Girl Power

It's been a full year of blogs as of this week, and I'm glad to know that I still have it in me to be disciplined enough to follow through on a commitment I make to myself.  However, I never really doubted that I would be able to do it, since I did a similar project in 2000, writing an essay every week.  I had no public forum for that project, so to hold myself to the letter, I mailed those essays to a college friend and fellow English teacher.  Throwing myself into the blogosphere was a bit daunting;  I think I play things pretty close to the vest in everyday life with the majority of people, but I try to write from a more open and spiritual place. 

For the most part, I've been met with kind, positive reactions to what I have to say.  Only a very few times did I bring down a hail of brimstone for being too....well, for not agreeing with everyone in my world.  Twenty-five or 30 years ago, that would have not only hurt me but also made me feel that there was something wrong with my way of thinking.  Somehow, I suspected, everyone else was smarter than I was.  In a way, that only increased as I got my college degrees, because as we all know, the more you learn, the more you realize there is to learn, that the world is chock-a-block with places to explore and books to read and philosophies to puzzle out.  There is infinitely more than any one person can absorb in a short human lifespan---the main reason why I don't understand how anyone can ever be bored. 

Anyway, my insecurities:  I know where most of them came from, and if you've been reading my blogs semi-regularly, you probably do, too.  What I've been thinking about for this entry, the one-year mark, for quite a while has been when exactly so many of those insecurities fell away and left me, yes, more able to expose myself to criticism, but better able to deal with it, even welcoming it when it was in the cause of expanding my (or someone else's) knowledge, ideas, or experience. 

I bet you just guessed the answer to that little riddle.. In truth, it's pretty obvious:  teaching made me tough, confident, and committed to having more faith in myself than I ever thought possible.

But this blog isn't really supposed to be about me, I find.  Stay with me here, because I think we have a crisis on our hands that you and I, every one of us, have a crucial part to play in solving.

Twice this year, I had female students that said things to me that made me fear that young women are not only NOT in a better place now than when I was growing up, but that they are sometimes in a much worse setting for exploring their hearts and minds without fear of reprisal in many forms.  I posted one of those conversations on Facebook the day that it happened, kind of making fun of myself for what the young lady had said:

     Best school conversation this week....
Girl: Ms. Welker, I bet you have game, don't you?
Welker: Wha??
Girl: I mean, you're so self-confident that you just have game. I know it.
Welker: *chuckles quietly*
Girl: See? That laugh? You have mad game.

 

What I left out is the way that student looked at me.  She was joking, and yet she wasn't.  Here was a beautiful, athletically gifted girl, well-liked by her peers, but she was looking at me with a kind of admiration that I just don't understand from a young person with those attributes, beauty and athleticism being the only worthy qualities for so many high school kids.  She's not a vain girl at all, but I still was shocked to find myself the subject of her awe.  It made me laugh, of course, but as time went by, and as we had several personal conversations over the course of the year, I began to feel a little angry at the world that had made this exotically pretty girl feel it was so hard to have "game."  It left me wondering how much harder it was to be a teenager today than I had realized.... and the teenage world is something that I should by all rights be paying incredibly close attention to.  Frankly, it frightened me a little.

 

Then, at the end of the year, I received one of the most moving thank-you cards I've ever gotten from a student.  She was a graduating senior with a very bright future, many scholarships to see her off to college, a girl with poise, manners, and grace that put the lie to her difficult background.  The card was one left blank for "your message," and she had filled up both sides with details of our years in the classroom.  She ended with, "After getting to know you, I have come to discover that I don't have to wait on other people to help make me happy.  Through you I have learned that I write my own destiny and I can make my own decisions."  I was running out the door as she gave it to me, and I didn't get a chance to read it until I got home that evening.  I opened it sitting in my car in the garage, and my eyes welled up with tears, for the sweet words she had written, of course, and also for seeing once more that no matter how smart, pretty, talented, and determined our girls are, they are still held hostage to a climate that tells them they are "less."  What she wrote warmed, then broke, my too-often stilled heart. 

 

These two incidents have coalesced and fermented in my mind since May.  I find myself wondering how after all the years and talk of equality that girls are still left wanting in the confidence department.  In my more cynical moments, I rail at the establishment for the lack of parity in wages, legislative attacks on women, and unrealistic ideals for the female body.  I could go on for days about the media presentation of what a girl/woman should be.  And we know that teenage culture itself is and in reality will probably always be a brutal competition of survival of the fittest, or at least the most conformist.

 

But here is the call to arms I want to issue:  We, you and I, parents or not, no matter what age---we have the responsibility to change the reality for these girls before we send them out into the world.  I count myself blessed beyond measure that my complete lack of confidence did not land me in any major life crises at all, but many of these girls are not so lucky.  Just today I read an article on the epidemic of suicide in girls who have been "shamed" through social network bullying after being victims of sexual assault.  What kind of world IS this when victims are "shamed" to death?!  There is no way that our youth are getting the proper guidance about how to treat others when incidents like this continue to happen; whether parents are teaching their children properly or not, it's our job to give the lesson at every turn, because we can't afford to let those lessons be missed.  Through everything we say and do, we much teach young people that everyone has merit, contributions and talents that are as important as the next person's, regardless of sex.  We also have a responsibility to see that all legislation enacted in this country shows parity to both sexes, a responsibility we carry out at the voting booth.  And we have to be role models at the best and the worst of times, trying always to be even-handed in our dealings with others.

 

I am, at best, a moderate success at what I ask of us all here.  But I want "our" girls to come to high school confident of their place in the world, that it will be a better place because they lived, and that they don't have to wait for someone to tell them they are good or pretty or smart.  I want them to know it because they live it, every day.  I want them to know it, because it's true.