Stop shaming girls

Consider this quote:

"We teach girls shame. Close your legs, cover yourself, we make them feel as though being born female they're already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up--and this is the worst thing we do to girls--they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form." -Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

How does it make you feel as a woman? Were you taught to be modest, to be ashamed of yourself? I grew up in a pool of shame. To this day, I fight being ashamed of how I look, my own opinions, or simply not pleasing the people around me. Even though I’ve consciously made the decision to stop, after so many years it has become second nature for me to live in shame of just being alive.

It is feelings like these that we must consider as parents. We know that whatever we learned from our parents, they learned from theirs. The cycle continues until it is broken. We have to address our own childhood experiences to ensure that we do not repeat them with our own kids—and to help them avoid not only being impacted by them, but inflicting their own children with these same wounds.

Girls are taught to be ashamed of their own bodies, of their own pleasure. It’s important to teach them to enjoy their own bodies, to take charge of their own pleasure and to not live to please others. When a girl is caught masturbating, she is shamed; a boy is just considered to be normal—“Boys will be boys.” Both need to be taught that this is normal, and that it is okay, and that there is nothing wrong with them.

On the other hand, boys are taught to buck up, to not cry, to “tough it out.” Boys who do cry are called female names that shame both girls and boys—“sissy,” “girl,” etc. It should not be shameful to cry, and it should not be shameful to be a girl.

I think if we stop and look at these practices we can easily see how destructive they are. It’s the stopping to look—and the stopping any instincts we have leftover from childhood—that is the hardest part. Every person has something to overcome from childhood, whether it was a happy experience or not. There is no such thing as a perfect parent. I’ve been trying to understand how my child absorbs the feedback I provide, as well as what I unintentionally project upon her, and I really recommend Alice Miller’s books for help with that. Louise Hay's are also good for your own healing journey.

I also think of how I view my body and use my body and encourage her in the opposite way. Yesterday I did a workout with her in the room. Afterwards, I told her “I feel so strong! I have so much energy!” I did feel a little stronger, but in the back of my mind I could hear myself telling me it was to get rid of fat, to make me prettier—what I learned as a child. “You have such a pretty face… You’d be so pretty if you…” Instead of succumbing to these thoughts, I grin at Wood Sprite and say, “My heart really loved those moves.” She eagerly nodded and said, “That looked fun, Mom!”

Whew.

When she’s out playing or climbing or doing anything physical, I tell her she’s fast. She’s strong. Look how high she climbed! Yes, I still manage the “Be careful” sometimes because I’m a nervous hen, but I try not to do that much, to keep her sense of adventure, her trust in her body, intact. And try, really, is all any of us can do.