the 941

The glasses. The hair. Those eyes. Oh how we loved Winnie Cooper. Sure, we identified with Kevin, wanted to kill Wayne, empathized with Paul (not so much with Pfeiffer 2.0). But we watched The Wonder Years for her. We even thought we were in love with our own nextdoor neighbor for a while, gave her our letter jacket and everything. Wasn’t the same.

Winnie Cooper will always be Winnie Cooper, no matter what our neighbor spilled on our jacket, but Danica McKellar is all growns up. After the Years, she had bit roles here and there and did the requisite soft porn magazine cover, but is making news now for her new book aimed at tween girls, Math Doesn’t Suck. Turns out McKellar ditched the film department at UCLA to major in math, where she got straight As and even proved her own theorem.

The book’s an attempt to demystify math for girls, a noble goal, even if it feels a little stereotypical, at least to this non-tween girl. A sample problem, which applies algebra to a makeup bag full of lipstick, is here. Winnie McKellar describes her philosophy this way:

My approach is not to say “turn your back on glamour and makeup and boyfriends and all the other things girls are thinking about.” I’m trying to say, “look, I think all that stuff is fun, too. I like shopping, I like makeup, and I like boyfriends, and I like all that girlie stuff. And by the way, why should there be a contradiction between that and being good in math?”

We sorta wish we had the technology to play that quote in Daniel Stern’s voice, but given McKellar’s work, it would probably undercut the point.

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