In the midst of finals and my school year coming to a close I have been trying to think about being a young woman and especially about this blog (I have never blogged before so this is all new to me) and what insight I have to tell teens or girls my age and to be honest – I have been at a loss. I am no more experienced or qualified then any of you are but I’ve just decided I’ll try to use this as a place to get out the issues that we all face today. Girls today are pushed to be jugglers – balancing school with sports with boys with family and all the while, trying to grow up and find their own identity. While all parents want these things for their daughters, I don’t think our surroundings foster this goal of “finding our identity”. Girls are given so many options now that many strive to do it all but with the constant pressures in high school and middle school are often pushed to conform to what everyone else is doing – its hard! As someone who has been through those incredibly awkward and trying years of being a teenage girl (I recently turned 20), I remember being plagued with constant self-doubt – what is optimistically called “self reflection” – about whether what I was doing was right or wrong – cool or not cool. It’s inevitable that we will all have these moments but the frequency of them in myself, my friends and even my sister worry me.
Girls are usually their harshest critics. Whether we are critiquing ourselves or our friends – we have an incredible eye for error. We critique our looks, our brains, our grades and our talents in of self-deprecation in order to seem modest while our male counterparts are in the habit of the exact opposite. Somehow it has been engrained in our minds that while we must be the best at what we attempt, we are also taught we can never tout those achievements we work so hard to accomplish. In addition, the tendency of girls to evaluate others is incredibly common – I mean we have all see Mean Girls right? If you haven’t seen the movie, Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams star in Tina Fey’s (SNL) social commentary about the world of high school girls. There is the popular clique, the plastics, that rule the school and the other girls are classified into the different lower social groups (math nerds, cool Asians, burnouts etc). Once classified, social mobility is tough and the goal for most is to just survive by finding a group and staying there while trashing on those around you. I’m no eternal optimist and recognize that when I was younger and even now I am guilty of the same things but it still begs the question: if we know that this sort of “girl on girl crime” is wrong and harmful…why cant we change? So, here’s my idea – after reading this (if anyone does), do two things in the next day….
1. Go to the bathroom and look in the mirror and say something nice about yourself – it can be anything but I recommend saying something that you are good at. We’ve all got talents – personally one of mine is that I have a great memory for lines in movies (see it can be a weird one and now that I’ve put mine on the Internet you can say yours in the comfort of your own home).
2. Tomorrow when your at school – talk to some girl you’ve never talked to before. Just say hi, or what’s up or complain about the cafeteria food in line or something. I’ve tried to do this before and had a hard time putting myself out there but now that I’m writing this and asking others to do it – I will too. Think of this as a sort of Pay it Forward (movie staring Helen Hunt and Kevin Spacey – if the reference is lost its worth renting but its sad - just a warning) but for yourself and if you help others in the process then great.
So those are my ideas for now – I know they might seem trite but there’s no real place to start except for with our own actions - so why not? ☺