How To Talk To Little Girls

Ambersky

Recently I came across this article by Latina Fatale on How To Talk To Little Girls and I thought I would post it here.
http://latinafatale.com/2011/07/21/how-to-talk-to-little-girls/
The issue has been on my mind since visiting someone with two year old twins and on introduction to them the mother said "this is Ben he is such a strong little boy" while bouncing him up and down.
The little girl was sitting playing with something and the mother said "this is Lisa isnt she a pretty girl".
This really happened and in conversations about the twins I have heard other women also talk a lot about how active and capable the boy is and how pretty the girl is.
I had to point out that Lisa is the one who is beginning to speak a few words and had figured out a new toy first, but this information didnt seem to be held up as something worth talking about or elaborating on in the same way as her prettyness was.

This is the article by Latina Fatale the statistics she quotes are American but it still illustrates something that may be problematic for girls in Ireland too even though we dont have the statistics.
What does anyone else think about this

I went to a dinner party at a friend’s home last weekend, and met her five-year-old daughter for the first time.

Little Maya was all curly brown hair, doe-like dark eyes, and adorable in her shiny pink nightgown. I wanted to squeal, “Maya, you’re so cute! Look at you! Turn around and model that pretty ruffled gown, you gorgeous thing!”

But I didn’t. I squelched myself. As I always bite my tongue when I meet little girls, restraining myself from my first impulse, which is to tell them how darn cute/ pretty/ beautiful/ well-dressed/ well-manicured/ well-coiffed they are.

What’s wrong with that? It’s our culture’s standard talking-to-little-girls icebreaker, isn’t it? And why not give them a sincere complement to boost their self-esteem? Because they are so darling I just want to burst when I meet them, honestly.

Hold that thought for just a moment.

This week ABC news reported that nearly half of all three- to six-year-old girls worry about being fat. In my book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, I reveal that fifteen to eighteen percent of girls under twelve now wear mascara, eyeliner and lipstick regularly; eating disorders are up and self-esteem is down; and twenty-five percent of young American women would rather win America’s next top model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Even bright, successful college women say they’d rather be hot than smart. A Miami mom just died from cosmetic surgery, leaving behind two teenagers. This keeps happening, and it breaks my heart.

Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything. It sets them up for dieting at age 5 and foundation at age 11 and boob jobs at 17 and Botox at 23. As our cultural imperative for girls to be hot 24/7 has become the new normal, American women have become increasingly unhappy. What’s missing? A life of meaning, a life of ideas and reading books and being valued for our thoughts and accomplishments.

That’s why I force myself to talk to little girls as follows.

“Maya,” I said, crouching down at her level, looking into her eyes, “very nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” she said, in that trained, polite, talking-to-adults good girl voice.

“Hey, what are you reading?” I asked, a twinkle in my eyes. I love books. I’m nuts for them. I let that show.

Her eyes got bigger, and the practiced, polite facial expression gave way to genuine excitement over this topic. She paused, though, a little shy of me, a stranger.

“I LOVE books,” I said. “Do you?”

Most kids do.

“YES,” she said. “And I can read them all by myself now!”

“Wow, amazing!” I said. And it is, for a five year old. You go on with your bad self, Maya.

“What’s your favorite book?” I asked.

“I’ll go get it! Can I read it to you?”

Purplicious was Maya’s pick and a new one to me, as Maya snuggled next to me on the sofa and proudly read aloud every word, about our heroine who loves pink but is tormented by a group of girls at school who only wear black. Alas, it was about girls and what they wore, and how their wardrobe choices defined their identities. But after Maya closed the final page, I steered the conversation to the deeper issues in the book: mean girls and peer pressure and not going along with the group. I told her my favorite color in the world is green, because I love nature, and she was down with that.

Not once did we discuss clothes or hair or bodies or who was pretty. It’s surprising how hard it is to stay away from those topics with little girls, but I’m stubborn.

I told her that I’d just written a book, and that I hoped she’d write one too one day. She was fairly psyched about that idea. We were both sad when Maya had to go to bed, but I told her next time to choose another book and we’d read it and talk about it. Oops. That got her too amped up to sleep, and she came down from her bedroom a few times, all jazzed up.

