ery few weeks my daughter and I stand back-to-back in the kitchen, socks off, our bare feet cooling on the tiled floor, and we measure up. I can feel her body elongate itself against mine, squaring pre-teen shoulders on my sloping ones, our bottoms taut with tension. We look like a totem pole – bodies melded together, stony faces pointing outward, chins up and arms pressed against our sides. My husband circles us, bending his knees to get all the angles and squinting like a surveyor. ‘Not quite there yet,’ he says. ‘There’s about two inches in it.’ Later he confesses to being spooked. ‘Looking at the two of you is like witnessing time travel,’ he tells me.
My daughter, who initiated this household ritual, has already dispensed with one yardstick:
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My daughter’s knickers, candy-striped and tartan-checked, regularly turn up in my drawers, while my tights have begun disappearing into hers. She wears them in the new fashion – opaque black legs under cut-off denim shorts. All the girls dress this way, come rain or shine, their toenails poking holes into their mothers’ …show more content…
Having shared the job with me in a genuinely egalitarian, straight-down-the-middle sort of way for the first 11 years of our daughter’s life, he now, however unconsciously, seems to see our concerns forking into he-matters and she-matters. Underwear has become my domain, and now he need not think too hard about it. My own need to recalibrate my relationship to our daughter is just as pressing. But it is of a different order.
Every mother meets the paradox that the more their daughters are drawn into womanhood, the more they pull away. It is a confusing social induction that appears to obey strange magnetic rules: daughters are attracted to the adult world of women, but repelled by their actual mothers. Their resistance is primal, and fundamentally self-protective; how is a girl to acquire a distinct sense of her identity when every pubescent change in her body threatens to blend her into a confusing mélange with the woman who birthed
Lianne George’s article “Why Are We Dressing Our Daughters Like This?” (2014) focuses on the societal issue of an increasingly earlier development of young girls. George states that companies facilitate this early development by producing adult like goods for children that push an adult mindset and behaviour. Through the use of various examples George argues that this trend is ill advised and should not be continued.
Teenage rebellion is typically portrayed in stories, films, and other genres as a testosterone-based phenomenon. There is an overplayed need for one to acknowledge a boy’s rebellion against his father, his life direction, the “system,” in an effort to become a man, or rather an adult. However, rarely is the female addressed in such a scenario. What happens when little girls grow up? Do they rebel? Do they, in a sudden overpowering rush of estrogen, deny what has been taught to them from birth and shed their former youthful façades? Do they turn on their mothers? In Sharon Olds’ poem, “The Possessive,” the reader is finally introduced to the female version of the popular coming-of-age theme as a simple haircut becomes a symbol for the growing breach between mother and daughter through the use of striking images and specific word choice.
In this book, Peggy Orenstein explores the land of pink. She takes us on an adventurous trip to try and find out the truth about what society tells our young girls what they should be wearing, how they should be acting and most importantly looks are what matters. Orenstein herself is a mother of a preschool aged daughter so the topic of what influences young girls is of great importance to her. She struggles with making the correct decisions for her own daughter, Daisy, as she dives into the girlie-girl world, because as even she has found out, it is impossible to steer clear of it. She talks with historians, marketers, psychologists, neuroscientists, parents, and children themselves. She returns to the original fairy tales, seeks out girls’ virtual presence online, and ponders the meaning of child beauty pageants. In the process, she faces down her own confusion as a mother and woman about issues of how to raise a girl and teach her about her own femininity.
“Aunt Alexandra was fanatical on the subject of my attire. I could not possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breeches…” (Lee, 81).
Mary Pipher goes on to say that the problem faced by girls is a ‘problem without a name’ and that the girls of today deserve a different kind of society in which all their gifts can be developed and appreciated. (Pipher,M). It’s clear that cultures and individual personalities intersect through the period of adolescence. Adolescence is a time in a young girl’s life that shapes them into the woman they become. I think it begins earlier than teen years because even the clothing that is being sold for younger girls says sexuality. Bras for girls just beginning in every store are now padded with matching bikini underwear, Barbie dolls are glamour up in such away that these girls believ...
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls,” there is a time line in a young girl’s life when she leaves childhood and its freedoms behind to become a woman. The story depicts hardships in which the protagonist and her younger brother, Laird, experience in order to find their own rite of passage. The main character, who is nameless, faces difficulties and implications on her way to womanhood because of gender stereotyping. Initially, she tries to prevent her initiation into womanhood by resisting her parent’s efforts to make her more “lady-like”. The story ends with the girl socially positioned and accepted as a girl, which she accepts with some unease.
