Girls’ esteem in an image-crazed world
How do you teach girls true confidence in a world that’s obsessed with mere images?
When she was about seven, my elder daughter stood in front of a full-length mirror in her panda pajamas and said: “You know, I just don’t look good in panda.”
It was funny, but it was also kind of alarming. You don’t want sentences that start with: “I don’t look good in” coming out of your kid’s mouth ever, let alone when they’re so young.
As a child, I never had this problem. Most of the time, I gave zero thought to how I looked. Frequently, I thought I looked fabulous.
There’s a picture of me at the age of 10 in a denim top and widelegged orange and powder-blue woolly pants. I am holding the sides of the pants out at the thighs as if I’m about to curtsy and I am clearly confident that I look absolutely terrific.
Actually, I look kind of dorky, but that’s not the point.
I didn’t start to even think about my appearance until I was about 12 and had my hair cut into a very short Kristy Mc Nichol style feathered do.
I was delivering papers one day when someone referred to me as the paper boy. I informed my mother that I needed to have my ears pierced so no one would make the same mistake again.
A lifelong wearer of clip-ons, she refused, but my Aunt Peggy eventually snuck me off to do the job. Bang, bang — problem solved.
My two girls started pushing for pierced ears practically out of the gate. I finally succumbed when they were seven and nine, selling the privilege in return for two months of being on time for school. I’ve never seen them so motivated.
In fact, at eight and 10, they are much more appearance-conscious than I ever expected. I have had to threaten to remove all mirrors in the house to speed up our morning school departures. They both insist on having long hair, which requires regular maintenance and a staggering number of accessories.
In this image-obsessed world, where everyone has to present their best self(ie) all the time, I despair of them ever having the confidence that comes from being entirely oblivious to your appearance, something that’s traditionally been a privilege of childhood.
As girls, the deck is already stacked against them. Incredibly, it was only in 2012 that the Olympics dropped the requirement that women athletes competing in beach volleyball wear bikini tops no wider at the side than seven centimetres — and even then, they only dumped it because of pressure from countries where that kind of exposure is not encouraged.
How do you teach girls confidence in a world where their appearance will be constantly judged?
Criticizing women’s looks is the one Olympic sport every country in the world could compete in. From Christy Clark being rapped for showing cleavage to Hillary Clinton being eviscerated for her granny-in-a-pantsuit esthetic, even when we get it right, we get it wrong.
It’s a phenomenon that’s probably been around since the first early human turned to another and said: “You know, that wolf skin really emphasizes your hips, and not in a good way.”
As far as I’m concerned, the only legitimate grounds for appearance-based criticism, should one feel so inclined, is on the basis of appropriateness.
Here’s a quick guide: • Not good for the office, the campaign trail, the Olympic Games or a mining-industry promotional video: bikinis or panda pajamas • Not good for the beach: Granny pantsuits, although if you’re going to miss the mark, I would submit it’s better to be overdressed than underdressed. In this, I would part ways with the mayor of Cannes in France, who — along with other French cities — recently issued an ordinance forbidding so-called religious-oriented beachwear, which includes the burkini, a full-body, head-covering swimsuit.
The reality is, without the burkini, these women aren’t going to the beach at all, and if anyone needs a beach outing, it’s a gal who’s been sweating in a dark robe all day.
Besides, can you trust dad to keep the kids from drowning while he’s checking out the French ladies in bikinis? (“Look, the kids were fine — nothing happened.”) • Not good for a high-school class: visible thongs and crop tops
A Vancouver English teacher friend recalls invigilating a Grade 12 exam where a girl was bent over her paper for an hour, giving the boy behind her a technicolour display of her turquoise thong underwear over the top of her low-rise white pants. Somewhat distracting, no?
My teacher friend also tells of Grade 12 girls in crop tops giving presentations to the class, holding their papers in one hand and using the other to cover their exposed bellies.
She tactfully suggested alternative dress options if they wanted to be taken seriously, then or in the job market.
Some women think it’s unfair to subject girls to such rules, to stop them from “expressing themselves” in plunging necklines and short shorts. Others, myself included, argue that the reality is that girls who dress that way draw unwanted attention to their bodies, not their brains. Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton, not Madonna and Nicki Minaj, are my role models for girl power.
(It’s worth noting that my teacher friend also chastised a group of male high school basketball players who turned up in singlets with armholes down to their waists. They tried to argue there was no rule against it, but she held firm and they didn’t do it again.)
I already have my line ready for my girls when they reach puberty: You might be dressing that way for the cute boy in your Grade 8 English class, but what if you’re also inadvertently turning on some middle-aged or elderly man? Still want to wear the short shorts to school?
In June, I was at Willows Beach, where a group of girls who were probably about 12 were playing at the water’s edge in that not-quite-a-child, notquite-a-teenager way. They were wearing shorts and cropped tops and had attracted the rather leering gaze of a middle-age man on a park bench. For long minutes, he didn’t take his eyes off them. I wonder how they would have felt if they knew.
I want my girls to wear their childhood confidence like a warm, cuddly pair of socks that can stretch into adolescence and young adulthood. I want them to know that confidence comes from inside, not from dressing “sexy,” which provides only the fleeting esteem boost that comes from being a spectacle, and has little to do with real sexuality.
I don’t want them to be like the young woman I once met who was so proud that ever since she’d lost weight, men passing in cars had begun making lewd noises at her.
Social psychologist Amy Cuddy, a professor at Harvard Business School, has done studies that found standing like a superhero for a few minutes — in the bathroom or an elevator — before a stressful situation caused her subjects to be more confident.
If I could revisit that moment with my daughter in front of the mirror, I know exactly what I’d do. I’d get her to “power pose” like Wonder Woman — standing legs apart, hands on hips.
Then she’d really rock those panda pajamas.