So, one tiny bit of opposition to a culture that sends all the wrong messages to our girls. One tiny nudge towards valuing female brains. One brief moment of intentional role modeling. Will my few minutes with Maya change our multibillion dollar beauty industry, reality shows that demean women, our celebrity-manic culture? No. But I did change Maya’s perspective for at least that evening.

Try this the next time you meet a little girl. She may be surprised and unsure at first, because few ask her about her mind, but be patient and stick with it. Ask her what she’s reading. What does she like and dislike, and why? There are no wrong answers. You’re just generating an intelligent conversation that respects her brain. For older girls, ask her about current events issues: pollution, wars, school budgets slashed. What bothers her out there in the world? How would she fix it if she had a magic wand? You may get some intriguing answers. Tell her about your ideas and accomplishments and your favorite books. Model for her what a thinking woman says and does.

And let me know the response you get at www.Twitter.com/lisabloom.

Here’s to changing the world, one little girl at a time

Ambersky

I see we have a bit of synchronicity here with another post about little girls posted at the same time as this.
Mods feel free to delete if they are too simular.

r3nu4l

Well I'm a Dad to a 15 month old girl and am very very concious of not gender stereotyping her.

Our daughter has a teaset and toy cars. When I dress her in the mornings I tell her how pretty she looks and when she does something clever like use her spoon correctly or fits a shape into her shape sorter I always make sure to tell her how smart and clever she is. I also tell her how great she is at climbing things (and encourage it) and praise her agility.

I want my daughter to realise that she's smart and clever as well as pretty, I want her to grow up to be aware of the 'glass ceiling' for women in many companies but to not respect it or let it hold her back or use it as an easy excuse for any lack of progress! I want her to know that she can do anything she wants to do if she puts enough thought and effort into it and that she is capable of running her own company should she choose to (maybe not at 15 months old though ).

I think it's vital that any child, girl or boy, is taught these lessons. Boys shouldn't be taught that strength and sporting prowess are the critical factors that should define them, girls shouldn't be taught that dyed hair, fake tan, make-up and a boob job are their critical success factors either.

As her Dad, that's a big part of my job and I believe that it's important that it comes from a father as well as a mother.

Morag

The notion that little girls are to be pretty is re enforced time and time again, its hard to work against. Praise is important but I have found praising them for doing a good job or saying well done works better then saying good girl. That way when they fail they don't think they are no longer good.

Books are great but I find that I still have to watch and have oversight on books, comics and all other media cos things are still pretty skewed in it.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/08/17/we-heart-geena-davis/

Geena Davis is a powerhouse actor, best known for her strong and often comical roles in such Hollywood films as Thelma & Louise, A League of Their Own and The Accidental Tourist (for which she won an Academy Award). We love her consistent portrayal of strong women who take charge of their own lives, including her too-short stint as the first woman U.S. president, in ABC’s Commander in Chief (rest in peace, beloved drama).

But we heart Davis for more than just her screen roles (and for her decision to take up Olympic archery at age 41!). We especially appreciate her work at the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, where she seeks solutions to gender inequity in children’s programming.

This Monday, a few Ms. bloggers had the opportunity to hear Davis speak with Pat Mitchell at The Paley Center for Media about her quest for gender-balanced programming. Passionate and articulate, Davis shared how she came to recognize the unbalanced gender representation in her daughter’s favorite TV shows:

My daughter was about 2 (she’s 9 now) and I started watching little kids shows and G-rated videos with her and it really struck me how few female characters there seemed to be. … I started counting the characters while we were watching. I knew there were far fewer parts for women in movies in general, but that we would be showing that to kids was sort of a revelation.

When she would mention this information to others, she was often met with incredulity. Surely this wasn’t happening in the programming of today?

[It] made me realize that if I wanted to actually have an impact I should probably have the numbers … the actual data to show people, and it kind of snowballed into a whole institute.

Six years later, the Geena Davis Institute is rolling out data on gender representation in children’s programming, lobbying for legislation such as The Healthy Media for Youth Act and establishing See Jane, a program that uses research to work with entertainment creators to make positive changes.

