I’m delighted to promote Courtney Martin’s new book (just published this week), Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body, from which a substantial excerpt is available here. Here’s the bit that really grabbed me:
We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive as our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers. We carry the world of guilt — center of families, keeper of relationships, caretaker of friends — with a new world of control/ambition — rich, independent, powerful. We are the daughters of feminists who said, “You can be anything” and we heard “You have to be everything.”
We must get A’s. We must make money. We must save the world. We must be thin. We must be unflappable. We must be beautiful. We are the anorectics, the bulimics, the overexercisers, the overeaters. We must be perfect. We must make it look effortless.
We grow hungrier and hungrier with no clue what we are hungry for. The holes inside of us grow bigger and bigger.
Martin’s got it almost right. (Bold emphasis was mine, by the way.) It jives with what I was trying to say in this post last month about the girls in my high school youth group. Speaking for a generation of supportive, hovering, encouraging parents and teachers, I wrote: we’ve made the terrible mistake of turning opportunity into obligation.
The one thing I am leery about is Martin’s passing, mild indictment of feminism. At its best, contemporary feminism is more than a “you can have it all” message. It is concerned not only with giving a message of empowerment, but with how our little sisters hear and internalize that message. There is plenty of blame to go around for the current predicament — but I don’t think much needs to be shouldered by feminism.
I can’t wait to read Martin’s book. I do hope her description of the solution is as accurate and compelling as her diagnosis of the problem.
I feel like I can solidly relate to this excerpt. Martin flawlessly presents a feeling as well as an explanation for many behaviors that are often attributed as ‘bad qualities’ that women have. This excerpt shows that the stress to be perfect causes more damage than its worth. Hopefully her book reflects solutions as well.