Ed. — From the Sunday, May 14, print edition.
VIRGINIA BEACH — Two of my grandchildren visited recently – both girls, one four and one two.
Within minutes of their arrival, the youngest stood on a chair and began singing a song, each line accompanied by carefully choreographed dance movements. Given her age, it wasn’t always clear what she was saying, but that only made her performance more endearing.
My husband, Tom, and I stood by, ensuring she didn’t fall and trying to contain our laughter. Finally, she stuck one leg out behind her and the opposite arm in the air, ending the entertainment. I was spellbound. Her infectious grace, carefree confidence and lack of inhibition filled me with joy.
Most young children exhibit my granddaughter’s oblivious self-assurance. Yet girls, specifically, lose it quickly and terribly as they begin to grow and more frequently encounter the world around them.
I wondered what I could do to help my granddaughters maintain their chutzpah throughout their lives, especially when so many of our leaders seem convinced that girls and women need help navigating life and making simple decisions for themselves.
When our boys were young, Tom and I worked hard to model equality for them in all we did. Neither of us was “in charge” of the household, and we were bothered by the notion that one of us should be. We made all decisions together. We involved the boys in those decisions whenever possible and appropriate. We did not divide our work according to traditional gender roles. Instead, we shared the load according to who did what best and when things needed doing.
We also paid attention to and corrected the boys when they brought home ideas about girls we found dismissive, offensive or oppressive. They weren’t allowed to use words like “sissie” to demean others or phrases like “boys don’t cry,” “stop acting like a princess” and “you throw like a girl” as boy performance and behavior put-downs. And they were taught to open doors for everyone, reflecting our belief that courteousness shouldn’t be reserved for women only.
Still, it surprised us how many negative “girl” ideas we had to counter, misogynist phrases we had to banish from their lexicon and times their egalitarian chivalry was challenged.
We were also baffled by the behavior of some of the grown men around us, who used those phrases in teaching their boys about sports and general behavior, did so right in front of their young daughters, and then bragged about their plans to lock their girls away one day with a shotgun at the ready. It all felt a bit medieval. But it got me thinking about how a girl’s sense of self is developed and destroyed.
Flash forward to today, and I’m still wondering the same thing. Each night I turn on the news, and there’s another story about another lawmaker taking aim at women’s abilities to make significant and often personal life decisions. Lately, the “abortion debate” has been upstaged by the contraception debate, which is very cleverly couched in the language of that daddy at the window.
After all, many have proclaimed that banning contraceptive drugs or limiting contraception methods is about caring for women and protecting them from making bad decisions about their futures – that is, taking a pill to ward off the boogeyman of unwanted pregnancy.
How can we encourage our girls to be confident in their abilities, follow their dreams and chart their own lives when we support leaders and lawmakers who don’t trust them to make decisions for themselves and treat them like children who need help with directions and protection from themselves?
Talking to my granddaughters about their “sky’s the limit” choices in life makes me feel disingenuous and downright criminal. I can’t promise my girls the moon regarding careers and life goals (as many parents and grandparents do today) while those in charge strip them of controlling their futures.
In 2009, Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn published Half the Sky, a critically acclaimed book that argues female oppression as a human rights issue. It supports empowering girls and women through initiatives that, at least in part, focus on changing mores and laws that subjugate females globally, including customs and decrees that prohibit family planning methods.
It’s infuriatingly incomprehensible that our lawmakers are on the verge of doing that to my carefree and confident granddaughters here in the U.S.
All weekend, my granddaughters danced around the house, laughed while their grandfather soaked the air and floor with blue and yellow bubbles, and sank into bed on the last night, whispering of being astronauts and fairies.
When the last light went out, I made a star-wish that their futures would be full of all the freedoms they deserve.
And I vowed to keep fighting for their right to have just that.
The author is a former Virginia Beach Planning Commissioner and college professor. Reach her at leejogger@gmail.com.
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