Some of the data Davis has found is astonishing:

The aspirations of female characters are limited almost exclusively to finding romance; male characters almost never have “finding romance” as their ultimate goal.
The number one occupation of girls and women is royalty (not a likely profession for most of us).
Female characters in G-rated movies, from 1990-2010, wear the same amount of sexually revealing clothing as female characters in R-rated movies.
The more hours of TV a girl watches, the fewer options she thinks she has in life; the more hours a boy watches the more sexist his views become.
If female characters are added to media programming at the current rate, gender balance won’t occur for 700 years.

But Davis is quick to point out that the problematic media can also be a part of the solution:

The media can powerfully affect people positively. For example, girls seeing characters playing [nontraditional] roles will be much more likely to seek unconventional occupations later in life.

That’s right! I want to see more journalist heroes that are women and girls. Heck, I’ll even draw the cartoons! We heart you, Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Keep it up!

CathyMoran

I have two young children (16 month old boy and 11 week old girl) - I treat both of them the same. I do dress my son in blue etc and trousers and my daughter in pink and dresses but that is more because really young children all look the same (though my son looks like a real little boy now). My big brother had a huge influence on me, I read all his books and played with most of his toys - I still look up to him. All the toys we have for our children are gender neutral. I am trying to raise both of them the best that I can and will encourage them in whatever areas they like independant of their gender. I am in IT and was doing an electronic engineering masters (which I hope to go back to some time) but there were mainly men in my lectures - hopefully that will change.

pickarooney

I think even ignoring the smug, self-congratulatory tone of the article, the author rather misses the point - that a lot of adults tend not to deal with children as though they are individual human beings but as some generic small-person who's interested in things that they are not.

Maple

I have two nieces, I constantly tell them both how beautiful they are because they are beautiful. I also consistently praise them for how clever they are when they do something, in fairness I'm quite besotted so they practically get standing ovations for just standing up.

I read to them both lots, play with them, go for nature walks with them, I get them dirty, climbing stuff, shaking trees, picking plants and am constantly talking to them and involving them both, getting them to do stuff like help me when I have things I need to do, even if it's more of a hindrance, and I tell them how smart they are when they achieve it. I constantly tell them how wonderful they are, how brave they are, how smart they are and it's not just because they look gorgeous in whatever it is they're wearing that day.

I just believe in encouraging children, getting them to think for themselves, I'm not going to stop telling my nieces that they're beautiful but I'm going to make them aware of their intelligence too.

gargleblaster

pickarooney wrote: »

I think even ignoring the smug, self-congratulatory tone of the article, the author rather misses the point - that a lot of adults tend not to deal with children as though they are individual human beings but as some generic small-person who's interested in things that they are not.

?

Anyway, I disagree very strongly with what you think the point should be. She wrote it, so she kind of gets to decide what the point is.

Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything.

That is the point. And since it's reinforced almost everywhere, constantly, I think it is an extremely important one. I don't think she put it very well there. Obviously looks are one of the first things anyone notices about anything. However one would have to be extremely unobservant to fail to notice that looks are stressed as being of paramount importance with respect to a woman's worthiness.

Society is going to do its thing for the forseeable future, and that message will be hammered home almost constantly throughout girls' lives. I don't think it's unreasonable to propose that friends and loved ones maybe back off in reinforcing that message. Admiring a special dress or a pretty new haircut is one thing, and obviously experiences differ, but I noticed with my two girls that the focus on appearance really can get ridiculous.

virtus1

There was an experiment in developmental psychology where they took a baby and dressed it in blue so that people would think it was a boy. They then observed a group of adults interacting with the baby. They were quite rough with it, spoke in aggressive tones and told the baby that it would be everything from an astronaut to an explorer footballer when it grew up. They then took the same baby and dressed it in pink so that people would think it was a girl. When a different group of adults interacted with it, they were significantly gentler, spoke in softer tones using adjectives like "pretty" and "lovely". One of the adults said the baby was going to be a beautician.

You really can't underestimate the effect of social conditioning on gender roles. All these factors have a big effect on the developing brain, and newborn to prepubescence is the time where the brain is most plastic/malleable.