Puberty Sucks
No, it’s not what you’re thinking. Really, it’s not. This is not the lament of a parent with a hormonal teenager, or a dirge about girls and emerging PMS, or a cautionary tale about how my once sweet daughter became an actual fire-breathing dragon because…HORMONES!
No, it's not about any of that at all...it's actually a whole lot worse.
There has been tons of research about what happens to girls in our culture during puberty – in a nutshell, their self esteem and confidence plummet. Feisty, kick-ass little girls, shrink down into pretty paper-dolls, a two-dimensional copy of their younger self. Theories about why this happens focus on the cultural pressures that assault a girl and undermine her entire concept of who she is.
From the relative safety of the sidewalk watching Quokka’s trip down puberty lane, I can see it starting to happen to her – the same thing that happened to me and every other girl I know. Puberty is when we turn a free little girl into a thing that reflects our cultural dictates, expectations and rules for women. If she doesn't contort her wild, unfettered little self into this model of femininity, she will be mocked, shunned or ostracized.
Not that boys don’t have a tough go of it, with pressures to be manly, rough, aggressive and stoic – their experience is no walk in the park either. Both boys and girls have uncomfortable changes to navigate – they get oily, smelly and hairy, and their boy and girl parts start to change in new and embarrassing ways
For boys a lot of these changes are either blessedly subtle or a cause for celebration. Hairy = manly. Even smelly is sort of expected for boys.
Girls…girls get to learn that they are fundamentally unacceptable in their natural state; that what they are becoming is not okay.
Girls hit puberty and their lives transform because actual people tell them, out loud, that the changes happening to their body are disgusting and they must hide it or remove it, or make it go away. The thing they are transforming into must be tamed, conquered, undone. Shave the armpits, shave the legs, strap down or plump up the boobs, apply deodorant, body spray, makeup, fix it, fix it, fix it.
Welcome to puberty little girl, you’re turning into a repulsive beast that must be scraped with razors, muffled with pads, plucked and preened and turned into something else so that you don't disgust everyone.
I did a little bit of raging against the machine, but then I learned to shave, grew out the hair on my head, plucked my overabundant eyebrows and started wearing makeup. I learned how to “girl,” to fit in, and my peers finally found me acceptable enough not to publicly mock me.
Puberty fundamentally changed who I was as a human being because If I chose to reject the girl rules, I was choosing to be rejected. What girls really learn in puberty is fit in or get out.
Then I ran back out to the store and I bought her some tween pads (they make those now – yay!), awesome, new underwear (hello, Wonder Woman), a date book to track her cycle, a moon-charm bracelet, and a couple other little things. I put it all in a bold, red gift bag with polka-dot tissue.
I threw it all on the conveyor belt to check out, and one of the pad boxes landed at the front of the heap, just an inch back from the plastic baton that separated my stuff from the items of the customer in front of me, an older man. He looked alarmed at what had landed so perilously close to his things, and scooted his items forward away from the divider bar. Pads, PADS, were within inches of his stuff – oh the horror, the possible contamination. He scooted his things as far forward as he could. You know, you can’t be too careful – those pads just radiate period cooties. I managed to tamp down the urge to grab up the box and rub it on his stuff.
After dinner, we lit a candle on a chocolate cupcake with red sugar dusted over the frosting. Quokka laughed about the red bag and enjoyed her gifts. We celebrated this important mile-marker on her way to adulthood. And I kept the sadness that kept trying to swamp me to myself. I guess it worked because I overheard her tell her dad as he kissed her good night that it had been one of the best days of her life.
I, on the other hand, am seething when I’m not weeping, but quietly and secretly because I really, really don’t want to make this harder than it has to be.
Quokka is not a “typical” girl for our culture (which kinda makes me sick to even write – why the hell do we even have an idea about what a typical girl is or should be?). In the vernacular of my childhood, she’s a tomboy and she’s not going quietly into the narrow box of femininity.
