Christ, this is depressing:

I work at a bookstore. I was cashiering today when a woman and her two kids (a boy and a girl, both somewhere between 13-15) came up to the register. The mom was buying 2 celeb gossip magazines, and the boy put down a book. The girl then walked up and set down the newest volume of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.



The mom says "You can't buy that."



Girl: Why?

Mom: Because it's too big.

Girl: [Brother] is buying a book that big. It's not very expensive.

Mom: [Brother] is a boy. You're a girl. And girls shouldn't read big books like that. It's too thick. Boys don't like girls who read thick books. You want boys to like you, don't you?



The girl went and put the book away.

I hope that despite her mother, this girl achieves some measure of success beyond shitting out another mewling brood of intellectually and emotionally stunted brats. I hope that at some point she has the opportunity to point to a gap on her bookshelf and tell her mom, "See that? That's the book that you didn't buy for me. That's the book that inspired me to be better than you. Now go fuck yourself."



[via Pharyngula]