Books & Little Girls

Recently John and I read an excellent article entitled "How To Talk to Little Girls" by Lisa Bloom  In this article, Lisa Bloom points out the fallacies in our typical interactions with little girls. She points out that in our conversations with little girls, we often tell them how cute they look, focusing on appearances and teaching little girls that we value how they look. She points out the consequences of emphasizing appearances:

"Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything. It sets them up for dieting at age 5 and foundation at age 11 and boob jobs at 17 and Botox at 23. As our cultural imperative for girls to be hot 24/7 has become the new normal, American women have become increasingly unhappy. What's missing? A life of meaning, a life of ideas and reading books and being valued for our thoughts and accomplishments."

After reading the article, I realized that Lisa is correct. I work with children and adolescents at an acute psychiatric hospital, and many of them have an unhealthy focus on their appearances. Some of them have eating disorders or disturbances, and many of them fixate on looking a certain way or being perceived as "hot" or "sexy". Instead of placing their self-worth on the mind, or positive personality traits, many of these girls place their self-worth simply on how they look. This negatively impacts their self-esteem and self-identity. To combat this, Lisa makes the following suggestions:

"So, one tiny bit of opposition to a culture that sends all the wrong messages to our girls. One tiny nudge towards valuing female brains. One brief moment of intentional role modeling. Will my few minutes with Maya change our multibillion dollar beauty industry, reality shows that demean women, our celebrity-manic culture? No. But I did change Maya's perspective for at least that evening.

"Try this the next time you meet a little girl. She may be surprised and unsure at first, because few ask her about her mind, but be patient and stick with it. Ask her what she's reading. What does she like and dislike, and why? There are no wrong answers. You're just generating an intelligent conversation that respects her brain. For older girls, ask her about current events issues: pollution, wars, school budgets slashed. What bothers her out there in the world? How would she fix it if she had a magic wand? You may get some intriguing answers. Tell her about your ideas and accomplishments and your favorite books. Model for her what a thinking woman says and does."

For the last couple of months I've made a conscious effort to attempt this. During my interactions at work and with little girls in the neighborhood and community, I've been asking about what they are reading. However, I haven't limited this to little girls, I've also been asking the little boys at work what they are reading and what they like about what they read. The first time I asked the question to the children at work, there were mixed reactions. Some of the children were really excited to talk about the books they were reading, while others didn't know how to respond--perhaps they had never been asked the question before.

One particularly poignant reaction was from a little girl who had been sexually molested at a very young age. Although she's only 8 or 9 years old, she is constantly striving to act and be treated as if she is 17 or 18 years old. However, her perspective on how older women act has been very skewed by her life experiences. She believes that to be a teenager or adult, she must be "sexy". She constantly checks her appearance in the mirror, tries to sway her hips as she walks, and dances as "sexy" as possible to the music playing. She talks about who she thinks is "hot" and which boys she wants to kiss. I always try to steer the conversation away from these topics, but have never been successful. Until I asked this little girl what she was reading.

At first the little girl was surprised that I asked her what she was reading, but then her face lit up! With a huge grin she told me she's reading "Mrs. Piggle Wiggle's Farm". I grew up reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and I love those books. We talked about the book and what a funny person Mrs. Piggle Wiggle is for a full 15 minutes! It was incredible to see the difference it made by simply asking this little girl what she is reading.

Some days the kids at work aren't reading anything, and sometimes it's hard for them to focus on having a real conversation about the mind. However, I am going to keep trying, keep asking them about what they are reading, what they like about it and why. I want to promote placing value on the mind beginning when girls are young to help change the culture of sex being placed on women in society.

Change

My final semester at BYU is drawing to a close, and I'm faced with a lot of decisions concerning my future. While I am excited to conclude my undergraduate education, and I'm excited to enter a new chapter of my life, change is also intimidating.

I work at the Utah State Hospital, an acute psychiatric inpatient care facility, and this morning I was reading an article written by the superintendent. In this article, he discussed change in our individual lives, pointing out that so often we forget the very thing we discuss with our patients to help them deal with change: change can be a great opportunity for growth and happiness.

I'd like to share a couple of quotes which the superintendent shared which were particularly poignant. The first of these quotes is by a philosopher who said, "If nothing changes, nothing changes." This is so obvous!!! Why is it so easy to forget that if we want our life to change, we have to CHANGE!!!!? We can't expect to retain the same routine and have changes for good, we must make changes to have change in our life!

The next quote is by Elbert Hubbard, who points out that: "The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one." Sometimes I get caught up in worrying that I will make the wrong decision. I procrastinate make a decision for long periods of time, only to miss out on opportunity. Sometimes in the future I look back at a decision I feared to make and laugh at my own fear. I can see the good that has come from making a decision, and I sometimes wish I wouldn't have wasted so much time worrying about the decision.
A leap of faith is exactly what it sounds like--a stretch! Yes, it is uncomfortable, and yes it can even be painful. But when we make the changes necessary to change without fearing we will make the wronge decision, we will make progress in our lives. We will experience blessings and opportunities. And we will ultimately find growth and joy resulting from change.