Little Women
Feb 20th, 2007 at 4:43 pm by Maya
Glad to see some attention come to this. Culturally, we stack the deck so high against our girls, and then mock and punish them for succumbing to the constantly dangling carrot:
Inescapable media images of sexed-up girls and women posing as adolescents can cause psychological and even physical harm to adolescents and young women, a study in the US has warned.
The pressure of what experts call “sexualization” can lead to depression, eating disorders, and poor academic performance, said the report, released Sunday by the American Psychological Association.
What ever happened to positive role models, anyway?
I have a smart, confident, happy little girl who is turning 10 next month. I wasn’t much older than that when I started wanting to read Seventeen and took an interest in make-up and fashion and learned to be self-conscious, so I know damn well what I’m staring down the barrel of. But beyond giving her a thorough education on marketing techniques, I don’t know what I can really do, since the harder I try to steer her away from something the more interest she’s bound to take in it. I think the hardest part of parenting is learning to let go and allow our kids to struggle through the challenges (and mistakes) that help them grow and deepen, rather than trying to protect them with our own hard-won knowledge, which is never an adequate substitute for direct experience. I’m prepared to do a lot of wincing over the next few years.
As the mother of a 13-year-old girl, I have wondered for years why parents agree to support the purchase of overly sophisticated or sexy clothes.
For some mothers, I think, their daughters serve as an advertisement (or proxy) for the mother’s hipness or sexuality.
um…perhaps “dangling carrot” isn’t the best metaphor to use in a sentence about sexed up girls reaching for things?
My sister moved her family to change her daughter’s life when it became clear that the alternative was a girl whose focus would be sex and social power. That worked.
I didn’t think mine was going to live to be 14. Either I was going to kill her or she was going to self-destruct. Neither happened, she’s fine and she chooses not to wear clothing that is not age appropriate.
When my daughter’s middle school principal met my wife, she said, “…G.’s a beautiful girl… I’m so sorry.” An administrator wise to the ways of adolescents. So are we, fortunately (mostly, anyway:). She’s in 10th. grade now; so far, so good.
As for the 12 yr. old… the jury is still out.
I was worried the same way for my daughter, now 21. In middle school there was a quick ramp-up on spaghetti straps, makeup, hair, “am i fat”, and such. But those virtually disappeared when we chose “unschooling”, which turned out to be a social group which didn’t emphasize such stuff at all. I’m not saying that the unschooling is the key, but the group of kids around her. She experimented with coloring her hair purple, shaving it off, Blade-runner makeup at Halloween, and the like, but appears to be very comfortable in her skin day-to-day sans makeup/hairproducts/bodyimagedisorders.
My eldest daughter hit middle school during the Grunge era, which she embraced whole heartedly. She was just never into the whole girly thing. My youngest (now almost 20) was the total opposite. I sent her to Catholic High School. It was small (400 girls), the uniform saved us hours of conflict in the mornings, and best of all, it was very diverse. I remember waiting for her after school and seeing girls of all colors, shapes and sizes emerge from the building. It made me glad that I had chosen to send her there, instead of our local High School full of Ambercrombie clones.
I have four daughters. The oldest is 10. We homeschool, and we’ve never had a TV in the house. The ten-year-old is still becoming a teenager despite these precautions, but without the cheap sexuality.
While control is an illusion, you have deep influence.
Be an adult, visibly; your own responsible conduct and self-respect will be a standard against which your kids measure themselves long after you have shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the choir eternal.
Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t like that”.
But stop there.