Body, Soul, and Image
As girls approach mid-adolescence, body image becomes a primary focal point. Media images of tall, jaggedly skinny models are plastered on city buses, magazine covers and television commercials, literally everywhere. The physical development of adolescent boys often offers a rewarding sense of personal freedom. For example, a boy’s parents loosen the reigns on their son when his body grows taller and larger. He gains more responsibility. Whereas, this period for a girl with “well-developed breasts” helps her achieve status among peers, due to her popularity among older boys (Apter 26). For some girls, though, being well developed or tall is a curse. They feel as if they stick out in a crowd. They downplay their appearance and dislike the negative attention. Being too pretty or too well developed at an early age makes boys, or men in general, look upon girls as sexual objects, and creates uncomfortable situations that young girls can’t articulate. This can lead girls to withdraw further or to fall prey to insincere rascals. When parents become more protective of their blossoming daughter it compounds her sense of isolation. While girls find themselves through their mothers and in relationship to other people, boys in our society are largely encouraged to gain as much distance from feminine qualities as possible. While girls become confused by the double standards of nice and kind and the dishonesty with which they are faced, boys are encouraged to be competitive and independent and are often deprived of their own nurturing qualities. This does much to reinforce negative relations between the sexes and makes relating to boys as equals more difficult for the adolescent girl. Girls need to prove themselves, always being polite and non-argumentative. In front of boys they like, girls often become demure and self-effacing. They contain themselves, pretending to be less intelligent or knowledgeable in front of boys. Frequently, their mothers, fathers, teachers, and pseudo-role-models from television programs condition them in knowing that it is really not okay for girls to expect equality; so in return, they don’t. Surely as we approach the twenty-first century this is changing and has changed significantly in the last two decades. Or has it? In Reviving Ophelia, psychologist Mary Pipher notes that although women today are doing “things our mothers never dreamed of doing” still
During adolescence when dating begins, girls see themselves through the eyes of their peers, including boys. They feel pressure to look a certain way. Eating disorders among young girls are rampant. Anorexia and bulimia plague girls through high school and college, and some women are plagued well into adulthood. Pipher goes on to state:
If this passage is not a telling sign of the times, there is none. Is it possible that main-stream women and men recognize the power of the feminine as it swells up through the emergence of the women’s spirituality movement? Have men and women become fearful of this power, as during the witch hunts? If so, could it be, this time around, instead of burning at the stake, subjection is self-enhanced and self-induced by iconic imagery produced by the male dominated media? It seems that women are becoming more and more self-editing as they right the wrongs of their feminine bodies when their breasts aren’t big or firm enough, or their noses aren’t shaped perfectly, and their bellies aren’t perfectly flat. Women are self-editing in their diets to attain the perfect slight frame which obscures their strengths. If they are not tall enough, they wear stilts in the tradition of foot binding when women stuffed their feet into tiny contorted shapes to arouse their male lovers. Their backs hurt, their legs swell and they wonder why their bodies are deteriorating as they lay in tanning booths breathing in the remains of synthetic perfume after a hectic day. Is it really so difficult then to comprehend that our young girls have copious internal conflicts? A popular daytime talk show that aired recently is an example of the ways in which women can be their daughters’ worst enemies. Packaged as entertainment, the show presented mothers embarrassed by their teenage daughters’ selected wardrobe. National television did not seem like the most appropriate or healthiest forum in which these mothers could voice their feelings toward their daughters. This would seem to be more a design of public humiliation. It was clear that most of these daughters were not having fun. I found it disconcerting that these mothers were ashamed of their girls. The mothers projected their own fears of public disapproval onto their daughters. I perceived the girls as fairly normal, slightly trendy young women with a sense of individuality. The way they were being touted, I expected them to be entirely tattooed and pierced. They were not. Their hair styles were just slightly messy--no dreadlocks or bright greens. There was nothing very extreme about any of them. As they entered the stage, the host asked the mothers to recite what they had written about their daughters. One of the girls was into thrift shop garb which her mother said made her “look like an old lady.” I thought she looked cute. Another was into the combat look and her mother called her “G.I. Jenny.” Another mother called her daughter “Freddie Krueger in drag.” This girl wore an old dress with a comely old floral sweater and she appeared confident. There was not a remote resemblance to Freddie Krueger, the monster from the movie Nightmare on Elm Street. Each girl had her own style. One was into looking sexy. Her mother said something to the effect that she looked like a whore. The girls were all