Impossible Girls

In response to Reverend Evan Dolive’s Open Letter to Victoria Secret:

Although I have no idea what other values this man represents, I strongly share the beliefs outlined in his letter to Victoria Secret.....I wish it started and stopped with Victoria's Secret...Perhaps he hasn't perused his local Wal-Mart toy department lately, where the "girl" aisles are already amuck with sexy panties for 12 year olds, and toys that have more in common with porn stars than any other role model (hello, Bratz, Monster High etc). Maybe he doesn't have cable, where girls like Alex Rousseau value attitude and rudeness more than friendship and intelligence, or I-Carly  or any other "Family"(and I say that with the grandest sense of irony) TV show - where social currency is judgement, sass and making out with boys.

 I am a daughter, a mother of a daughter (and a son), a wife and a teacher of adolescents. I see the Victoria Secret effect every day (literally..., like, literally.) I get appalling amounts of saucy back talk from 15 year olds with their thongs on display; who spend more time preening in their cell phone cameras than contributing to classroom discussion. They are not vain or even shallow they are trying desperately and deeply to measure up. When every faux pas (fashion or otherwise) is instantly uploaded for all to see and pass judgement on (in 140 characters or less) they are exerting inhuman effort to look right, because that is all that matters, and even then, sometimes, that isn't enough. But screwing up on YouTube looking hot is preferable to screwing up on YouTube looking bad.

I am worried about my daughter.

Being a girl has always been hard. But now, being a girl is impossible. You have to be smart mouthed (not the same as smart), sexy, with a perfect physique, a perfect wardrobe, experienced but not skanky, and a long list of other superficial and contradictory characteristics. What if she falls into that un-navigable maze, fraught with an over inflated need to impress others and sub-zero self esteem? What if her kind and delicate heart can't endure?

And I am worried about my son, whose image of a valuable woman is one without pubic hair, who needs bigger boobs and smaller brains. My son, who may grow up thinking it’s Ok for women to be rude as long as they are sexy… because, "Who cares about personality...did you check out her underwear?" Whose peers don't even bat an eyelash at porn because it is everywhere...even the toy aisle at Wal-Mart. (Did I mention Bratz?)

I want a girl's beauty to be measured by generosity, leadership, capability, curiosity, intelligence, integrity, kindness, strength, independence, helpfulness, soulfulness, and heart....not her underwear.

But we don't make toys that look like Maya Angelou or Marie Curie or Indira Ghandi or Pearl S. Buck. We make toys that look like Lady Gaga and Sexy Corpses. ‘Cause dead girls are sexy...right? (Hello, Monster High.)  Our romantic role models are vampires and sexual submissives.... so our daughters are looking for suitors who are emotionally inaccessible and totally dominant. Lovers who value only their own pleasure and not hers.

Victoria Secret is just the tip of the iceberg.

It isn’t productive to lay blame or point fingers, but we must as parents … as consumers, evaluate our own responsibility in this. It is productive to recognize that we are responsible for our children. My husband and I raise our daughter and our son. Not Mattel or Hasbro, not Disney, not YouTube, not facebook, not MTV.  We do, her mom and dad. We lay the groundwork. I am not dumb enough to think that it begins and ends with me…but I am smart enough to know that it does begin and end with her.  So I will set a bedtime, and put 3 square meals in front of her each day, I will listen to relentless knock-knock jokes and kiss scraped knees. I will set curfews and I will enforce them, I will watch TV, even the Family channel and I will talk with her about what we see, the things we loved (even cute shoes) and the things that bugged us (the way Alex spoke to her brother ) and sometimes (many times) we will turn the TV off. I will creep on her facebook (if I ever let her on it) I will invite her friends to our home, I will drive them to and from and I will chaperone the semi-formal.  I will not buy toys that contradict my values. I will pin her art to my fridge and display her poetry in my workspace. I will brag about her imagination and her sense of adventure more than her beauty and her wardrobe.  I will tell her exciting stories about amazing women (real and imagined) and I will make her spend as much time as possible around the real women I most admire. And I will do my very best to live the way I want her to live. I will foster and cherish my relationships with women; I will speak to my husband and son with love and appreciation for the wonderful role they play in my life. I will nurture in myself the qualities I hope to instill in her, self-worth, personal strength, capability, positivity, integrity and generosity. I will talk about beauty with the conviction that it is not skin deep, that it is universal and all-inclusive. I will bite my tongue when I feel driven by harsh self judgement or negativity towards others. I will love myself in the very way I love her. In doing so I hope to teach her that she is already worthy, and the right doll, the right lipstick, and the right panties are accessories, not an indicator of her real value.

 

Emily Pittman March 25th, 2013.