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It’s never been a better time to be born a girl, and it’s never been quite so difficult to grow up female. Barbie may say, “we girls can do anything,” but what too many girls do is starve or cut themselves, have sex before they are ready to handle the consequences, or simply grow up a little too precociously, thanks to a culture that loves the female body a little too aggressively. Lauren Greenfield spent five years documenting American girlhood, capturing moments for a resulting exhibit of fifty-eight photographs (also published as a book) that are shocking and troubling, joyful and beautiful—sometimes all at once. (Read more on page 24 in our Straight Talk interview.) 165 13th Ave. NE, Minneapolis; 612-824-5500

If you can’t see the image above, scroll down to the PDF and click on that sucker!

It’s quite possible that you’ve used one of Jane Frees-Kluth’s public artworks, which live among us in parks, on streets, outside public buildings. Some people sip from her drinking fountain at a housing development in Richfield; others enjoy her colorful, fishlike whirligigs dancing in the fountain at the Hennepin County Government Center. This year she installed “Sibling Rivalry,” a bench featuring two figures in a tug-of-war, on the University Avenue spot where Minneapolis and St. Paul meet. Frees-Kluth insists that any commentary on the tale of our two cities was unintentional. “It was totally serendipitous. I was installing it and someone came out of the Day’s Inn restaurant and told me there used to be a marker there that said it was the joining place of the two cities,” she says.

On a desert isle, of course, she would be both the creator and the audience for her work—but she chose to bring art-making tools that could also be employed for survival purposes and even rescue attempts. Luckily for us, she realized she was asking for too much when it came to “a foundry and a crew of native men.”

1. With a hatchet, I could build my palm house, Swiss Family Robinson-style, and crack coconuts, make wood sculptures and furniture, cut my hair, and practice hatchet-throwing for self-defense.

2. I could write, draw, and sketch millions of ideas, but I’d need pencils and paper. If you would be so kind as to throw in a bottle, I could send out a message.

3. A magnifying glass to ignite a fire for light, warmth, and cooking. I’d also use it to sketch tiny bugs, do portraits of grains of sand, and burn patterns into fallen wood.

4. With a 3D rendering machine, I could create a community of sculptures based on people from my life. I’d put question and comment cards in their hands and pull one every now and then to carry on “conversations.” It would give the illusion that I wasn’t so alone.

5. Mylar, a zip sealer, and a large tank of helium. The hope that someone might see my giant homemade balloons and come rescue me would keep me inspired to create the most amazing balloons. I would have a sense of purpose. I would send letters in them.

Starting in the mid-nineties, Lauren Greenfield embarked on a project to photograph a broad spectrum of modern American girlhood. She documented girls in states of deep imagination: a four-year-old playing princess, an anoxeric teen who only saw fat. She captured girls getting ready for the big dance, toiling at the fat farm, and primping at the strip club. These images were compiled in the book Girl Culture, published in 2002, and a selection of them is now a traveling exhibit, opening at the Minnesota Center for Photography on January 15 (see page 26).

THE RAKE: Several of these photos were taken in Edina. What brought you to the Twin Cities?
In 1998 I was working on a photo essay for the New York Times Magazine about being thirteen. [The Times nominated the project for a Pulitzer Prize.] My mission was to find out what it was like to be thirteen in Edina, Minnesota. In a way, the choice of the place was a little bit random. They were looking for a city that could show the influence of consumerism on kids, but without it being New York or Los Angeles. They wanted something that was more representative of America.

One of your subjects is a young girl who wants to be a stripper. The kids you met in Edina seem pretty healthy by comparison.
But they looked very precocious. They looked older than they were. That’s a result of direct marketing to kids. In the case of some of those girls, there’s an innocence, but also they are dressing, talking, and behaving in a way to get a reaction from the outside world. My first book, Fast Forward, is about how kids grow up quickly and how they are influenced by the media—specifically by the culture of materialism. This isn’t just some phenomenon happening to Hollywood kids, or “those crazy people in California.” The way that kids are in Beverly Hills is not that different from how they are in Edina. Kids in Edina are buying the same clothes as kids on the coasts. Kids in Edina were having their first outing to Starbucks with each other, without parents, or going to dinner at TGI Fridays. That kind of youth culture, where some of the signposts are chain stores or restaurants, is shared by kids all over the country.

What kind of pressures do you see affecting girls?
My passion for this project came from my own memories of growing up. I felt the pressures to have designer clothes, I was always on a diet, that kind of thing. But I think the bar has been raised for girls. Not only do they have to look good in jeans, but their stomach is showing because the jeans are low-riding and the top is a crop top, and so it’s not just about the clothes, but about the body. I think thirteen-year-olds have always been worried about clothes and fitting in, but it seems much more intense, and starts at a much younger age.

You have a four-year-old son. Do you think it’s easier to be a boy than a girl?
I think the pressures are slightly less for boys. They are encouraged more toward self-expression and creativity, while girls learn that their appearance makes a big difference. So they start putting some of their creative energy there. But I think that instead of things getting better for girls, they are getting worse for boys. Eating disorders are increasing for boysÑso is steroid abuse and plastic surgery.

Have you revisited any of the subjects of your photos?
I was doing a lecture in Florida, and Erin, who is the anorexic in the book, came to it. Then she was interviewed by the Orlando Sentinal about how her life was affected by being in the book. She said that it actually helped her recovery. Anorexics don’t know how to use their voices, she said, so they use their bodies instead. Being in the book gave her a voice. I’ve reconnected with several other girls from the book. And I think for the most part it’s just a moment in their life, and they forget about it and move on to boyfriends and school and everything else. It’s just a blip on the screen. But sometimes there’s a connection from the moment our paths cross, and we find each other again in different ways afterward.

