Why girls need imperfect role models
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Version 0 of 1. Mothers like to hand down helpful advice, and this is a snippet that stayed with me: why should you be perfect when no one else is? For a young woman struggling with the pressures of perfection – to get good grades, to have a body that manages to be a flawless mix of skinny and curvaceous – it was something of a revelation, and now girls’ schools are getting in on the act. Oxford high school for girls has launched an initiative called “the death of Little Miss Perfect”, intended to teach pupils about the confidence-destroying ramifications of perfectionism. It is, I believe, an enlightened way to treat young women, especially those in girls’ schools, where competitiveness and eating disorders can be, according to the teenagers I’ve spoken to and worked with, par for the course. The importance of being told that it’s OK to fail, that it’s normal not to match up to the media’s ideal of perfect feminine beauty, cannot be overstated. New research suggests girls who begin dieting in their teens are most at risk of depression, substance abuse and obesity in later life, and are more likely to resort to drastic weight loss measures such as diet pills and vomiting. It’s a shame that, at the very time young women need imperfect female role models hammering home the message that life is not a perfect parade of Instagram images, a new brand of “female fuck-up” is being denigrated in the press – by no less than Jenni Murray, the presenter of Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4. She wrote that writers such as Caitlin Moran and Bryony Gordon (the Telegraph journalist allegedly called a “slut” or “slattern” by Michael Fallon, the defence secretary) are producing hyperconfessional works that constitute an “abandoning of dignity and self-respect”. There are some things – and I imagine Murray muttering this darkly while standing at her net curtains – that a woman should take to her grave. It’s a strange reaction to Gordon’s book, a memoir chronicling her “decade of chaos” as a columnist that involves casual sex, drug use and borderline alcoholism. I read the book, and found it fairly tame, or at least familiar, in that her apparently shocking behaviour is typical of her generation, including myself. It also has a clear moral: don’t let someone snort cocaine off your breasts unless you’re absolutely sure about it; don’t shag married men because it’s cruel and debasing; have sex only with people you want to have sex with, otherwise it can be soul-destroying. Indeed, Gordon admits that all she really wanted was to settle down with someone who loves her – hardly a controversial message. The notion that to reveal one’s sexcapades publicly is somehow lacking in dignity comes from a place where women are denied agency in the expression of their sexuality. It also flies in the face of current writerly conventions for our gender. Young women are encouraged to confess in print, to lay themselves bare to their audience and reveal their flaws. But as any woman who writes personally knows, what you give away publicly is a conscious act, and much of it is just skimming the top, if you are keen to hold on to at least a part of yourself. If you are wise, the really dark stuff never sees the light of day. We know that many women enjoy confessional writing; it is often written for women, and in some ways reflects the way we communicate with one another. My conversations with friends are frequently hilarious and self-deprecating, relying on the comedic currency of “the story” – whether it’s blocking a toilet and resorting to drastic measures, or going home with a buffoon. If a friend confesses that she has been cheated on, I’ll happily volunteer the time I walked in on my ex in bed with someone else. If anything, the media – partly to blame, I believe, for this perfection anxiety – needs more of this empathic exchange, not less. Whether it’s Lena Dunham’s Girls or Tracey Emin’s squalid and profoundly affecting unmade bed with its dirty knickers, fag ends, Levonelle and empty vodka bottles, the message that the business of being a woman can be messy, complicated, hilarious and, yes, sometimes degrading, even tragic, is being shouted loud and clear. And more than ever, it’s important that young women, with their perfectionism complexes, hear it. |