Archive for the 'The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls' Category

Reprint: Fat, Slut, Selfish

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Hugo Schwyzer
on October 06, 2009
in Eating disorders, Family, Sexuality, The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls and Virginity
. 4 Comments

This first appeared in June 2007.

I’ve been teaching women’s history here at Pasadena City College for more than a dozen years now, and throughout that time, have made journals a critical part of the course. It’s a lot of reading for me, but I remain convinced that my own teachers were right when they told me that putting my words down on paper is the single best way to figure out what it really is I think, feel, and believe.

Over these twelve years or so of teaching gender studies, of meeting with countless students in office hours, of listening. of reading student journals and reflecting on what I find there, I’ve noticed some fairly clear patterns. And the pattern that’s in my head this morning is the ubiquitousness of self-doubt and self-criticism that I see in so many of my female students (and youth group kids).

As my students will confirm, I’m fond of insisting that there are “three key points” to be made about virtually anything. (Too much Trinitarian Christianity; too much of the “three-column system” in Kabbalah; too much Hegel… or three divorces. Take your pick.) And if I were to try and sum up all of the negative self-talk I encounter from my students in just three words, it would be easy:

Fat, Slut, Selfish.

Let me be very clear that I’m not claiming that most women regularly beat themselves up with all three of these. For most of my students and youth group kids, one or two of these three words is particularly haunting. The fear of fat is much commented upon, and in looking back over the last twelve years of journals, the best that I can say is that that crushing anxiety about the body has, at least, not gotten significantly worse. Of course, it couldn’t get much worse. (I do notice more of my male students admitting to body dysmorphia and a desire to lose weight or change their shape.)

If the label “fat” still has tremendous power to wound, there are signs that at least among some young women, “slut” is losing at least a little of its force. From what I can tell (and to generalize enormously), we’ve done a marginally better job of helping young women claim ownership of their sexuality. Compared to what I was seeing, hearing, and reading in the mid-1990s, I see slightly more acceptance among young women (and their male peers) of the notion that women have the right to be sexual subjects rather than objects. Of course, as many feminists worry, when it comes to “sex talk” it’s often difficult to distinguish between false bravado and a genuine embrace of erotic agency. One role of feminist mentors (and youth group leaders) is to provide a safe environment where students can get honest about sexuality. It’s in these safe environments that those who are merely “talking big” about their comfort with their sexuality can begin to acknowledge that some of that apparent confidence is a facade; it’s also in these environments that those who are anxious or confused about their own sexuality can begin to unburden themselves. Continue reading ‘Reprint: Fat, Slut, Selfish’

Holly dyed her hair: more on myths of female frailty, our fear of women’s anger, and what happens when the truth comes out

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Hugo Schwyzer
on September 02, 2009
in Age, All Saints Pasadena, Clothing and Fashion, The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls, Youth and Youth ministry
. 24 Comments

I posted earlier this year against the “myth of female frailty” and the lie that “one mistake will ruin your life”. The topic of that myth arose again this week when I met with one of my former All Saints youth group kids, “Holly.”

Holly, whom I’ve known since she was in eighth grade, is now headed into her senior year of high school; she’s 17. When I first met Holly, and indeed for the next several years, Holly “presented” outwardly as the pretty, outgoing, poised and popular blonde whose passage through adolescence seems almost unfairly graceful. Holly was much sought after as a friend (and more) by boys and girls alike; at our Wednesday night youth group meetings, I often saw not-very-subtle attempts by kids of both sexes to sit on “Holly’s couch” and be near her.

Of course, Holly was far more than the walking embodiment of a stock American stereotype. Not only was she exceptionally bright and a particularly talented writer, her childhood had been touched by tragedy and loss to a degree that set her well apart from most of her peers. A few — a very few — of her friends got to know the depth of that loss and its impact on Holly’s life; I was one of the small group of adults to whom she also regularly turned. I watched her struggle with the disconnect between how the rest of the world perceived her and how she felt on the inside, and we talked often about her frustration with the realization that she was the object of desire, admiration, jealousy, and envy when for the most part, she felt out of place and frequently lonely. Holly’s is not an unfamiliar story — at its most extreme, call it the “Richard Cory” phenomenon after that famous Edward Arlington Robinson poem so loved by generations of misperceived adolescents.