healthy, attractive young women who remained true to themselves in the way they dressed; for personal comfort. Their clothes reflected trends they found personally acceptable and appealing. They looked creative, relaxed and ready for school or social activities. The escorts took the girls backstage to a dressing room where they had their hair styled and donned new clothes. A red carpet was laid for the costuming of a false image. The point of the show was to please the mothers by making the girls over. It seemed surreal to me as I watched these women literally squelching their daughters’ aesthetic urges. It seemed worse as I viewed the mothers in male-like business uniforms or lady-like frilly dresses that resembled dresses worn by Native American girls who were forced into the white culture through military boarding schools. Old photographs depict these young women in dresses with lacy white collars and bows, very prim and proper. One of the mothers on this show wore a dress like this. The norm considers this type of dress feminine and acceptable. I cannot help but feel oppressed just by looking at a dress like this. When the girls came back from being made over, two girls commented that their skirts were too short. The designers sexed them up by tightening, tailoring, and shortening their clothes. They wore high heels and could barely walk. Running was out of the question. Although some of the girls enjoyed their new clothes and new look, others detested what was happening to them. One girl hated her hair and clothes so much that she seemed to be experiencing a trauma. This girl may resent her mother for very different reasons than those suggested by Freud. The mothers cried as their little girls became cookie-cutter young women, acceptable to our massive “junk culture” as Mary Pipher states. One girl was propositioned by a clumsy, drooling young man in the audience. Even so, thunderous applause came from the audience. Tears of joy sprang from the mothers’ eyes. These little girls became women in front of the whole world. I raged alone in my living room. These mothers are primary role models to their daughters yet fail to see how they sanction societies bereft values. In this process, young women are subtly robbed of their individual identities as they are physically and psychologically squeezed into acceptable uniforms of junk culture. The daughters are faced with decisions to either be “authentic and honest, or they could be loved. If they chose wholeness, they [are] abandoned by their parents. If they chose love, they abandoned their true selves” (Pipher 36). It would be interesting to know how the experience of appearing on this nationally televised show affected the girls. They may live a long time before they become aware of any effect at all.
Changing the way a young girl dresses can be a very powerful conditioning tool. This I know from personal experience.
When I was in eighth grade, I ran away from home with my best friend, Chris. One drizzly November morning, Chris and many other kids from the crowded bus, witnessed my embarrassment at the bus stop. That morning, my mother instructed me to take an umbrella. Knowing that I was welcome to stand under the awning of the corner house whenever it rained, I didn’t think it was important. My father noticed my umbrella on our porch and came storming across the street. He grabbed me by the shoulders as the bus was pulling up, swung me around while he yelled at me about how I disobeyed my mother and that I was an ungrateful brat. Right as the bus driver stopped to open the door for me, and with dozens of eyes looking at the scene unfolding in front of them, my father kicked me in the ass with what felt like all his might. As I reflect back with knots in my stomach, I can imagine the implications and unconscious effects of this experience. Even though he was a man of religion and never swore, he thought nothing of besmirching his youngest daughter through physical violence or abusive language. Today, although I have seen my father very little in the twenty years I have been away from home, he proclaims remorse about the abusive way he treated my sisters and me. I do not believe he is aware of the consequences of his actions or just how brutal his daily words were, even without the physical abuse. I have come to forgive him and my mother, who once was an advocate for me, but slunk into the habit of leaving the room once the physical abuse started. The common belief that children were the property of the parents, even in the 1970’s, was confirmed and supported by the archaic child-rearing teachings of my father’s religion. My body was just developing. At times I felt he hated me for it and worked out his frustrations through his violence. He called me a whore once when he saw that I had worn make-up to school, which prompted another beating. There are many instances of abuse, including one in the seventh grade when my father beat me with his wing tip shoe and left 36 heal shaped welts on my body. After a Tuesday night book study, which was held in our home (the Witnesses must study the books that the WTB&T Society publish) a woman found my footballed note that I wrote to a girlfriend in which I declared my love for a boy named Shawn and my hatred of my parents. She gave it to my mother who, in turn, gave it to my father. The beating started with a belt and him holding me down on my parents' bed, like all the other beatings. But as I began digging my nails into him and talking back he decided his shoe would be a more effective punishment device. I ran from their room into my room where he chased me around and over the bed walloping me the entire time. Every now and then my nails landed on his