Judi Smith, assistant to Dave Barry and Leonard Pitts Jr. at The Miami Herald, asked this of Meg Cabot whose books this year are "Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: Stage Fright'' ($15.99, Scholastic Press) and "Being Nikki: An Airhead Novel'' ($16.99, Point):

Q: Feminism (or perhaps more palatably to this generation, Girl Power) is an ongoing theme in your two new series, Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls and Airhead. Do you agree with pundits who say that young women today seem less mindful of the struggles of past generations of women, and are you hoping your characters' feminist attitudes will boost awareness among young readers?

A: Ask any tween or teen girl today if she considers herself a feminist, and chances are good you will receive a horrified "No!'' in reply.

But ask that same girl if she feels that women should receive equal political, social, and economic rights as men (which happens to be the definition of the word feminism), and she'll cry, "Of course!''

It's not the concept of feminism that's the problem. It's the word "feminist.''

I'm not sure when "feminist'' became such a dirty word to so many. But for a lot of kids it seems to summon up an image of a hairy-armpitted, man-hating woman who despises fashionable clothing (and eschews all meat and dairy products).

In fact the word feminist has such a bad image these days that even many female celebrities -- who head up multimillion dollar fashion and music conglomerates -- reply when asked if they consider themselves to be feminists, "Absolutely not"...only to then bemoan the fact (often later on in the exact same interview) that they don't get the kind of respect from studio executives as their male counterparts.

So how does a feminist author like myself write popular books for this generation of tweens and teens, who are at best suspicious of the word "feminist'' and at worst repulsed by it, while actually getting across a feminist "message''?

I'll let you in on my dirty little secret:

I grew up loving Marlo Thomas's gender stereotype exploding album Free To Be You And Me, laser pistol-packing Princess Leia, and lasso-wielding Wonder Woman, being told by my parents that I could do anything my brothers could (and should demand equal pay for it).

Although my mother was a housewife for most of my childhood, she was adamant that all her children learn to make their own beds and meals as well as do their own laundry, so we would know how to do these things when we had homes of our own.

The mothers of my characters Allie Finkle (of the Allie Finkle Rules for Girls series) and Em Watts (of the Airhead series) both work but are raising their daughters in a fashion similar to the way my mother raised my brothers and me.

So 9-year-old Allie, who makes up rules about friendship for herself because she finds the vagaries of fourth-grade cliques so overwhelming, loves the color pink but she has every intention of becoming a veterinarian when she grows up. For her birthday, all she longs for is a cell phone not so that she can text boys, but so that she can call whoever is hiding while playing hide-n-seek when Allie is "It'' and find them by their ringtone. Allie is a modern girl with modern concerns, all of which revolve around her friends, family, school and new pet kitten, not boys or clothes (not that there is anything wrong with these things).

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