This summer, Holly broke up with her first serious boyfriend, got her first lead in a play, and let go of a great many of her old friends. When I met with her earlier this week, her long blonde hair was mahogany brown. Despite the heat, she wasn’t wearing the short skirts that had been her trademark since junior high school. She wore corduroy pants, a t-shirt, and a vest. Not a trace of make-up on her face, but when we met at a local coffee shop, there was a sense of real happiness behind her eyes. Holly’s making changes; the outside shift reflects an inner transformation — and the brunette tresses a greater willingness to expose to the world the darker, more complex aspects of her personality. Continue reading ‘Holly dyed her hair: more on myths of female frailty, our fear of women’s anger, and what happens when the truth comes out’

Sixteen hours per week: boys, girls, video games, and expectations

Published
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Hugo Schwyzer
on August 03, 2009
in The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls and Youth
. 23 Comments

Amanda at Pandagon linked last week to this summary of a study from the journal Sex Roles, reporting that college-aged women spent considerably less time playing video games than their male counterparts. No surprise there, but the key explanation for the discrepancy is chilling:

“Our findings suggest that one reason women play fewer games than men is because they are required to fulfill more obligatory activities, leaving them less available leisure time,” said Jillian Winn of MSU’s Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media, and one of the co-authors of the study.

To be precise, the study found that college-aged women did sixteen hours “more work” per week (chores, jobs, and so forth). As Amanda pointed out, that finding dwarfs the discussion of video games; it points to further evidence of what Courtney Martin talks about in her marvelous Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters and what on this blog is called “The Martha Complex”. Young women today are increasingly likely to be over-worked, anxious, and beset by fears of failure; a growing percentage of their brothers are hooked on pot, porn, and Playstation, prioritizing “chilling out” over virtually any other waking activity. And an extraordinary number of these lads have women in their lives — mothers, sisters, girlfriends — cleaning up after them (a traditional sex role) and providing for them financially (something of an innovation.)

This time discrepancy is rooted in many things, it seems. Of course, some of it is rooted in the contemporary cultural ideal that, as Courtney Martin says, tells girls that they “can be anything” but implies that in order to do so, that they must somehow “do everything.” Over-caffeinated, over-achieving, and over-scheduled, a great many women are beset by anxiety. But it would be wrong to suggest that the problem is primarily in women’s heads. The time gap that forces so many college-aged, childless women to work a “second shift” is indeed frequently a result of direct pressure from parents and the community.

The lower the expectations for male behavior, the higher the expectations for female success and self-control. This is not only obvious and axiomatic, it has real-life repercussions in the lives of a great many young women. Many of my students come from immigrant families in which there are strict household divisions of labor; women cook and clean, men take out trash and fix cars. Given that cooking, cleaning, and laundry are daily and time-consuming activities compared to mowing lawns or emptying garbage cans, many of my female students take the same academic loads as their brothers while doing twice as much work at home. In many families, a young man is encouraged to do his homework so that he can then go out with his friends and play video games; his sister is told to help with the chores, and when everything else is done, she can then turn to her own homework. Continue reading ‘Sixteen hours per week: boys, girls, video games, and expectations’

One mistake will not “ruin your life”: thoughts on “onesies” and the myth of female frailty

Published
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Hugo Schwyzer
on February 09, 2009
in Favorite Posts 2009, Feminism, Parenting, The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls, Virginity and Youth
. 34 Comments

I’m on a fairly steep learning curve as a first-time father. Having changed fewer than five diapers in my life before a fortnight ago, I’m an increasingly efficient middle-of-the-night cleaner and re-coverer of baby behinds. I consider myself nearly an expert on working with teenagers, but this infant business is new stuff to me. Our beautiful daughter is teaching me a great many things.

Last week, I was changing her “onesie”, and was quite tentative about it, not wanting to bend or pull her little arms too briskly. My mother-in-law, who has been immensely helpful, came to my aid: “She won’t break, Hugo”, she said; “babies are less fragile than you think.” It was a reassuring thing to hear, though I’m still a bit frightened to pull too fiercely on any part of my daughter’s frame.