arm as he struck. I aimed to draw his blood. The next day at school, my science teacher reported my welts to my guidance counselor. She contacted the police who drove me home and confronted my parents. They told my father that if it happened again he could face jail time. How I wished for that to come to pass. I was accustomed to his beatings. The sound of the belt was familiar. I still remember the way it switches the air when being whisked out of the belt loops. The wavy frequencies that are created by the swoosh of the thin strap of leather are indelible. The cracking sound of it landing on my back or behind or thighs is ingrained in me. The sound of his footsteps creaking up the steps at night while I lay in bed with the covers drawn up tight frightened me to no end. I never knew what was in store. The bus stop incident was my breaking point. Publicly humiliated in clear view for my peers and neighbors, I decided this was the last time he would abuse me. Chris’s father was an abusive alcoholic. Who knows the terrors she went through? When I sat next to her in the bus, we looked at each other and she said, “It's time. We’re leaving tomorrow.” I shook my head affirmingly as tears streamed down. Looking straight ahead, I told her I would sew the duffel bags we’d need for our clothes, and take as much money as I could from my mother’s purse and hiding place in the top of her bathroom linen closet. The next morning, with $34 between us, we hitch-hiked to New York City. We were picked up on Main Street in front of our junior high school by a young man who drove us to friends of Chris's in a neighboring town. We spent the first night with them in a town near Philadelphia. The next day we were conveniently picked up by another young man who was heading to Wildwood, New Jersey. Ironically, Wildwood was the town where my family used to vacation for a week each summer. He had keys for, and apparently took care of, a stuffed animal kiosk on the Boardwalk. I knew the Wildwood boardwalk well--the rides where I could scream with delight like a little girl without a care in the world: the bumper cars, the Zipper, the Hell Hole, the Zodiac. I usually followed far behind my family, so as not to be seen with them, eating candy apples or cotton candy, trying to separate myself from them and craving attention from anyone who would notice--only no one ever noticed. The Boardwalk was a bit different now. It was mid-November and desolate. The ocean wind blew hard through the drizzly, gray sky. The man left us alone in the kiosk. He told us to keep the door locked and that he would return for us the next morning to drive us to the train station. He gave us a joint and some matches before he left. We smoked it and when I lay down on the cot that Chris and I shared, I thought I was dying in a field of bright orange and pink and yellow flowers. Looking back, I'm sure the marijuana was laced with a psychedelic like PCP, commonly called Angel Dust, or maybe it was a popular type of weed called Thai Stick, which is thought to be cannabis laced with hashish oil or opium. On his word, he came back the next morning, took us for coffee and breakfast and drove us to the train station. On the train, my eyes were fixed on the passing scenery and my thoughts were of sadness yet elation at finally being free. We arrived in New York City's Grand Central Station where we schlepped up the steps with our light blue denim duffle bags, and, not knowing what to do next, went into a store across the street. It happened to be an adult store, but we didn't realize this until we were inside. We probably should have felt more awkward than we did, but the men in the store just chuckled among each other at our naivety. We asked them for directions to a place we could get some food and quickly left. We found some peace at a diner called Pippins where we met friendly people and then were taken in by some young male hippies. Billy had shoulder length blond, curly hair. The other young man had long dark brown hair--I don't remember his name. They took us to their flat and I remember walking down a hallway into the living room where there was a white leather sofa. There were a couple of young women streaming in and out, which put us at ease. As the dark haired man sat next to me on the sofa, he asked me if I was a virgin. I had to ask him what that meant. Luckily for us we were safe with them. They were in the drug culture, but that's where I was heading anyway. I took a pink pill that Billy gave me. I don't remember much of what happened during that time. Chris left and stayed with another man that we met at Pippins. Somehow we lost contact for two or three days but were reunited at the diner. I stayed on with Billy and his friend and found a job delivering pizzas. One night, in the pouring rain, carrying a soaked pizza box in my hand, I searched for the delivery address. I walked up several flights of steps, found the right apartment number and knocked on the door. A woman answered in her robe, looked at me and said, "Oh, it's a little girl." We lasted a week until we got caught by the NYPD. Eventually, and thankfully, the restaurant owner told the police we were runaways. They took us to the station where we didn't want to give up our names or our parents' phone numbers. One officer pointed to one of the jail cells and said to me, "You don't want to have to spend the night in one of those cells when all the prostitutes start coming in, do you?" That scared me. I gave him the information. We were held in the jail but spared the cell experience. Our parents came to get us and we drove home together in silence. Our parents kept Chris and me separated from each other and we never spoke again.