I’m trying to help her celebrate and ease her toward making decisions about who she wants to be, instead of gnashing my teeth and telling her how very much it fucking sucks to be a woman in our culture: Congratulations! If you’re not pretty enough people will ridicule you and bully you. But if you’re too pretty they’ll dismiss what you have to say because surely that means you can’t be smart, or wise. And that’s when men aren’t harassing you because you were pretty and nice, which must mean you want to do the sex thing with them. Then, oh then, if you’re sexy men and women will call you a slut, and if you get assaulted they’ll say you were asking for it.
All of this joy comes with the incredible maintenance required to be attractive enough in our culture. Getting the right haircut and then maintaining and styling that hair. Scrubbing, polishing and moisturizing your skin, and then hiding your “flaws” with makeup so that you meet that just-right amount of attractive. You have to shave approximately 50% of your body, or more if you happen to be on the furry side (I am a pale-skinned, dark-haired yeti), and never, never show stubble. But you need to make this all look effortless or else you will be dubbed “high-maintenance” and no man will ever want you.
Now Chuck, tell her what glorious prizes wait behind door number two! Well, Francine, you also get to have a period every month…which adds up to 12 or 13 times a year when you will have vicious cramps, bloating and extra pimples, accompanied by liters of blood coursing from your uterus and possibly humiliating you when your bastard history teacher won’t let you go to the bathroom even though you can feel your [ahem] feminine products failing to stanch the raging torrent of blood coursing from your hoo-ha!
And, while all of this is going on, you’re supposed to pretend it’s not affecting you, and you’re still cheerful and sweet and low-maintenance, or else people (mostly boys and men) will make snotty remarks about how you’re just a bitchy girl suffering from PMS, and what day of the month is it anyway, and periods are gross. And you just want to stomp them in to the ground, slap a pad on their face and say, “oh, gee, looks like you needed something to soak up that blood there!”
So, I’m trying very hard to be gentle and supportive – I balance lessons about meeting cultural norms with uplifting stories of women who have done great things, Always #LIKEAGIRL videos, and HelloFlo commercials. We talk about the cultural absurdities that say guys can be hairy and we’re supposed to think that’s manly and sexy, while it’s totally okay for a man to tell a woman that her naturally hairy armpit is disgusting and repulsive. We discuss the double-standards on nudity that tell us a man’s nipples are fine and dandy to flash around, but a woman’s bare breasts are obscene and something she may be arrested, stalked, harassed and humiliated over if she shows them in public.
I’m trying to soften the self-esteem smack down and let my quirky, oblivious Quokka figure out how, whether and how much she wants to squish herself into the narrow box of American femininity. To help her to navigate the field of landmines that is puberty without losing herself or getting blown to hell.
Being a woman is not all bad, but sometimes it's terrible, horrible, and crappy in ways no man can understand or appreciate. And, after all of these years, puberty still sucks the soul right out of girls because everything around them is trying to turn a fierce, genuine, powerful little person into a polished thing we call an acceptable woman. I’m sorry my baby, and little girls everywhere…it really sucks.
Oh, and welcome to womanhood
No, it's not about any of that at all...it's actually a whole lot worse.
Puberty Sucks Large
I went through puberty, and it sucked, but wrapped up in my own hormonal shitstorm I wasn’t able to put my finger on exactly why it was so terrible and soul-sucking. 26 years later, I have a ring-side seat to Quokka’s voyage and, yes Martha, it still sucks.There has been tons of research about what happens to girls in our culture during puberty – in a nutshell, their self esteem and confidence plummet. Feisty, kick-ass little girls, shrink down into pretty paper-dolls, a two-dimensional copy of their younger self. Theories about why this happens focus on the cultural pressures that assault a girl and undermine her entire concept of who she is.
From the relative safety of the sidewalk watching Quokka’s trip down puberty lane, I can see it starting to happen to her – the same thing that happened to me and every other girl I know. Puberty is when we turn a free little girl into a thing that reflects our cultural dictates, expectations and rules for women. If she doesn't contort her wild, unfettered little self into this model of femininity, she will be mocked, shunned or ostracized.
