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The Number One Thing We Need to Stop Teaching Little Girls...

As a society we fail our young females in a ton of ways, but this has got to take the cake... and it's got to STOP.

By Reigning WomenPublished 5 years ago β€’ 6 min read
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When I was a little girl, I was always confused by the directions given to me by my parents, grandparents, and other elder family members.

The crazy part of this is that almost every single one of the people I can remember giving me these said directions were my female family members.

Between my mother, grandmother, aunts, even older female cousins, I can remember the words, "Be a lady," a multitude of occasions when I was young.

I can even remember moments that my female teachers (shout out Mrs. M from third grade) chanting at me the three words that would not only confuse me, but make me question what being "a lady" even meant.

To be fair, I've always been an inquisitive child. I'd like to believe more than the average. In many moments, even now in my near mid-20s, that habit of overanalyzing and questioning reveals itself a burden. As I look back on my childhood, though, I'm happy that in these situations my curiosity and willingness to question stuck.

I grew up on the northeast coast of the United States. I have a younger brother which makes me the oldest of two. My parents are of Italian and Irish origin, split down the middle I'm an easy 50/50. I say this you so you can piece together a certain level of traditional values that they group up around.

I would say for the most part, my parents are typical Gen X-ers, caught between their upbringing and the morality their children stand for. My parents, in particular, faced certain stereotypical geographical conditioning as well, seeing as neither of them had really left the areas they'd been born in and grown up in.

With this, I was subject to an interesting set of "lessons" growing up, mixed with subtle sexism, racism, and sheltered mindsets.

All this to explain, the phrase "be a lady" is not that uncommon in a family makeup like mine.

This sentence and everything it stands for is, to me, the NUMBER ONE thing we need to STOP saying to little girls, and here's why.

Explaining My Viewpoint in a Story

To best explain my standing on this issue, is to give you a recap on my childhood, a distinct memory that I can recall as vividly as the day I was there.

I remember vividly being with my younger brother and an older female family member (I won't get too specific for reasons you might understand) one day when I was at an elementary age, likely six to eight-years-old.

We were in a dentist office in the mid-morning on a weekday, so naturally, the two of us were pretty riled up at the fact that we'd been missing school that day.

My brother is about two years younger than I am, so at the time, he was at an age where any reinforcement of rowdy behavior did it's worst.

At the time, he'd had an obsession with this foam baseball bat and he persisted always to take it everywhere.

So there we were in the dentist's office, kids being kids, roughing around a bit, laughing and playing.

There were two other people in the office, one of which was showing visible discontent with our volume. My brother, the younger and likely cuter of the two of us (at the time lololol) had gotten riled up enough to the point where he'd gone solo, running around the office hitting chairs and other objects with his bat. He didn't mean any harm, he was a little kid with a foam bat and an older sister who was infamous for instigating his energy.

Noticing the shift in energy in the room from other patients, I sat down, but I was still laughing and egging my little bro on.

Our guardian for that day had been up at the reception desk getting us checked in, and was signaled by the woman at the desk that we were less and behaved.

The next few seconds are some that have made me question the validity of the way we speak to our young female population since the day.

My female family member turned around walked straight toward, you guessed it, me. And uttered the words, "Stop messing around, be a lady," turned around, walked away, and said nothing to my brother who was still running around performing semi-violent and destructive behaviors.

Now, call me sensitive, call me whatever you like, but my guardian, someone who shared my blood, gender, and was responsible for taking care of me, had defined for me at that moment what "being a lady" meant.

In that dentist office, I was taught that being "ladylike" meant being quiet, submissive, still from movement, and acceptance of wrongly placed blame.

Now, of course, I didn't think about all of this that moment in that dentist office, but it is something that I carried throughout my childhood.

There are so many moments I can recall as a young girl staying quiet in moments I didn't want to. To this day, I question why that was, but I can fairly wager a reason or two.

At that moment, I was taught that blame will nearly always be placed on a young girl, and the conditioning fostered from the patriarchy truly is designed to keep young girls, who later turn into women, quiet.

This is a problem.

I've written articles in the past about vocabulary and verbiage around young girls, how in order to truly bring up little girls with the same amount security and confidence as we do little boys we must start with what we say to them, and what we teach them about themselves. Looking back at this particular moment in the dentist, I still believe this to be undoubtedly true.

As women of today, it truly is our job to pass down a particular mindset to female generations following behind us. As a human species, it is truly our job to pass down a particular mindset to female generations following behind us.

EQUALLY so, it's just as important to stop teaching little boys and little girls that the behavior condoned from my brother is unhealthy and that justified blame go where it's supposed to.

See, that day I wasn't the only one that learned something invalid, so did my brother.

My brother learned that his rowdy behavior, very much aligned with "boys will be boys behavior," was completely okay, and would not receive any repercussions. Equally, I learned that not being "a lady" a.k.a. being a BOY, meant that as well.

Being a boy at that moment was all about being rambunctious, rowdy, a bit violent, and receiving no discipline. And that is where we fail our young women.

I don't have to say much to say we need to do better by our young female population. This, among a ton of other things, needs to change, and quickly.

This, however, is to mean arguably first on the list in steps to orchestrating a different kind of world. In this world, our little girls have confidence earlier on and don't have to teach themselves in their young adulthood what that means.

In this world, we use words like "strong, smart, driven" and phrases like "you can do whatever you want, there is no cap on your success."

And in this world, we believe in justified right and wrong for both genders and we make examples of it. We stand up for what is right when it is right and we strike down what is wrong when it is wrong regardless of gender.

So when you ask yourself what we need to stop doing or what we can do to make an actual impact, please read this, and then read it again.

While it isn't a march, a poster with a catchy slogan, or anything else of the sort, it attacks many of our problems at their conception and sets a new tone for our young ones.

gender roles
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About the Creator

Reigning Women

πŸ‘‘πŸ‘‘πŸ‘‘

WHERE πŸ‘ WOMEN πŸ‘ REIGN πŸ‘

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