small things like that, for me, really do help." In the public eye since she was a child, many of us remember Mayim from Beaches as young CC and as Blossom (and no, she doesn't remember the steps to the theatrical opening-credits dance) from the hit 90s show by the same name. Since her successful 5-year stint on Blossom, she has appeared on a few TV shows including The John Larroquette Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager. She left the industry for 12 years, she tells me. During this time, she got her undergraduate-, graduate degree, and gave birth to her two sons. Per Wikipedia, Mayim took a break from school in 2005 to return to acting and went to UCLA in 2007, where she obtained her Ph.D. Her return to acting came as a "big" and "wonderful" surprise as it wasn't part of her game plan. "I started auditioning just because I was running out of health insurance," she laughs. "But at the time, I was teaching. I taught neuroscience for five years after getting my degree and was brought onto Big Bang Theory as a guest star, possible recurring. I didn't expect to be made a regular." (Mayim joined the award-winning ensemble cast as Amy Farrah Fowler at the end of Season 3 and was made a regular in Season 4.) As Amy, Mayim has received a number of accolades including four Primetime Emmy Award nominations