Reviving Ophelia (42 page)

Alice Miller would say that strength in adolescence requires an acknowledgment of all parts of the self, not just the socially acceptable ones. Simone de Beauvoir would say that strength implies remaining the subject of one’s life and resisting the cultural pressure to become the object of male experience. Betty Friedan would call it fighting against “the problem with no name.” Toni McNaron calls it “radical subjectivism.” Gloria Steinem calls it “healthy rebellion.” Carol Gilligan refers to it as “speaking in one’s own voice,” and bell hooks calls it “talking back.” Resistance means vigilance in protecting one’s own spirit from the forces that would break it.

Margaret Mead defines strength as valuing all those parts of the self whether or not they are valued by the culture. She would encourage the survival of the ten-year-old androgynous self that is competent and connected, and she would emphasize the importance of developing innate potentialities and fighting efforts to limit value.

In America in the 1990s, the demands of the time are so overwhelming that even the strongest girls keel over in adolescence. The lessons are too difficult and the learning curve too steep for smooth early mastery. Strong girls manage to hold on to some sense of themselves in the high winds. Often they have a strong sense of place that gives them roots. They may identify with an ethnic group in a way that gives them pride and focus, or they may see themselves as being an integral part of a community. Their sense of belonging preserves their identity when it is battered by the winds of adolescence.

Strong girls know who they are and value themselves as multifaceted people. They may see themselves as dancers, musicians, athletes or political activists. These kinds of identities hold up well under pressure. Talent allows girls some continuity between past childhood and current adolescent lives. Being genuinely useful also gives girls something to hold on to. Girls who care for ill parents or who help the disadvantaged have a hedge against the pain of adolescence.

Strong girls generally manage to stay close to their families and maintain some family loyalty. Even if they come from problem families, they usually have someone in the family whom they love and trust. Through all the chaos of adolescence, they keep the faith with this person.

Almost all girls have difficulty with their families. Even the healthiest girls push their parents to validate them as adults before the parents are ready to accept the new situation. All girls do some distancing as part of their individuation process. But healthy girls know that their parents love them and stay connected in important ways. They keep talking and seeking contact. Even as they rage at their parents on the surface, a part of them remains loyal and connected to them.

While no girls look or feel strong at this time, often there are signs that they are fighting to save themselves. It’s a good sign if they maintain some memory of their preteen selves and are able to keep the interests and relationships of elementary school years. It’s good if they resist pressure to become ultrafeminine.

Often strong girls can articulate a sense that things are much tougher and not quite right in the outside world. They are aware that they’re being pressured to act in ways that aren’t good for them. The premature sexualization of their lives makes them nervous. They may be involved in cliques, but a part of them hates the snobbishness and actively resists hurting other girls.

Healthy girls, like all girls, are scared of many things. They lose perspective and are more likely to be conformists than at any other time in their lives. They are more likely to blame their parents for their troubles and to do things they really don’t believe in. They want to be pretty and well liked, but it’s a matter of degree. They won’t sell their souls to be popular. When push comes to shove, they’ll stand up for themselves. There are certain lines they will not cross.

Positive signs include beliefs in causes or interests in anything larger than their own lives. Girls who have some special passions can call on something that is greater than their experiences in the halls of junior highs. Often their passion can give them some perspective and sustain them through the toughest times. Strong girls manage to avoid heavy chemical use and deal with pain in more adaptive ways. Often they have healthy stress-relieving habits such as reading, running or playing the piano.

In
Smart Girls, Gifted Women,
Barbara Kerr explores the common experiences of girls who grew into strong women. She studied the adolescent years of Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Mead, Georgia O’Keeffe, Maya Angelou and Beverly Sills, and she found that they had in common time by themselves, the ability to fall in love with an idea, a refusal to acknowledge gender limitations and what she called “protective coating.” None of them were popular as adolescents and most stayed separate from their peers, not by choice, but because they were rejected. Ironically, this very rejection gave them a protected space in which they could develop their uniqueness.

Many strong girls have similar stories: They were socially isolated and lonely in adolescence. Smart girls are often the girls most rejected by peers. Their strength is a threat and they are punished for being different. Girls who are unattractive or who don’t worry about their appearance are scorned. This isolation is often a blessing because it allows girls to develop a strong sense of self. Girls who are isolated emerge from adolescence more independent and self-sufficient than girls who have been accepted by others.

Strong girls may protect themselves by being quiet and guarded so that their rebellion is known by only a few trusted others. They may be cranky and irascible and keep critics at a distance so that only people who love them know what they are up to. They may have the knack of shrugging off the opinions of others or they may use humor to deflect the hostility that comes their way.

Many strong girls have found protected space in which they could grow. There are various ways to find that space. For example, athletics can be protective. Girls in sports are often emotionally healthy. They see their bodies as functional, not decorative. They have developed discipline in the pursuit of excellence. They have learned to win and lose, to cooperate, to handle stress and pressure. They are in a peer group that defines itself by athletic ability rather than popularity, drug or alcohol use, wealth or appearance.

Protective space can be created by books, interests, families, churches and physical or social isolation. It’s a blessing. Girls who grow up unprotected, adrift in mass culture with little protective coating and no private territory are vulnerable to many kinds of problems.

This business of protected space is very complicated, however. Too much protection leads to the “princess and the pea syndrome,” girls who are hothouse flowers unable to withstand stress. Too little protection often leads to addictions and self-destructive behaviors. The same stresses that help some girls grow, cripple others.

