Fans of The Big Bang Theory know Emmy-nominated actress Mayim Bialik as loveable neurobiologist Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler, but Bialik is also accomplished beyond the silver screen: she has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, she founded online community Grok Nation, which she still writes for, and she’s penned four books that cover everything from parenting to vegan cooking to puberty. The latter is the subject of her newest book, Boying Up: How to Be Bold, Brave and Brilliant, a sequel to 2017’s Girling Up: How to Be Strong, Smart and Spectacular.
Bialik spoke to Her Campus about Boying Up, her thoughts on body image and the media, the next season of The Big Bang Theory and more.
Her Campus: For our readers who might not know, could you give a brief description of what Boying Up is about?
Mayim Bialik: Yeah! It’s kind of hard to talk about Boying Up without also mentioning Girling Up, because I wrote Girling Up a year ago about the process by which girls become women, and it includes physiology and psychology, but also a little bit of sociology. When I was doing the book tour for Girling Up, it was actually Stephen Colbert who joked to me, like, “Oh, are you gonna do Boying Up next?” And I kind of laughed it off, but more and more people kept asking me if I was going to write the boy version. My thought was, like, “No!” You know, I’m a woman! And I used to be a girl—why would I do that?
But then I realized that my training is in science, it’s not in female science. And I’m the mother of two boys, and that doesn’t mean that I know everything, but it means I’m kind of living this struggle and trying to understand from a female perspective how boys develop into the men that we all then interact with. So this book is really the male version with a special emphasis put on the pressures put on males, which are distinct from those put on females, and I use actual voices of grown-up boys throughout the whole book so there’s also an actual male perspective.
HC: Have your sons read the book?
MB: No, it’s funny: my younger son is nine, and he’s not really at the age where he would be reading this kind of book on his own. My older son read Girling Up, and he was kind of like my first editor—I asked him if I sounded like a cool mom, but not too cool. And he has not read Boying Up!
It’s not something that I want to force on him. I think it’s probably something pretty close to home, in that he knows I’m going to have all these awkward conversations with him anyway, because I’m his mom and I’m a doctor. So I think he just thinks he’ll experience the real thing, but he keeps carrying it with him, so it’s there if he wants it!
HC: Even though the book is geared toward boys, you include explanations of how girls go through puberty and you explain things like menstruation, and how the vagina works. Why do you think it’s important for boys—and men—to understand how the female body works?
MB: This was something that my editor Jill and I talked about with Girling Up. We wanted Girling Up not only to be a book about girls and the female body, but we wanted it to be the kind of knowledge that we wished we had had as girls, and so I wanted Boying Up to be the same thing. I don’t think that we want to raise boys who simply know about their bodies. That’s kind of how the medical industry is operated—with a strong emphasis on male bodies.
But I think we’re seeing more and more how valuable it is and how important and how critical it is for guys to understand women, and I think that part of the education that we need to start giving our boys is a basic understanding of the female body and the male body. And, you know, my boys don’t love to hear about periods, but the fact is the more we normalize it, and the less we make it this, like, big weird secret or gross thing, the less boys are going to be weirded out by the processes that are totally normal and part of being female.
And we all know what it’s like to talk to guys who start to lose the color in their face when anyone even brings up, like, pregnancy or something. We want our boys to be well-rounded.
HC: You identify as a feminist, so did your feminism influence other areas of the book? I know you talk about masculinity and femininity, and those are definitely more social issues than purely medical issues.
MB: Yeah, there’s absolutely a lot of social issues and a lot of social psychology. I like to say this is not a political book: if you’re a Republican, or a Democrat, or if you’re a feminist, or don’t even know what that means, this book should appeal to you as well. But for me, a true feminist perspective is one of presenting women as equal voices, which is something I do throughout the book—and also understanding the differences between men and women, and how we can work together to really better the world with the things that are unique to both of us.
So the idea’s not to make boys act like girls, or to make girls act like boys. The idea is there’s a full spectrum of behavior—a full spectrum of gender—and every culture gets to determine what they decide is normal, but that there is nothing wrong with the differences in men and women, and the differences among men and women. So I don’t identify as a particularly feminine female. Never have, probably never will. But that also doesn’t mean that I necessarily understand boys or men any better than if I was.