Not that boys don’t have a tough go of it, with pressures to be manly, rough, aggressive and stoic – their experience is no walk in the park either. Both boys and girls have uncomfortable changes to navigate – they get oily, smelly and hairy, and their boy and girl parts start to change in new and embarrassing ways
For boys a lot of these changes are either blessedly subtle or a cause for celebration. Hairy = manly. Even smelly is sort of expected for boys.
 |
| What's in the present little girl? |
Girls…girls get to learn that they are fundamentally unacceptable in their natural state; that what they are becoming is not okay.
Girls hit puberty and their lives transform because actual people tell them, out loud, that the changes happening to their body are disgusting and they must hide it or remove it, or make it go away. The thing they are transforming into must be tamed, conquered, undone. Shave the armpits, shave the legs, strap down or plump up the boobs, apply deodorant, body spray, makeup, fix it, fix it, fix it.
Welcome to puberty little girl, you’re turning into a repulsive beast that must be scraped with razors, muffled with pads, plucked and preened and turned into something else so that you don't disgust everyone.
A Long, Long Time Ago
I was a tomboy growing up. While some girls sailed into puberty it was a massive upheaval in my life. Suddenly, people stopped judging me by my capabilities, the things I was most proud of – a fast runner, a smart student, a good artist – and started ridiculing me for my hairy legs, stocky build, small breasts and lack of “proper femininity.” Suddenly being proud of my accomplishments was discouraged because girls aren’t supposed to brag. Instead, I was supposed to try and look pretty and hope someone noticed enough to comment.I did a little bit of raging against the machine, but then I learned to shave, grew out the hair on my head, plucked my overabundant eyebrows and started wearing makeup. I learned how to “girl,” to fit in, and my peers finally found me acceptable enough not to publicly mock me.
Puberty fundamentally changed who I was as a human being because If I chose to reject the girl rules, I was choosing to be rejected. What girls really learn in puberty is fit in or get out.
Oh, Bloody Hell
We came home from the store a couple of weeks ago and in the middle of unpacking groceries Quokka called me to the bathroom. There she was, holding out a wad of tissue, her eyes shining, lips quirked to the side caught somewhere between a smile and a cringe; a turbulent mix of pride, excitement and fear washing over her face. I hugged her, kissed her forehead and matter-of-factly told her to get some clean undies and I would show her how to put on a pad.Then I ran back out to the store and I bought her some tween pads (they make those now – yay!), awesome, new underwear (hello, Wonder Woman), a date book to track her cycle, a moon-charm bracelet, and a couple other little things. I put it all in a bold, red gift bag with polka-dot tissue.
I threw it all on the conveyor belt to check out, and one of the pad boxes landed at the front of the heap, just an inch back from the plastic baton that separated my stuff from the items of the customer in front of me, an older man. He looked alarmed at what had landed so perilously close to his things, and scooted his items forward away from the divider bar. Pads, PADS, were within inches of his stuff – oh the horror, the possible contamination. He scooted his things as far forward as he could. You know, you can’t be too careful – those pads just radiate period cooties. I managed to tamp down the urge to grab up the box and rub it on his stuff.After dinner, we lit a candle on a chocolate cupcake with red sugar dusted over the frosting. Quokka laughed about the red bag and enjoyed her gifts. We celebrated this important mile-marker on her way to adulthood. And I kept the sadness that kept trying to swamp me to myself. I guess it worked because I overheard her tell her dad as he kissed her good night that it had been one of the best days of her life.
Woop…There it is
Quokka has been creeping toward full-blown puberty for the last year and now she's galloping through the thick of it. She’s dealing with things that no boy can even imagine. Puff-Man is baffled about how to help her or even deal. Points for him, he’s trying – awkwardly, like a baby horse trying to get on its feet for the first time, stumbling all over the place and sometimes crashing into a heap, but trying.I, on the other hand, am seething when I’m not weeping, but quietly and secretly because I really, really don’t want to make this harder than it has to be.
