The Goddess Speaks
The Goddess Speaks
Today's girl is more ambitious, more confident and more adventurous than ever before. But, she is not without king-size challenges to good and wholesome living. Girls need help
sorting real from
marketing madnessAdolescent girls are the chief marketing target for products from cosmetics to clothing, from TV programming to movies. And consider Internet sites, magazines, and CDs that have made their way into our homes. Often, they affect our young girls in ways that are neither age- nor developmentally-appropriate. The implications of early sexualization of young girls by the media is disturbing.
One has a hard time finding a song or movie that does not include sex, drugs, foul language, money, power or the mistreatment of others. The TV characters our girls see and emulate do not sleep in separate beds and say things like "Gee golly" and "shucks."
Many of my students are walking advertisements for the powerful media. They purchase T-shirts, hats and backpacks embossed with the ubiquitous Nike swoosh symbol. When out of uniform, they sport images of heavy-metal bands and sports teams. Research tells us they will have racked up 22,000 hours of TV viewing by the time they graduate from high school -- twice the amount of time spent in school.
Some of our girls are starving themselves, undergoing surgery, giving strange colors to their hair, piercing their bodies and spending energy on their appearance when such intense energy could be better spent motivating one's inner self.
The insidious influence of media and peer culture pressures even those girls who are still too physically immature to wear sexualized, adult fashions with skimpy tops and short skirts. Our young ladies are at times more influenced by popular media than by the novels and textbooks we often must "bribe" them to read.
Today, too often, neither parents nor teachers are the primary influence on our young daughters, who don't have enough media savvy and are unable to deconstruct the messages they receive daily.
Media messages screaming "thin is in" may not directly cause eating disorders, but they cause girls to place a value on the size and shape of their bodies. Many are convinced that their bodies need improvement and that they need to look young, beautiful, made up, sprayed up, very thin and perfectly groomed at all times.
Growing up is a great adventure, full of promise, but that promise is best fulfilled when girls are given a safety zone, and when guidance is available, good examples abound, and expectations are clear.
Mary Pipher, author of "Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls," says that we should encourage our girls not to look like Britney Spears, but to look, dress and behave in a way that is appropriate for their chronological age. Middle-school dances attended by 12- and 13-year-olds should not be venues for girls to wear revealing clothing and engage in freak dancing that is blatantly suggestive and overtly sexual. It's troubling when we see that they have little real understanding of the implications of their behavior.
Helping our girls become critically literate and reactive to the powerful influence of advertisers is a must. We have to convince each girl that she is a competent individual, whose ultimate goal is to make herself financially independent and prepared to assume leadership roles in her family and community. Girls must realize that real women and advertising images are two different things.
They need encouragement to work through difficult relationships with people important to them, not to move on quickly when things become complicated. And they always need to be steered toward friends their own age.
Parents should pay attention to family conversations.
Are makeup and designer clothes the most important things discussed? Doing volunteer work, playing musical instruments and going to sporting events give daughters a different message.
A disappointing test grade should not be described as the worst thing that ever happened. This type of disappointment is a part of life.
Not enough is being done to teach girls how to manage this problem; instead, we abandon them to media messages that say they can shop and shout their way out of the most depressive states in which they think they are stuck.
Our girls need to learn to manage their hurts and disappointments with people they trust -- through honest conversation, self-reflection, journal writing, poetry, art, dance, physical activities, and sometimes a quiet talk with the Master, all positive acts that require full engagement of the self in a world that is real, not electronic or synthetic.
Betty White is principal of Sacred Heart
Academy, an all-girls school.
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