We were fortunate enough to attend a viewing of Tomboys! Feisty Girls and Spirited Women and a discussion following with the director, Christian McEwen. The message is that essentially, we need to to encourage young people to be who they are and empower them to make their own decisions. It was interesting to learn that by the age of 13, many girls will say that “it doesn’t matter” when asked a question, like “what would you like on your pizza?” By the age of 15, they will say, “whatever you like is fine”. It’s important to encourage young people to know that their opinions and desires and emotions count and matter. The DVD is short, but wonderful. Christian is a local author/filmmaker and so passionate about this, as were the many that attended. It was all made possible by Sisters Ink, and awesome group of women that mentor girls 9-12, and every season offer workshops and such. (I’m doing the first workshop…stay tuned for pics and details. It’s next Saturday. In fact there are a few openings – so if you know a 9-12 year old girl – bring her to the workshop – it’s going to be a blast.)
And it all is set in the first few years of life. We have to get rid of the expectation of our girls being “good” and “nice” and “polite.” The words shouldn’t even be in our vocabulary because they are judgemental and frankly don’t mean anything. They are used to make our lives easier and they are surpressing the spirits of our future women.
I have an article on this subject: “Getting the Good” OUT Of “the Girl” at my mama site:
http://www.outloud.wordpress.com
Michelle – your article is excellent – everyone should read it! We always try to tell Izzy that what she is doing is “awesome because…”, and give her reasons to continue what she is doing, mostly because what she is doing is by her choice, and not because we bribed her to do a “good” job.