Quokka is not a “typical” girl for our culture (which kinda makes me sick to even write – why the hell do we even have an idea about what a typical girl is or should be?). In the vernacular of my childhood, she’s a tomboy and she’s not going quietly into the narrow box of femininity.
I’m trying to help her celebrate and ease her toward making decisions about who she wants to be, instead of gnashing my teeth and telling her how very much it fucking sucks to be a woman in our culture: Congratulations! If you’re not pretty enough people will ridicule you and bully you. But if you’re too pretty they’ll dismiss what you have to say because surely that means you can’t be smart, or wise. And that’s when men aren’t harassing you because you were pretty and nice, which must mean you want to do the sex thing with them. Then, oh then, if you’re sexy men and women will call you a slut, and if you get assaulted they’ll say you were asking for it.
All of this joy comes with the incredible maintenance required to be attractive enough in our culture. Getting the right haircut and then maintaining and styling that hair. Scrubbing, polishing and moisturizing your skin, and then hiding your “flaws” with makeup so that you meet that just-right amount of attractive. You have to shave approximately 50% of your body, or more if you happen to be on the furry side (I am a pale-skinned, dark-haired yeti), and never, never show stubble. But you need to make this all look effortless or else you will be dubbed “high-maintenance” and no man will ever want you.
Now Chuck, tell her what glorious prizes wait behind door number two! Well, Francine, you also get to have a period every month…which adds up to 12 or 13 times a year when you will have vicious cramps, bloating and extra pimples, accompanied by liters of blood coursing from your uterus and possibly humiliating you when your bastard history teacher won’t let you go to the bathroom even though you can feel your [ahem] feminine products failing to stanch the raging torrent of blood coursing from your hoo-ha!
And, while all of this is going on, you’re supposed to pretend it’s not affecting you, and you’re still cheerful and sweet and low-maintenance, or else people (mostly boys and men) will make snotty remarks about how you’re just a bitchy girl suffering from PMS, and what day of the month is it anyway, and periods are gross. And you just want to stomp them in to the ground, slap a pad on their face and say, “oh, gee, looks like you needed something to soak up that blood there!”
Sigh, Sniff, Smile
I'm also trying really hard to not inadvertently become my daughter’s first bully. The other day I gently reminded Quokka that, in our culture, girls usually shave their armpits when they wear tank tops if they don’t want people to say rude things about them. Now, I can either choose to be part of the cultural system that tells my baby how her body is naturally developing is not acceptable to other people and she needs to fix it, or I can choose to let her learn it from the ridicule of her peers. Pre-teens are vicious little bastards who take no prisoners.So, I’m trying very hard to be gentle and supportive – I balance lessons about meeting cultural norms with uplifting stories of women who have done great things, Always #LIKEAGIRL videos, and HelloFlo commercials. We talk about the cultural absurdities that say guys can be hairy and we’re supposed to think that’s manly and sexy, while it’s totally okay for a man to tell a woman that her naturally hairy armpit is disgusting and repulsive. We discuss the double-standards on nudity that tell us a man’s nipples are fine and dandy to flash around, but a woman’s bare breasts are obscene and something she may be arrested, stalked, harassed and humiliated over if she shows them in public.
I’m trying to soften the self-esteem smack down and let my quirky, oblivious Quokka figure out how, whether and how much she wants to squish herself into the narrow box of American femininity. To help her to navigate the field of landmines that is puberty without losing herself or getting blown to hell.
Being a woman is not all bad, but sometimes it's terrible, horrible, and crappy in ways no man can understand or appreciate. And, after all of these years, puberty still sucks the soul right out of girls because everything around them is trying to turn a fierce, genuine, powerful little person into a polished thing we call an acceptable woman. I’m sorry my baby, and little girls everywhere…it really sucks.
Oh, and welcome to womanhood