Also, I should mention, there are things that our president has introduced into our consciousness that I wasn’t planning on discussing with my boys this early—I mean, honestly, the word “pussy” was not one that my children even knew before it was brought up in the context of the news. So that’s something I talk about in the book: how we talk about women, how we refer to men and how degrading it is to call men female anatomy as an insult, how it’s degrading to women and to men. And also I talk about the notion of “locker room talk”—again, something the president brought to our consciousness. I talk about that how we talk about women when they’re not around actually matters, and it forms the way we think about women.
The true is same for men, but culture’s really, really different in how men and women are treated, so those are definitely things that I address—again, without hitting people over the head, but it’s pretty clear that we’re working toward a much more progressive and open society that is more open to the concept of feminism and needs to be.
HC: With the current political climate, and the fact that your kids first heard the word “pussy” from the president, do you feel more of a responsibility now with your book and just as a parent in general to educate your kids on these topics—and other people’s kids, too?
MB: Like I said, I think of the book as separate from politics. To me, this is all just common sense stuff that I hope we can all start talking about more. Every family gets to decide how they talk and how they do things. I was actually writing an article today for Grok Nation about why when I got married, I decided not to take someone else’s name. And I was thinking, these are things that we all need to talk about, where everyone gets to decide what works for them.
But I think for me personally, as a mom and as a feminist, and as a woman who was in science which is dominated by men, meaning I was a minority in all of my classes in college and grad school, I definitely think that our political climate is forcing a lot of us to have conversations. It’s giving me the opportunity to talk to my boys about consent, which is something I cover in the book as well, and even basic things that we think we wouldn’t need to say, like, “If someone cannot give consent because she is unconscious, you cannot touch her body.”
And the fact that these are stories that are still in the news; there are clearly boys and men who have not gotten that message. So it’s up to us to start talking to young girls and boys about that.
HC: Moving on from political choices to other choices that you’ve made for yourself and for your family, Boying Up has a whole section on food, and I noticed that you provide a list of ways that boys can get protein without eating meat. You’ve written a vegan cookbook, you’re raising your children vegan—when and why did you choose to be vegan, and why do you think it’s important for others to be vegan as well?
MB: Well, I don’t know if I think it’s important for others to be vegan. I think it is important for everyone to eat less processed foods, and less meat and dairy, which is the recommendation of every food organization and health organization in the world. The way that I do that is by eating a vegan diet, and the way that our pediatrician has helped us decide to raise our boys, but I know it’s not for everyone.
For me, in college I made the choice—I had been vegetarian since I was 19, and then in college, I started eliminating more and more dairy and having less and less sinus infections, and less allergies. I was always someone who was concerned with the welfare of animals, and so it really worked nicely that I could combine my love for animals with my lack of desire to eat them. So those things kind of evolved during the time that I was in college. It’s difficult in certain situations to be vegan, but it definitely reduces your carbon footprint and it is, like I said, generally recommended to eat less things that vegans tend to not eat. I like not eating any cholesterol as vegan—there’s no cholesterol in anything that’s vegan, so that feels good. And it’s better for the environment. So those are the reasons that I do it.
But I think it’s important to remember that Meatless Mondays is a great way that people have started exploring food options that don’t involve meat: it is possible! And especially ethnic cuisine that doesn’t rely on dairy can easily be made vegetarian. You don’t need to eat a lot of processed soy to get your protein. There are a lot of ways to do it and many of us do it every day. I think for boys especially, where the pressure is, often in the teen years, on bulking up, there can be pressure to eat a ton of protein, but we actually eat more protein than we ought to in general, men and women in this country.
HC: We heard you’ve got a partnership with Invisalign, so could you tell us more about that?
