Liz Funk
Supergirl Speaks Out
Recovering "Supergirl" Liz Funk is a 20-year-old author and freelance writer who focuses on issues facing young women and Generation Y. Her first book, Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Secret Crisis of Overachieving Girls, (Simon & Schuster, March 2009) is a first-hand look at the lives of today's "Supergirls" — young women who attempt to be simultaneously smart, involved, accomplished, desirable, people-pleasing, and charming — and make it all look easy. Unfortunately, attempting perfection in such a way presents a complete impossibility for young women. And these stressed-out Supergirls are secretly starting to pay the price, in the form of burnout, addiction, eating disorders, or worse...
But luckily, there is hope! When young women realize their "intrinsic worth," they will unlock the key to living an empowered, pleasurable life. Supergirls Speak Out follows the lives of five young women (two of them college students at the University at Albany and the George Washington University) and includes interviews with almost a hundred more young women and experts. The book has received advanced praise from Leslie Bennetts, Laura Sessions Stepp, Leora Tanenbaum, and Gloria Feldt for its analysis of the limiting female ideal in Generation Y and its sympathy for today's young women.
Liz has spoken at Hampshire College, Columbia University, Pace University, and SUNY-Buffalo. She gives keynotes and has spoken on panels for political conferences — the National Organization for Women, the NYS College Democrats, and Young People For-People for the American Way Foundation have all presented her and been very glad they did!
Liz was raised in the suburbs of Albany, NY, where she learned at an early age that she had a passion for women’s issues and writing. As a teenager, she wrote op-eds for newspapers, sent poetry to literary magazines, and got involved with local politically progressive interest groups. She attended Hudson Valley Community College when she was a senior in high school and went on to study English and women’s studies in the Honors College at Pace University. She will graduate from Pace University in May.
In her freelance writing career, Liz has written about topics such as overexposure on Facebook, the criminal cost of private college, the political bearings of Generation Y, and the trials overweight young women face in pursuing sex and relationships, among many other topics. Liz has been published in USA Today, Newsday, the Christian Science Monitor, CosmoGIRL!, the Huffington Post, Girls’ Life, theNation.com, the Baltimore Sun, the NJ Record, and Tango magazine, among other publications. For two years she wrote the most-read “Personalities” blog for the Albany, NY newspaper the Times Union; now she blogs at her personal blog — http://LizFunk.com/blog
Liz is a senior fellow of Young People For-People for the American Way Foundation. She has served on the National Organization for Women Young Feminist Task Force, and when she was in high school, she started a chapter of the National Organization for Women specifically for teenagers. In her work with NOW, she organized protests of MTV and Wal-Mart, and she coordinated a Take Back the Night March with the local YWCA; her events regularly garnered media attention from local television and newspapers, and she was once profiled in the Albany Times Union for her feminist activism. She has received awards for her writing and activism from Choice USA, then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, and Young People For-People for the American Way Foundation.
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