As human beings of the female variety, we’re practically torn out of our mother’s wombs with a pair of pink “For Her” tongs. From that moment we’re taking everything in, we’re absorbing as much garbage as we are the foundations of proper cognitive function.
By elementary school, we’re kind of expected to know the basics: how to be desirable to men, how to make your crush laugh, how to make your crush look at you, how to be a good girlfriend, how to keep a man, how to be good in bed, what will turn him on, what will turn him off, how to, how to, how to.
At the ripe age of nine years old, I remember feeling like I couldn’t compete with some of the girls who already had breasts and bushes of underarm hair, because my scrawny body wouldn’t be going through puberty until my second year of high school.
I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a flat chest and a curve-less torso, big ears that stuck out of my head (a fun source of mockery at school), and my thought, at nine, was I wasn’t sexy. I wasn’t sexy, so I might as well be a boy.
This isn’t a note on the fluidity of sexuality or on gender identity. It’s a comment on how terrible it is that little girls are brought in to this world with an inevitable construction manual on how to be a girl, and the majority of it has to do with being a girl in relation to a boy.
Even with my liberal parents—my strong, opinionated mother and my feminist father, who let my brother wear dresses in public when he wanted to—I had succumbed to this, somehow.
It’s probably partially due to growing up in the 90s, which was after women’s liberation but before Ke$ha made us all remember it’s okay to be drunk and naked and just go nuts. As long as it’s for your own amusement, and for money, it’s just empowering.
It’s also something that’s been embedded in global society… since forever. There isn’t really a nice way of saying it.
I’m not dismissing the other side of this spectrum. I know it’s hard growing up as a boy, for different reasons.
I would argue that those reasons have little to do with being a boy for a girl, though. It’s man against man. Are you weak, or strong, sensitive, or tough, ambitious or lazy, will you play sports, are you a man?
A survey designed by DecisionAnalyst in 2007 surveyed 423 young women between the ages of 15 and 20, living in the United States.
The majority of girls answered they are more preoccupied with worrying about “how they look” (body image, prettiness, clothing) than “who they are” (personality, skills and abilities, intelligence).
The survey was conducted for a book titled For Young Men Only. The results of the entire survey are available online.
Growing up, womanhood is often not defined as something independent of men. My elementary-school years were a bit painful because of this.
I’ll never forget what it felt like to watch the girls in my class half-stripping to S-Club at the talent show, bushy underarm hair and all, and wishing that I could be a part of that.
I must have missed something, because when my turn-on stage was done, I didn’t get an ass-grab from the guy I had a crush on in my class. I tucked my violin neatly in its case and sat in the aisle next to my super-proud family waiting for me with giant bouquets.
I want to say that over the years, I grew out of that all by myself because I was smart and I had bigger and better things to think about, but that isn’t true.
I learned that all of that stuff about being a girl and about relationships and how to be in one and secure one was complete bullshit in two ways: 1) by growing up with a role model couple, my parents, who after 25 years, still love each other and 2) by being in two long-term relationships with intelligent men. Others may have arrived at that realization in other ways, but this was my saving grace.
A relationship between two people should never have a “should have” attached. There are no musts. Relationships function on an individual-to-individual basis, and so they should.
The important thing is that men and women define themselves by themselves. It’s especially important that women are aware of this.
Call it over-correction, but sexism isn’t a quick fix. We can’t go back and relive our childhood experiences, but we can enlighten the newer generations of girls.
In the last year, a slew of articles has been published online with the somewhat controversial message, “Don’t tell your daughter she’s pretty.”
The basic idea is what I’ve been discussing here: little girls shouldn’t be focused on their physical appearance.
Lisa Bloom, author of Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, reveals that “15 to 18 per cent of girls under 12 now wear mascara, eyeliner, and lipstick regularly; eating disorders are up and self-esteem is down; and 25 percent of young American women would rather win America’s Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize.”
The thing is, girls have to grow up with all that toxicity and somehow find their way to the other side, where they learn it was all for nothing.
Healthy relationships are the product of independent individuals finding each other. Someone who actually cares about you won’t give a shit how tanned your skin is. They’ll care more if you’re literate than if you can fit into a size 2.
And yet, the point still stands that we needn’t care what that person is looking for or values in his or her partner, because what matters is that you’re your own person, independent of anyone else.
Erica Dennis-Orofino
Contributor
