Raising Girls with Backbone

By Varda Epstein  

We think we’ve made progress. After all, we’ve earned the right to vote. We’ve wangled equal pay for equal work. And for the most part, we control our own bodies and when and whether we will or won’t have babies.  But in many ways, not only have we not made progress, we’ve actually regressed. 

We fought against our objectification by men, yet according to Experian Market Research, 43% of 6-9 year-old girls are using lipstick or lip gloss and another 38% are already using hairstyling products. 

We make top dollar as executives but three year-old girls avoid touching game pieces that depict overweight individuals. Dr. Jennifer Harriger of Pepperdine University, says “that fear of fat in preschool girls is already so well-developed they will shun even a piece of plastic that doesn’t reflect the idealized body image.”

Sexualized Dolls

We tell our daughters they can be anything they want, but little girls’ product lines tell them they must first and foremost be sexy.  Go shopping for toys, says Peggy Orenstein, author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter, and you’ll find sexualized dolls (Bratz) with sensuous lips, big brown eyes, and lots and lots of cleavage. 

Go shopping for Halloween costumes and you’ll find dominatrix costumes for 6 year-olds that would not look out of place in a bordello.  By the time our girls hit their teens, the transformation from thinking/feeling human to sex object is complete.

Orenstein described one research trial in which teenage girls were asked how they’d felt during physical encounters with the opposite sex. The girls responded by describing how they’d looked. 

For our daughters, appearance has supplanted feeling because society tells our daughters their feelings have no importance. What is important is how they look.  Are they thin enough and sexy? 

But no one asks the question: thin enough and sexy enough for what?

This damaging culture, so appearance-based and sexualized, persists in spite of the richness of our feminist history. The Suffragettes, the bra-burnings of the sixties, Steinem and Abzug have come and gone and yet we find ourselves still in the thick of this objectification.

Mass Brain-Washing

We didn’t expect to inherit a struggle already fought and thought to be won. But here we are, the mothers of daughters.  Do we decide this is a lost cause? 

Is it even possible to turn a blind eye to this mass brain-washing of our daughters—to pretend it isn’t happening?  Animals are born with survival instincts, but in most cases, wildlife moms still guide and educate their young.

As human beings, we are meant to be even more evolved. We are not free beyond the biological imperative to perpetuate the species.

Cultural Noise

That means it is our duty to raise daughters determined to be judged by more than how they look in tight leather skirts. Mothers must counter the subliminal and not so subliminal messages thrown at their daughters by the marketplace, the media, and society at large. Right now, we haven’t got the means to silence the bombardment. Our only recourse is to strengthen our daughters against the overwhelming cultural noise.

The task begins with teaching a daughter to question. It’s very easy to be one with the herd; to be carried along on a wave with the masses. That’s not what you want for her. You want your daughter to be capable of critical thinking and not to swallow whole everything spoon-fed her by advertisements, social media, and yellow journalists.

Show her how it’s done: watch TV together or read the same article and then state aloud your questions about what you’ve seen or read. Demonstrate for her how you dig up the real facts and read between the lines. Let her see that you are not afraid to look beyond what is shown or said: that it’s possible to think outside the box.

But don’t make an issue of it either. It should just be you being you, being natural: discussing the important issues of the day with your loved ones or with friends—but in earshot of your daughter, of course.  It doesn’t end there—a mother must also give her daughter wings. It’s not enough for her to watch and listen. She needs to find and exercise her own voice. So, wherever appropriate, let your daughter make choices.

Let her choose her own wardrobe within reasonable limits. Let her decide which extracurricular activities she’d like to try and, if possible, the number of activities in which she’d like to participate. This way, your daughter gets a chance to try different things and find how she feels about them.

Step Back

When things go wrong, don’t fix them for her. Learn to step back instead of jumping into the fray. It’s never pleasant to watch a daughter struggle with a difficult situation. But if you take over, she’ll never learn the coping skills she needs to handle things on her own.

What you might do instead is help her work things through. Ask her to come up with three possible strategies for solving her problem. Discuss how those strategies might play out, and then let her choose what she wants to do. You may not agree with her choice, but you’ll be giving your daughter a sense of control over her life. You will be teaching her to be responsible for her own decisions.

Most of all, take pleasure in her company.

Find activities you both enjoy and can do together on a regular basis. She can’t help but feel your enjoyment as the two of you spend time together. This is how you create a lasting bond.

Don’t let it rest there. Nurture the connection with your daughter and never let it falter. If your daughter feels secure in your love, she will feel free to leave the nest.

She will have come into possession of the tools she needs to make her own imprint on this world.

About Author

Varda Epstein is mother to four daughters and a content writer/editor for CogniBeat where you can learn more about education children at the CogniBeat Community Portal.