Girls are creating cultures everywhere: putting up Web sites, publishing magazines, playing on sports teams, starting bands, and writing books. They are becoming political activists on a wide range of issues: the environment, homelessness, animal rights, reproductive rights, welfare rights, international child labor practices, trade with Burma, free Tibet, and class size in their schools. They are also taking care of their intergenerational families and working at jobs, both dull and promising, while planning for their futures, imagined and immediate.
There is no one representative girl or homogenous girl culture. Girls are too varied and vibrant for labeling, and as soon as you think that you have one pegged, she changes.
A Sample of Voices
Who are these girls? What do they have to say about the world? In the spirit of listening, I selected statements from girls that demonstrate their activism, involvement, and efficacy—they are actors in their world, and in ours.
Girls are concerned with subjects as varied as economic conditions, independence and identity, schools, the media, and personal relationships. I offer the following quotes as evidence of the multitude of cultures that girls create or find themselves in. Their words also are sophisticated critiques of the people around them and the situations and historical moments in which they find themselves. Their remarks offer insightful suggestions to improve their lives and the lives of others. Although the selections process does not pass the rigors of a scientific study, these statements represent a sample of students who might be sitting in any given classroom or walking the halls of a school.
- Independent and mature. A young woman on welfare displays resiliency and maturity when she writes about her economic conditions and desire for independence: Dear Governor [of Massachusetts]: I'm writing you this letter in reference to your welfare plans. I'm a welfare recipient and also a teenage mother. . . . I'm not just sitting back and receiving welfare checks every month. I attend a GED program which I recently completed and I am now planning to go to a four-year college. . . . Don't just cut everything and leave people in the middle of their goals and plans. Don't just try to get welfare recipients odd jobs that don't have any futures.—Angela Lopez, 19 (Teen Voices, 1995, p. 19)
- Technologically and socially assertive. Another girl writes about her passion and hobby: zines. She and others like her have created a new cultural phenomenon—a social movement. They have deliberately resisted standard cultural messages; they and their zines defy conventionality and offer a critique of popular culture: Zines are short for "magazines," where girls write, design, copy, and circulate [the issues] themselves. Zines have been written by almost every type of girl on almost every topic imaginable: jump rope, body image, candy, and sexual assault. Zines are very much about ranting and raving and sharing your experiences with others. . . . Reading zines helps girls feel that they are part of a larger community and that they are not alone.Zines are a backlash against mainstream fashion magazines. Often in zines, girls complain about too-skinny fashion models, articles and advertisements that encourage girls to try to live up to someone else's ideals, and stupid and/or sexist boys. . . . The women's music scene and women's zines are very closely tied together, both having the effect of creating a community for girls to feel comfortable in, and providing a place for girls to communicate with each other and the "female experience."—Sonya Satinsky, 17 (Teen Voices, 1996, pp. 32–33)
- Expanding traditional gender roles. Moreover, as girls describe their lives in schools, they offer ways to widen and explode gender roles, knowing the benefits for both girls and boys. This young woman's account is emblematic of a desire to break boundaries and artificial borders: To help develop each person in [his or her] own individuality, it would be nice if schools got students to experience classes and activities that weren't conventionally dominated by their own sex. For example, if more women went to computer programming or power tech, with more males going to child psychology and home economics. Schools have been really good about having students experience more variety in their classes like this, but each person could more easily develop as an individual instead of as a role in society if this was done more extensively.—17-year-old girl Puget Sound, Washington (Haag, 1999, p. 56)
- Socially responsible. Finally, the statements from young women who see themselves as social activists carrying on a tradition serve to inspire not only their peers, but also all generations. Someone like this woman might be sitting in your classroom. Those who have been instrumental in bringing about social change never did so by sitting around talking about how bad things were. Imagine if Rosa Parks had simply complained about the injustice of segregation on Montgomery buses? She never would have been the catalyst which helped end Jim Crow in the South. . . .Because of all of these things, I am involved. I speak to teenagers across the state, in the hopes that they will understand that the struggle for equality in this country did not end with the Civil War, or even with the Civil Rights movement. For these reasons, I work with Men of Action (yes, I am the only female), a youth action council which helps young people lift up themselves and others through collective work. For these reasons I work with the Do Something Foundation which gives grants to young people who are interested in changing the face of Boston. . . .As long as the world is not right, I am doing something to make things better. I say these things not to hold myself up as a perfect person who has it all together, but rather to challenge everyone to get involved.—Mariama M. White-Hammond, 16 (Bill of Rights Network, 1995, p. 5)
Obstacles and Challenges
Despite their individual creativity and achievements, many girls find themselves up against some common obstacles, experiences, and institutional expectations that limit or inhibit their accomplishments. Among the obstacles are the likelihood to be sexually harassed at school and at the workplace; to be sexually assaulted by someone they know; and, as adults, to be paid less than their male counterparts for the same work.
Whether in a North Dakota high school or in an urban high school in New Jersey, approximately 80 percent of teenage girls report being sexually harassed at school. National crime surveys administered by the Justice Department, the U.S. Department of Education, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Survey report increasing levels of interpersonal violence perpetrated against adolescent girls at home, in the streets, on dates, and at school.
LaShonda Davis, a 5th grade girl in Macon, Georgia, spoke up when a boy classmate grabbed her genitals and breasts. For months, she and her parents asked her teachers to move her classroom seat, but they never did. Her voice and her case, Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, traveled all the way to the United States Supreme Court. On May 24, 1999, in a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that schools are liable for student-to-student sexual harassment if they know about the harassment and fail to stop it.
LaShonda knew that she was entitled both not to be touched and to go to school with the expectation that the adults there would care for her safety. LaShonda showed the same persistence, resistance, and knowledge as other girls (and a few boys) who have spoken up about sexual harassment, have been ignored by the school personnel, and then initiated lawsuits in the lower courts. I suspect that the Supreme Court's decision will mean that the days of school personnel's inaction and unresponsiveness are over. This lonely case may herald powerful changes for the social order.
Voices of the Future
Somehow, in the face of all these challenges, girls manage to get better grades than boys, score higher on certain test measures at certain ages, and attend college in greater numbers than boys. Their resilience, their resistance, and their ability to find alternative narratives to inspire them to persevere are powerful qualities. As one 16-year-old young woman states:No longer can I sit back and be passive. I refuse to let the nihilism that is coming down over this country, and especially on young people, continue to dampen the efforts to confront injustice in this country. The more I learn about the heroines and heroes. . . the less I can stay still. (Bill of Rights Network, 1995, p. 5)
Taken together, a chorus of cultures created by girls emerges—girls who set themselves in opposition to the institutional, conventional norms and standards. Sometimes girls define themselves by what they are not and flaunt their opposition; sometimes they define themselves by what they want to be and what kind of world they want to create.
Resources on Girls
Brown, L. M. (1998). Raising their voices. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Carroll, R. (1997). Sugar in the raw: Voices of young black girls in America. New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks.
Leadbeater, B. J. R., & Way, N. (1996). Urban girls: Resisting stereotypes, creating identities. New York: New York University Press.
LeBlanc, L. (1999). Pretty in punk: Girls' gender resistance in a boys' subculture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Stein, N. D. (1999). Classrooms and courtrooms: Facing sexual harassment in K–12 schools. New York: Teachers College Press.