MB: When I was writing Girling Up, obviously I paid a lot of attention to appearance and all the mixed messages girls get about, like, “You’re beautiful the way you are!”, except all the women in the media are no way that most of us look. So when I was writing Boying Up and raising boys, I honestly didn’t think that I would need to think as much about appearance, but as I’ve witnessed with my own child: he’s got metal in his mouth because his jaws are small and he has jaw expanders, and we recently made the switch to Invisalign trays because that stuff is important to boys too, and it’s something that I didn’t really realize.
And although the emphasis might be different, it’s absolutely something that boys in our culture are becoming more and more attuned to. So while I’m totally fine with him using Invisalign to straighten his teeth, I’m honestly kind of surprised at how much boys’ appearance and that perception has changed even since I was a girl, when boys were not even necessarily thinking about that stuff as much as girls. That’s one of the shifts that’s incorporated into Boying Up.
HC: You talked about portrayals of appearance in the media, and of course you’re on a huge TV show, The Big Bang Theory, as Amy Farrah Fowler. Like you said, you’re not a very feminine woman, and you don’t play a very feminine woman on the show, so what’s been your favorite part about playing that role and introducing that kind of character?
MB: Well, I don’t have to wear Spanx! And I barely have to sit in the hair and makeup chair, because I barely have to wear any makeup. All they have to do is straighten my wavy hair. I’m a low-maintenance person in real life, and I’m glad that my character is as well.
But I think it’s also important to point out that the character of Bernadette—played by Melissa Rauch, who’s an awesome actress and person—her character’s a microbiologist, and she definitely gets to wear cute headbands, and pretty makeup, and cute outfits. There’s all kinds of women in all kinds of fields, and the science world is not just frumpy women who mix checks and plaid, which Amy does frequently. So I think it’s really cool to be on a show that has different female scientists representing two different kinds of women, because we can be all of those things.
HC: There are reports that next season (Season 12) will be the show’s last. Have you started filming for that season yet? Do you know what’s going to happen? Is there anything that you can tell us?
MB: Honestly, I know people might find it hard to believe: I don’t know a lot about what happens beyond Season 12. It is absolutely true that everyone is contracted through Season 12, and that’s all we know as of now. There’s a lot of legal and business-y conversations that I don’t get to be involved with, but I have nowhere else I’d rather be. I love my job, and I’ll do it as long as people want me to.
HC: Beyond The Big Bang Theory, it seems like you always have so many exciting things going on. Do you have any new projects that you’re working on now or starting work on soon that we can get excited for?
MB: We just hit 400,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel. That’s a really big deal; we’ve been building for a couple years now. I do a lot of very personal stuff on YouTube in a way that I never thought I would share. Obviously, my Grok Nation writing is very personal and I’ve written a piece after my father died, and I’ve written about divorce, but making these videos is a really interesting way to explore a totally different audience and a younger demographic, which is really cool. So that’s been fun, [and] it takes up a lot of my time.
Between that and building up Grok Nation, we’ve sort of turned it into more of a lifestyle site for people who do life in an alternative way, and that’s been fun, too. Like, in what ways can we teach design that’s sustainable? And makeup, and fashion? So that’s something we’re looking to expand even more.
HC: You’re obviously very accomplished as an author, an actress, and a neuroscientist. Do you have any advice for college women who are starting out in their careers or figuring out what they want to do?
MB: Obviously, I believe that women can do whatever they set their minds to, and I don’t want to not sound like a positive person. But I also want to acknowledge that the time that we’re in college is the time when our bodies are young and active, but also the time that we tend to start thinking about, “What if I want a family?”
I remember that I wasn’t thinking about it in undergrad, but everything that I did in those years built up to these decisions of, “Can I have a career and also be a mom?” Or, “What’s my life going to be like if I narrow down my situation to having a career?” and, “What if I still want to travel?”
So, I guess my advice would be that this is not a dress rehearsal. This is our life. If you want to see parts of the world, the time to do it is now. And getting your education is incredibly important, but if you do want to be a parent, there are ways to do that where you can also have a career—but conflict is real. I lived it, and I live it every day. The decisions we make in our twenties absolutely impact the rest of our life.
Also, of course, don’t overindulge in drinking and drugs. [laughs]