But my mother-in-law’s words reminded me of an essential feminist point: women don’t break as easily as we imagine. On Friday, I posted a rebuke to the sorry Zoe Lewis op-ed in the London Times which suggested that feminism led women astray with promises of independence, fulfillment, and satisfying relationships all at once. Part of the discourse anti-feminists like Lewis push isn’t just about feminism, however; they also peddle the notion that the bewombed are particularly easy to break. At 36, less than halfway through an normal lifespan for a woman in the Western world, Lewis is convinced that feminism has “ruined her life.” She’s wrong about feminism, of course, but she’s also wrong about something more fundamental: that women are easily ruined “for life” by either their own poor choices or their early capitulation to certain cultural messages.

In a post about how my students responded to Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism (a piece that played a small part in one of the many internecine wars to which the feminist blogosphere is lamentably prone), I noted that some of the most enthusiastic responses I received were to the author’s brief but memorable defense of making mistakes. Jessica wrote:

I’ve had more than a couple of embarrassing moments in my life and sexual history — but isn’t that what makes us who we are? Do we really have to be on point and thinking politics all the time? Sometimes doing silly, disempowering, sexually vapid things when you’re young is just part of getting to the good stuff.

I’ve had several excellent class discussions about this section of FFF since.

Thinking about Jessica Valenti’s book and about changing my daughter’s onesies reminds me of an essential truth: we tell a great lie to young women when we issue dire warnings to them about sex, men and other choices if we accompany our warning with the phrase “you might ruin your life.” I often ask the young women whom I teach and with whom I work how often they’ve heard “Don’t do x, or you’ll ruin your life.” Most raise their hands. Far fewer of the young men to whom I pose the same question respond affirmatively. Even now, with almost a decade of the 21st century under our belts, our culture still clings to destructive myths of female fragility. Girls born as recently as the Clinton Administration are taught that adolescence and young adulthood consists of a series of pitfalls to be avoided, and that one false step could mean a lifetime of heartbreak and regret. Do the wrong thing, this discourse suggests, and you’ll end up (for the literary minded) like Dickens’ Miss Havisham (possibly with the same fiery demise.) Continue reading ‘One mistake will not “ruin your life”: thoughts on “onesies” and the myth of female frailty’

Blue book essays and the Martha Complex: on time management, test-taking, and letting go of perfectionism

Published
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Hugo Schwyzer
on July 11, 2008
in Feminist Pedagogy, Teaching and The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls
. 7 Comments

I’m grading summer midterms today, with an eye to passing them back Monday. I gave all three of my summer classes their midterms on Tuesday. In each class, including my women’s history course, the midterm was designed to take ninety minutes. Within that time, students were to answer two out of three essay questions within their blue books.

Yesterday, after my 25B (Women in American Society) class, two of my students asked to meet with me briefly. Both young women were very concerned that they each had done poorly on the exam for the same reason, namely that they had spent too much time answering the first question leaving themselves little time for the second. I gave them my standard spiel about the importance of time management, and reminded them that no matter how poorly they had done on the midterm, a strong final exam could go a long way towards lifting their course grade.

But we also talked briefly about perfectionism. For years, I’ve given the same classic exams: “blue book” essays, with students required to complete two prompts within a given period of time. Each essay is worth 50 points. And I’ve noted that my female students, particularly the very bright ones, often have a great deal of trouble managing their time effectively. Part of the trick of doing well on these exams is learning to let go of the perfectionist desire to write one flawless essay. Spending the full class period crafting one beautiful, elegant paper will earn the student a poor grade. One “50″ (a perfect score) and one “0″ is an F grade; two “35s” will earn a C.

There’s a method to this madness, and its rooted in more than a desire to inflict upon my students the same testing techniques that were inflicted on me. Learning how to write well under time pressure is an important, even vital academic skill. From a pedagogical standpoint, we can debate whether or not that’s as useful a skill as some academics imagine it to be. But there’s little doubt that my students, as they transfer on to four-year institutions, will continue to be exposed to tests that evaluate their competence at writing effectively under time pressure. And as long as these tests are given at places like UCLA, I have an obligation to prepare my students for those exams.