After this, my parents’ primary goal was to change my image. Since I was slightly popular for the clothes I designed and wore, they knew interfering in my manner of dress would be a most effective method. I was forced to get rid of my hand-made clothes. My mother took me shopping one day to buy transforming new clothes. The new clothes were conservative, but I forced myself to like them. New colors of light blue and sallow yellow were filling my closet instead of bright green, orange, and red, the vibrant primary colors I cherished. Now I was subdued, reserved, decent. My hair was cut off into a less unruly style. I was tired of fighting. I began to understand what my mother meant by saying she was numb. Over time, I unconsciously, once again, went along with my parents and their religion. I submitted to the melancholy and went underground. I withdrew into the pallor of my quiet colors. This is my first memory of a double bind. Steven Hassan describes this catch twenty-two stating: “A double bind forces a person to do what the controller wants while giving an illusion of choice” (68). Here I was robbed of my wardrobe, yet given the opportunity to select new clothes. My parents and their religion stole my self-hood, yet provided me with the choice between “good and evil” so that I might live according to God’s laws and employ the fantasy of “living forever on a paradise earth.” I often hated my parents and their constant double-standards. I knew what my choices were in this situation: either become the perfect obedient daughter and submit, or continue to disobey and get beaten, ridiculed, and shamed.
I became, along with an obedient daughter, a walking oxymoron. My hair was cut. It felt good but I hated it. My clothes smelled new, felt fresh, and were stylish, but I felt self-conscious and gawky wearing them. They did not reflect personal style the way my old clothes had. I feared that my friends thought I was being rewarded for running away and I withdrew from them. Looking back, I am sure my friends did not realize these changes as a grand scheme to break my spirit like a trainer breaks a horse. Like the girls on the recent televised talk show, my false self was invoked to shroud sparkling eyes. Pipher notes, “Many girls become good haters of those who do not conform sufficiently to our culture’s ideas about femininity” (68). She speaks of the advantages of androgyny as a way to helping solve the problems of sexism. The term she coined is “lookism.” Lookism judges attractiveness. Even though the context in which she provides these insights is not specific to wardrobe, the concept could be applicable in this matter also. This could help narrow the gap both intellectually and socially between the sexes. During adolescence, girls become absorbed by how they are perceived by their peers. They begin wearing make-up, getting their hair dyed, highlighted, permed and straightened, and they begin worrying about facial and body hair. Everything that is natural becomes forbidden and repellent. What’s more, becoming “feminized” causes girls’ IQ scores to sink (63). What Pipher states should be taken seriously:
As girls begin to compare themselves to the media’s favored beauty icons, they begin to dissociate from their own sense of reality. They begin living in a fantasy world as they follow the dictates of Hollywood and junk culture. What is true for them, what is true for their friends, what is true for their parents, and what is true for society, all becomes a great big blur impossible for them to decipher. They begin to realize that their power comes through in their sexuality. Some girls find out that instead of using their intelligence, they can better get what they want through coquettish behavior. Simone de Beauvoir suggests that Freud’s speculation of girls and women having penis envy really comes down to “power envy” (Pipher 20). At a young age girls see men as the ones holding all the power. When girls have a bad day, they are handed notes by strangers instructing them to “Smile! It’s not that bad,” as if they are supposed to keep themselves beautiful at every waking moment for the benefit of onlookers. Behind these comments and other denigrations, a girl learns that what she feels as truth may not hold much weight in the real world. To come through this stage mentally and physically strong, it is necessary for girls to become their own champions. Parents play a critical role in how a child learns to get about in the world. Parents who treat their daughter as a capable human being and take the time to teach her that she is just as capable of changing the oil in a car, or chopping wood as she is in cleaning her room or cooking the family dinner will instill in her a strong sense of self-proficiency. This feeling of self-proficiency will act as a foundation from which the child can flourish. This is a good starting place from which to build the necessary acceptance of her own strengths and weaknesses, and to be able to praise herself for jobs well done. This foundation also establishes the roots of self-reliance and an ability to face life’s periods of vulnerability, to acknowledge, affirm, and justify herself. It is important for young girls and women to surround themselves with family and friends who are supportive and encouraging of their pursuits. Stimulation is necessary and is found through school subjects of interest or personal hobbies, whether these things are of a creative nature or simply for enjoyment. Stimulating conversations are important to a young girl or woman in finding her voice. The connections that most young girls have with music are especially strong. Music can be a haven for a girl who is trying to find her place in the world. Through listening to lyrics of songs, singing along, and feeling the rhythms of a favorite song, a girl learns more about herself and her own feelings. She receives affirmation that her feelings are warranted. Through music she feels less alone in the world. Songs can act as support to her unclear senses and ideas. Music catapults [girls] out of the world of their family and into the world of their peers. It expresses the intensity of their emotions in a way that words cannot. Music is a place where love is a life-and-death matter, where small events are dramatized and memorialized. Music fits the emotional experience of girls much more closely than ordinary adult speech. (66)
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