Grasshopper and Sensei‘s good friend, Sarah
Image, KylaBorg on Flickr, under Creative Commons
It’s Not Easy Being a Girl
You are female.
You wake up in the morning and get ready to go to school. Picking out clothes can sometimes be a little emotional for you. Like 91 percent of other girls, you are unhappy with the way you look. Doing your makeup isn’t easy either. The day that you ran out of time to put any on, someone called your skin gross. A few days later, your friend tells you you’d be prettier if you just didn’t wear so much makeup. You glance at the fashion magazines on your nightstand, where Kerry Washington or Emma Watson or it doesn’t really matter who is laughing at you with a frozen, glossy smile. They never had to worry about this, did they?
You arrive at school. Your first class is calculus. The class has more girls than boys, so you have some close friends in the class who have been helping you with your homework the past few days. This unit has been particularly challenging. At the end of class, you walk over to the teacher’s desk to grab some extra review sheets. A male classmate of yours is trying to argue his way into a C- on a recent test; he is doing far worse than you are. Before you make it to the door the teacher catches you and says, “I see you’ve been having some trouble lately. Are you sure this class is the right place for you? You may want to think about switching down a level.” You politely assure him you’ll stay where you are.
Your day is fine until lunch. The hot line option is chicken fingers and French fries, your favorite. You walk over to your lunch table with your friends and sit down. The girls are all eating salad. They look at your French fries, then at you, then back to their lettuce bowls. They’ll never admit they’d rather be eating fries. One girl eventually comments, “Why don’t you like salad? It’s so much better for you. Fewer carbs. You won’t gain any weight.” You lose your appetite and end up throwing half of your meal away. But then your friend slides her fruit cup across the table. “You gotta have something in front of you or you’ll look anorexic or something.”
The rest of the day is uneventful, but it’s a Friday, and you are so tired and stressed by the end of the day by the homework you’ll have to do this weekend and your low-paying babysitting job. You’re managing OK, but you snap when your male friend says your dress makes you look like a housewife. “Calm down,” he says. “It was just a joke. Are you on your period or something?” Despite your annoyance, this reminds you that your time of the month is next week, and you’re going to have to buy tampons on the way home. Throughout the course of your life, you will end up spending $1,773.33 on tampons alone. And this kid in your econ class was arguing today that the pink tax is a myth.
You stay in for the night and your friend comes over to watch a movie. The two of you decide to grab some candy and you run to the CVS down the street. You are walking home; it’s not too late but your street is dark. As a car slowly drives by, you tense up. The other day someone whistled at you from their car, and you’ve felt a bit uneasy on the sidewalk ever since. You are part of the 99 percent of women who have experienced street harassment in their lives. You desperately try to remember the self-defense lesson you got in middle school–was it go for the eyes or do you try to run?–when you realize the car is only waiting to pull into the driveway you’ve just crossed.
Read more here.
And how insightful and sensitive is her disclaimer?
Author’s disclaimer: The author of this piece wrote from the perspective of someone with racial and economic privilege. The way people interact with her as a female is affected by this. She realizes the piece does not address the greater microaggressions that a girls of color or a lower-income girls may see in their daily lives.
Sarah Groustra is a sophomore at Brookline High School in Brookline, Mass. She loves writing, and in her free time enjoys dancing, classic literature and playing the ukulele.
p.s. Sarah and my daughter have a blog together, Lemondaisy. Sarah does the writing and my daughter does the art.
BEST #OWNVOICES CHILDREN’S BOOKS: My Favorite Diversity Books for Kids Ages 1-12 is a book that I created to highlight books written by authors who share the same marginalized identity as the characters in their books.
I love this, Mia! What a wonderful young woman. I’m an alumna of Mount Holyoke and this could easily be written by current students there.
Hi Dee,
Isn’t she amazing?! She is a serious writer and has been getting published lately. We are so proud of her!
This is a well-written article/essay! It’s such an important topic too!
Thanks Erik! I’ll let her know! She’s a sophomore in high school and won an award that is giving her these publishing opportunities. I’ll try to keep track of her next articles and post. And also that award if it is not high school based.
Sarah has written a very articulate essay. It has always been tough being a girl, but I imagine even more so today with the pressures from school, peers and advertisements. Social media adds a whole other dimension. It’s even more important for girls to have relationships with parents and friends who support them. Finding purpose also helps.
Hi Patricia,
I totally agree and I feel lucky that my daughter can count on her to be a good friend (and vice versa). Some things never change like peer pressure and the confines of high school.
I love this. I obviously don’t know her, but I”m proud of her for putting her experience and her thoughts out in public in such a well-written piece. And yes, I love the acknowledgment at the end that she’s fully aware that others have it even worse. If you ever come across an essay along the same lines from a girl of color or less “economically advantaged,” please post it!
Hi Jennifer,
I most definitely will!!! Thanks for your kind words. I’ll pass them on to Sarah!