All lives have ups and downs. For most women, early adolescence is a big dip down. Strong girls, like all girls, do crazy things in junior high. They feel unstable and out of control. It’s important to look beyond surface behavior to understand what’s happening. For example, a girl can be depressed in junior high because she’s bright enough to recognize our girl-poisoning culture and to feel defeated by it. A girl who withdraws may be acting adaptively. She may know that she’s not ready to drink or be sexual and she may drop out of social life for a time while her friends grow up. Things are often different from the way they look on the surface.

Strong girls strive to define themselves as women and adults. They are trying to break away from family and remain close at the same time. They are trying to have friends without sacrificing themselves to do it. They attempt to define themselves as moral people and to take responsibility for their choices. They are trying to make good choices, often without much help. All of this is so difficult that weak often looks strong and strong looks weak. The girls who seem the happiest in junior high are often not the healthiest adults. They may be the girls who have less radar with which to pick up signals about reality. While this may be protective when the signals come fast and furious, later they may miss information. Or they may be the girls who don’t even try to resolve contradictions or make sense of reality. They may be relatively comfortable, but they will not grow.

The morning we met, June had worked a double shift at the Kawasaki plant, gone out for breakfast and driven across town to my office. June was big-boned with a round, pockmarked face. She wore her hair short and was dressed in a gray sweat suit. She lumbered into my office and sank onto the couch. She was so physically imposing that I was surprised by her delicate sensibilities.

Her language was personal, precise and earthy. She talked about herself softly and carefully as if psychotherapy, like dentistry, might hurt. She did not, thank goodness, talk like someone who had read too many self-help books.

June said, “I’m here because I am dating someone for the first time in my life. I’m twenty-seven and I’ve never been kissed. I thought I might need some coaching.”

She’d been at Kawasaki for ten years. Her closest friend worked next to her on the assembly line. Dixie was a single parent and June helped her with her kids. She pulled out their school pictures to show me and said they called her Aunt June. “They’re real good kids,” she said, “once you get to know them.”

June had met her boyfriend, Marty, at work too. He was the union representative for her group of workers. The last three Saturday nights he had dropped by with a pizza and a video. Last Saturday night he put his arm around June. That’s when she decided to call me.

I asked her about her family and June sighed. “I was afraid you would bring them up.”

“We can wait,” I say gently.

“I might as well get it out,” she said. “After you hear about my teenage years, you’ll understand why I haven’t dated much.”

June’s father was a farm laborer who “never had much to do with me.” Her mother was a cook at a rest home. “She was hard-working and fun. She’d bring me treats from the rest home—cookies and crafts that the residents made for me. She showed them my pictures and kept them posted on my activities. Everyone at the home loved her.”

June paused and looked at me. “Mom died at the start of my freshman year in high school. It was an awful time to lose her. I had just started my periods. I was clumsy and had bad acne. I had been slightly chubby and then I got fat. I was totally alone.”

June blew her nose before continuing. “The year Mom died, I watched the Miss America pageant all by myself. I stared at those thin, poised girls and knew I would never be like that. I had no looks and no talents. Only my mom had loved me as I was. I thought about giving up.”

She rubbed her forehead as if to erase some memories too painful to consider. “I don’t know how I made it through that year. Dad was never home. I had hardly any clothes. I did what housework and cooking got done and that was precious little. Dad almost never gave me money for groceries. I was fat and hungry at the same time.”

I asked her about the kids at school. “They were terrible. Not so much mean, as totally indifferent. I didn’t exist for them. I was too ugly and too sad to even be part of the class. I ate by myself and walked to and from school alone. No one would be my lab partner.”

She rubbed her big face and continued. “One time a boy approached me in the cafeteria, in front of all the other kids, and asked me to go to a football game. I was such a goof that I thought he meant it. I thought maybe he could see past my appearance and like the real me. So I said sure, if I could get Dad’s permission. Then he started laughing. His buddies all whooped it up too. They’d dared him to do it for a joke. He collected ten bucks for just asking me out.”

June sighed. “After that I steered clear of boys.”

Her father married Mercene a year after June’s mother died. They took a honeymoon trip to Sun City and brought June salt and pepper shakers for her hope chest. “By then I had no hope,” she said flatly.

“My stepmother was tight with money. She only let me wash my hair once a week. I needed to wash it daily it was so greasy, but she didn’t want to pay for the water. My teeth were crooked and the school recommended braces. Mercene said, ‘I’ve heard that can cost a thousand dollars. No way we’ll spend that kind of money for straight teeth.’ Once I cut my foot pretty badly when I was walking beans. She wouldn’t pay for the doctor. I limped a little because of that.”

I worked hard to remain neutral as June talked about this neglect. June herself had no anger. She continued matter-of-factly. “I was the black sheep. Once my stepbrother asked me why I lived with his family.”

I asked how she survived those years when she was rejected at home and at school. “I thought about my mother and how she would have wanted me to behave. I decided that other people’s bad behavior was no excuse for mine. I would do the best I could. I talked to Mom in bed at night. I told her about my days. I always tried to have something I was proud of to report to her. I knew she had really loved me, and that got me through a lot. I knew I was lovable and that the people around me were too blind to see it.”

She rubbed her broad face with a handkerchief. “At the time I desperately wanted friends. Now I think I learned a lot those years. I learned to take care of myself. I got so that other people’s rejection didn’t faze me. I had my ideas about right and wrong.

“After high school my life really improved. I started working at Kawasaki. Immediately I felt more accepted. I worked hard and people noticed. Women invited me to eat with them. The men joked around with me. My supervisor took an interest in me. He encouraged me to get my teeth worked on and have my foot evaluated. I wear a brace now that corrected the limp.”

June smiled when she spoke of work. “I have a Halloween party every year for all the workers in my area. Fridays I bowl on the union team. I have earned merit raises every year I’ve worked there. I make good money.