The Constructed Girlhood
Growing up as a girl is never easy to simply categorise life for every girl as everyone is different. But girls all share similar experiences when it comes to their gender and what comes with it while understanding and experimenting with their self. Even in the western world, where everything seems somewhat 'equal', there is still a lot of traditional beliefs when it comes to qualities which people had no choice over. As you grow as a girl, you start to spot the indifferences which you receive even when you're young. It can be challenging to understand why this happens.
Women are labelled depending on their appearance and mannerisms, like a girl could be interested in football and video games and she would be considered a ‘tomboy’ which isn’t a ‘desired quality’ of a woman. Because of this, mothers project their insecurities onto their daughters to appear more feminine and appealed, shoving makeup bags and dolls in their face to train them to be a mother at the age of 4. Because of this, it was hard to actually explore your interests and develop a personality.
Why do mothers project these ideologies onto their daughters? This commonly occurs when the mother has unresolved issues from their life which they regret or fear. These fears are then pushed onto their daughters to, seemingly, not do the same thing as them. Although this can come from a place of protection and from the most loving mother, it can educate but also harm the young girl. Often these projections are related to self esteem, appearance and dating. Everyone should be given the chance to explore and learn from opportunities, if they are successful of not. This will allow oneself to judge and act upon the response of the situation. Now, why do mothers project these insecurities, commonly relating to their value of beauty, on their daughters and why is this unrecognised?
Where do insecurities come from? Insecurities are related to standards set by the people we interact with, such as our family, friends, and peers, and societal expectations that may be legitimate or perceived.
We often view insecurities as an interruption of our everyday lives, but, what if groups in a society created these insecurities that now heavily affect them today? It was thought that it all began 2,400 years ago in Greece and Rome, when the West’s standards of beauty were set, found by Dr Dietrich von Bothmer. This standard was to be healthy, to be beautiful and to become rich by honest means, which some would consider reasonable. This standard was was so stressed upon as worried parents would even place statues of Aphrodite and Apollo, the two deities of physical appearance, in their bedrooms to help them conceive beautiful children. This is already the start of taking extreme measures for the value of beauty. It is also thought that later on in mythology, Greek women began using makeup to appear more beautiful and hide any signs of aging. However, if a woman was to wear makeup as a housewife, it wasn’t considered important for the housewife to do this as it was a sign of unfaithfulness to the husband. As we progress through the Roman era and the renaissance, this idea of beauty had really taken off and natural materials like wax and fur from animals were used for hiding wrinkles and applying fake eyebrows. These practises were pushed by men, especially artists which portrayed women in paintings to convey a sense of mystery combined with maternal sadness. As we progress to our standards todays, beauty was adjusted by the revelation of humans, discoveries and wealth status.
These ideologies on women only limited them from having freewill in life. Until 1918, women weren’t allowed to vote in elections as they were considered, too emotional too actually consider voting. Although they did achieve the right to vote in 1918, it was only a limited amount of women, white women with a wealthy status was allowed to vote. This was small progress on equality after years of pain. This action bought on more waves of protest to let women have more rights that men have, these acts were titled as the three waves of post feminism. The final wave was in the mid 1990s which focused on the reproductive rights for women, this advocated for a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and stated it was a basic human right to have access to birth control and abortion. This wave was also more wide spread due to the attraction of media and pop culture.
So, how is beauty still so important to society today and how does it affect women after the waves of post feminism in the 1900’s? Because of generations of people still prominent today, there is a mix of political judgement as some weren’t used to, or completely didn’t agree with the changes, so these judgements are passed from older generations to the younger generations. This is how beauty is still so important in society as it was only, sadly, recently that this understanding has come around.
After understanding where this standard came from, girls are more adjusted to apply themselves to these standards by the ones around them, especially by their mothers. This is apparent by the dolls marketed towards little girls like Barbie which is skinny, has blonde hair and blue eyes. Having this as the first impression on what a woman should look like is cruel and can be hard to understand if you don’t have those same features. As you grow and are exposed to further expectations and reality of the life of a woman, you begin to understand that even simple life skills which everyone should learn, like cooking, are assigned for women to do. We see it in our own homes, and in media everywhere around us.
As you grow to begin puberty and start your period, you are taught to keep it to yourself as it is considered disgusting to actually experience it. Especially when boys are typically taught to not know about women’s experience of puberty. It can feel shameful when you are growing to care about these matters, especially in school as you are told you can’t go to the bathroom for these matters. Typically, mothers can’t support their daughter through this as they can’t control the people around their daughter, all they can do is teach her how to deal with it and move one, and fathers don’t bother to educate themselves on the subject when it is most important.
Overall, girls are typically shut down by society because of what we have been taught previously in history. Although change is always happening, some worse than good, people will never understand what it is like to grow up as a girl with these issues that are still not considered normal, although women were born with this issue from day one. Women are still put into a box because of their features and personality and this will unlikely change for a very long time.
https://feminisminindia.com/2018/04/27/brief-summary-third-wave-of-feminism/#
