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Female adolescence is - universally - an emotionally and psychologically intense period.

Although individual temperaments vary, boys are designed to be more assertive, audacious, and excitable than girls are.

Girls' inner critics are starting to reveal themselves at a younger and younger age. And body image issues are an aspect of their lives which is causing them low self esteem and day-to-day suffering.

Puberty was not kind to me. I had acne, eczema and had a stye in my eye, so it was quite hard to go in to somewhere where the majority were boys. At that age, they were quite vocal about what they thought of your looks.

Girls grow up scarred by caution and enter adulthood eager to shake free of their parents' worst nightmares. They still know to be wary of strangers. What they don't know is whether they have more to fear from their friends.

Often times, we think of girls as soft and vulnerable. And we don't really think of them as possibly being the solutions to some of the world's toughest problems, but they really are.

The girls show more skin these days, but I think, generally, they behave the same way as when I was growing up.

I don't really find girls to be any more dramatic or delicate than boys; I've known plenty of little boys who've had miserable breakdowns over things... in fact, I was one of them!

Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.

Any child may go through periods during which they become less outspoken with their parents or teachers. But girls, like boys, live in many different worlds - they have their friends and their classroom and their parents - and within these different domains, they may have different levels of expressiveness.