... drives. There are boys in the mountain villages of the Dominican Republic that lack testosterone and “are usually raised as ‘conditional’ girls” (681). Once these boys reach puberty, “the family shifts the child over from daughter to son. The dresses are thrown out. He begins to wear male clothes and starts dating girls” (681). These boys, also known as “guevedoces,” show biological features that produce in later stages of life rather than birth which determines gender role. My female cousin, who was raised by a single father, grew up acting and playing like a boy. She was very aggressive when she was younger but as she grew older, society and human nature has changed her. She is not only influenced by our culture to act in a feminine, lady-like way, but she is now an adult that wants to have a family and become a mother in order to produce off-springs and survive.
“Aunt Alexandra was fanatical on the subject of my attire. I could not possibly hope to be lady if I wore breeches; when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn't supposed to be doing things that required pants.” (Lee, 90).
After tracking down the origins of his blue jeans, Timmerman meets Nari, a factory worker in Cambodia. Timmerman describes Nari’s living conditions as poor and crowded. Nari, and seven other girls, live in an 8’x12’ room with no air conditioning, and a squat toilet walled off in the corner. To gain a semblance of privacy, the girls use a sheet hanging from a sagging cord in the back corner as a changing room. Four of the girls sleep on a bamboo bed and the other four girls sleep on the floor. (Where Am I Wearing? pp.99-103) Timmerman, then, writes of his meeting with Nari and her roommates.
As a young child in elementary school, I struggled in the regular classes of language arts and math, and this caused my teachers to put me into Special Education. I recall hearing the regular students call me “stupid” all the time behind my back. When I had my regular classes in Social Studies or Science none of the other students wanted to be my partner in the group projects. I felt like an outcast, and my self-confidence was exceedingly low. However, I knew that I was not the smartest kid, but I was a hard worker. I begged my mom to help me convince the teachers to allow me to to join the regular classes in the 5th grade. Fortunately, my teachers agreed, and in my regular language arts class I was motivated to prove to my teachers, my classmates,
In doing this she is listing off things that the Daughter should be acting out upon. “Don 't squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know” (Kincaid 68). The mother is demonstrating how the daughter should act in the presences of boys and explain she is not one. As a girl she must act proper and not play the ways boys do. Boys are aggressive and dirty as seen by society; a girl like she is supposed to be kind and proper. Then the mother explains in one section on how to do housework and chores; a woman’s job. “This is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so they don’t have a crease” (Kincaid 67). Kincaid writes that the mother is instructing the daughter on how to do her father’s clothing. This shows that the father; a man does not iron his own clothes but that it is a woman’s job. This can connect to Judy Brady’s work “I Want a Wife” which is about a woman who is listing all the things women do for their husband. Like Kincaid she brings up the same chores of housework and tending to clothing. “A wife who will pick up after me. I want a wife who will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended,
At this time my mother gave me a clothing allowance, as an incentive to reduce. She thought I should buy clothes that would make me less conspicuous, the dark dresses with tiny polka-dots and vertical stripes favored by designers for the fat. Instead I sought out clothes of a peculiar and offensive hideousness, violently colored, horizontally striped. Some of them I got in maternity shops, others at cut-rate discount stores; I was especially pleased with a red felt skirt, cut in a circle with a black telephone appliqued onto it. The brighter the colors, the more rotund the effect, the more certain I was to buy. I wasn=t going to let myself be diminished, neutralizes, by a navy-blue polka-dot sack (Atwood 84).
The mother’s genuine care for her daughter in girl is displayed through her imperative instructions. The mother decides to transfer her domestic knowledge and life experience to her daughter in order to shape her daughter’s behavior from a young age. She gives out detailed instruction on how to “sew a button, how to hem a dress when the hem coming down to how to iron a khaki shirt so that it does not have a crease” (Kincaid). Although heming a dress is not a difficult chore, the mother emphasizes the its importance since she understands that the appearance of clothing reflects a woman’s character. Because domestic skills serve as a measurement for women’s competence and self-worth, the daughter’s inability to take care of her clothes will indicate her lack of interest in household affair and organizational skills. Through these advice, the mother highlights the importance of house...
It is not up for Congressmen and distressed aunts to decide a decision for someone. Just as young teenage daughters covet trendy, short-skirts, there is always disapproval from elders suggesting that the skirt is not appropriate, and shouldn’t be purchased. Yet, are they to decide the wardrobe of this young female for the rest of her life? Ultimately, it is up to the daughter to decide what she wants, what fits right, what looks good, and what will help he...
In the way that Kincaid writes, her diction of “this is how you...” serves as a modeling purpose for the speaker’s daughter to observe and learn the correct behaviors. “Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry”(Kincaid 47). From this area of text, the reader notices the small tasks in simply doing laundry that is taught. Then as the text continues, we read the lines, “Soak your cloths right after you take them off”(Kincaid 47). This shows an insight how maturity and changes that the daughter may go through during life and growing up. In particular to this text, it may state those words in reference to the menstruation stage and keeping good hygiene during