I know who I am. I’m not looking for anything or anyone to define me. So why am I such a complete sucker for personality tests: the MMPI, Rorschach blots, Cosmopolitan’s “Hot Lover Quiz”? Recently, someone sent me a Web link to a particularly in-depth Jungian personality questionnaire. Naturally, I forwarded it to three people I respect and love, thinking we’d all take it and then share our results. As is common with these types of tests, after you’ve been “diagnosed” and “labeled,” they offer you a wide sampling of your fellow personality types. I looked at my friends’ results, clicked on their like-minded types, and was impressed to see what company they kept—all brainiacs and world leaders like Einstein, Mark Twain, Harriet Tubman, and Beethoven, for crap’s sake. When I clicked on my type, the first celebrities to pop up as my “personality matches” were John Goodman, Ice-T, Wilt Chamberlain, and Madonna. Suddenly, I felt a little fluffy. None of my “personality twins” had won a Pulitzer or written a great book. Their likenesses do not appear on currency. They were sitcom actors, nymphomaniacs, and one semi-successful cop hater from the late eighties. By contrast, the matches for one friend were so obscure that I couldn’t identify any of them by photo, which seemed to make them all the more important. Oh, and did I mention that each personality type had a cute archetypal name, e.g. “The Peacemaker,” “The Caregiver,” “The Explorer”? Then I saw mine. “The Diva.” Ouch. For the love of Celine Dion’s nail technician, please tell me this is a mistake. My friends are Gandhi and I’m Patti LaBelle. So the lesson here is that my self-perception is more than a little off. Maybe it’s time to embrace my inner pompous hack. I guess in my own deluded head, I will continue to think of myself as a sort of rockin’ Madeleine Albright. Truth be told, I would rather enjoy a cocktail with Lady Marmalade than, say, Golda Meir.

Out on Winnetka Avenue in Golden Valley, north of the spanking-new D’Amico, you run into a place where the bulbs in the street lights have burned out and no one seems to notice, because this is the quiet old suburbs. And that’s where you will find some mighty fine Malaysian food, even though the sign at Rasa Sayang also says “Chinese Food.” This being the quiet old suburbs, some people here just aren’t ready to eat something called a hot pot, which arrives with the Sterno ablaze, cooking your vegetables in a dark, spicy, deeply complex sauce. Sure, Malaysian cuisine has a Chinese influence, but it borrows from Thai and Indian, too, and thus does not resemble anything you know as chow mein. By offering up some of the best golden curries and butter-fried rotis in town, it makes the suburb of Golden Valley seem exceedingly well named. 28 Winnetka Ave. N., Golden Valley, 763-525-9876

Uptown has more than its share of restaurants where you can ensconce yourself in swanky, towering booths, eat overpriced steak, pasta, and chocolaty desserts, and revel in the company of other beautiful people. But when you take menu items from restaurants around the Twin Cities, add a sparkler here and hybrid vegetable there, and then serve them under cool blue lighting, what do you get? Tonic of Uptown! While the rooftop patio at this uber-restaurant-cum-nightclub was all the rave this summer, it’s quite possible to stay warm throughout winter among the well-dressed honeys dancing upstairs. If dancing’s not your thing, we’ll bet that the early-bird special is. Choose from three salads, entrees, and desserts for twenty bucks (OK, $19.95). Add a wine pairing with each course for $10 more. Who says you can’t show your grandma what you’re doing in the city? 1400 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; 612-824-8898

Few venues are brave enough to put an exclamation point in their name. But that’s not the only thing that makes Pop! different. The menu of this Northeast neighborhood joint, which has become a magnet for a broad swath of hipster types, is as bright and fun as the pop-art decor. Nevertheless, please refrain from leaping up and exclaiming “Wahoo!” when you bite into the Black Angus burger with Tillamook cheddar—or, for that matter, when you dip into the grilled beef Matambre stew with its bright Latino flavors. You might disturb someone who is demurely tucking into a plate of fine Swedish meatballs. Also, the space, while vibrant, is tight. Prepare to wait on the weekends. 2859 Johnson St. NE, Mpls.; 612-788-0455

Did we need another Elton John? Apparently so. With Scissor Sisters, we get the five bad children of the Rocket Man, who play keyboards with both a bang and a flounce, and write catchy dance tunes that seize your butt and bounce it across the floor. How can it be that this country, which soundly rejected gay marriage, has made a raging hit of “Take Your Mama Out,” a song about taking your wife to a dance club to out yourself as a homosexual? Then again, America loved Elton’s “Philadelphia Freedom.” The Quest, 110 N. Fifth St., Minneapolis; 612-338-3383; www.thequestclub.com

We’re as tempted as anyone to hole up at home during January, but thereÕ’ no better excuse than this festival to break free from a self-imposed house arrest. Some of Hawaii’s most accomplished musicians are descending upon the Twin Cities at the very moment that planeloads of Minnesotans are zooming away in search of sunshine and sand. Those of us who stay to brave the cold winds are in for a musical reward (if not a Hawaiian vacation). Today’s slack-key players, including Patrick Landeza, George Kahumoku, and Dennis Kamakahi, play breathtakingly complex, yet traditional compositions that are fascinating and strangely sweet, even to landlocked ears that only hear ocean waves in a souvenir seashell. 416 Cedar Ave S., Minneapolis; 612-338-2674; www.thecedar.org