But there’s another purpose too, one that ties in to feminist work. I’ve written a lot about the “Martha Complex”: the relentless pressure that so many young women feel to be “perfect” in every area of their lives. This perfectionism shows up in disordered eating of course, but it also shows up in the tendency of many of the best and brightest to overload themselves with work, volunteer activities, and family obligations. Classic symptoms of the Martha Complex include near-constant anxiety and exhaustion. Not surprisingly, those with the Martha Complex feel a huge pressure to do well on exams. So knowing this, why do I offer the particular sort of tests that I do? Continue reading ‘Blue book essays and the Martha Complex: on time management, test-taking, and letting go of perfectionism’

On “Warrior Girls”, knee injuries, and the tangible costs of adolescent perfectionism: some thoughts on Michael Sokolove’s article

Published
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Hugo Schwyzer
on May 08, 2008
in Athletics and Fitness, Body, Favorite Posts 2008, Mentoring, Sports, The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls and Youth
. 13 Comments

The New York Times has a preview up today of a long article coming out on Sunday in their magazine: The Uneven Playing Field. It’s by Michael Sokolove, and based on his forthcoming book Warrior Girls: Protecting our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports. (I’ve pre-ordered the book, and will review it this summer when it comes out.)

In this lengthy adaptation on the Times website, Sokolove writes about what he sees as the extraordinary number of knee (ACL) injuries that are being sustained by female athletes, soccer players in particular. His thesis:

(the epidemic is) part of a national trend in the wake of Title IX and the explosion of sports participation among girls and young women. From travel teams up through some of the signature programs in women’s college sports, women are suffering injuries that take them off the field for weeks or seasons at a time, or sometimes forever.

Girls and boys diverge in their physical abilities as they enter puberty and move through adolescence. Higher levels of testosterone allow boys to add muscle and, even without much effort on their part, get stronger. In turn, they become less flexible. Girls, as their estrogen levels increase, tend to add fat rather than muscle. They must train rigorously to get significantly stronger. The influence of estrogen makes girls’ ligaments lax, and they outperform boys in tests of overall body flexibility — a performance advantage in many sports, but also an injury risk when not accompanied by sufficient muscle to keep joints in stable, safe positions. Girls tend to run differently than boys — in a less-flexed, more-upright posture — which may put them at greater risk when changing directions and landing from jumps. Because of their wider hips, they are more likely to be knock-kneed — yet another suspected risk factor.

The rate (of ACL injury) for women’s soccer is 0.25 per 1,000, or 1 in 4,000, compared with 0.10 for male soccer players. The rate for women’s basketball is 0.24, more than three times the rate of 0.07 for the men. The A.C.L. injury rate for girls may be higher — perhaps much higher — than it is for college-age women because of a spike that seems to occur as girls hit puberty.

At this point, my heart was sinking. Was this going to be anti-feminist ideology dressed up as professed concern for the health of young women? Was Sokolove trying to scare parents into pulling their daughters out of competitive sports? I even wondered if Sokolove was some sort of shill for the anti-Title IX crowd, trying a new tactic in their never-ending crusade to roll back a policy of equal funding for women’s sports. As a passionate sports fan, married to a former club soccer star, I have a deep and abiding commitment to women’s athletics — particularly the “beautiful game” of what the rest of the world calls football.

Happily, reading the article to the end (it is ten pages long) makes it at least fairly apparent that Sokolove is committed to women’s sports. Rather than imploring parents to pull their daughters off soccer teams, he writes sensibly and knowledgeably about the causes of what is undeniably a common problem: catastrophic ACL injuries among young female soccer players. The chief culprits have nothing to do with inherent feminine weakness. Rather, they are two-fold: poor bio-mechanics and the exhausting “club” system in high school and college that leaves many talented girls playing a demanding sport literally year-round. Continue reading ‘On “Warrior Girls”, knee injuries, and the tangible costs of adolescent perfectionism: some thoughts on Michael Sokolove’s article’

A long and enthusiastic review of “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 11, 2007
in Books, Eating disorders, Feminism and The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls
. 10 Comments

It’s been a smoky week here in Southern California. Two places I know well have been burning: Griffith Park and Catalina Island. I know almost all the trails in the former; the latter hosts one of my favorite dirt marathons, which I last did in 2004. I’m thinking this morning about the people who’ve been displaced, the firefighters who have worked so hard, and about all the countless animals who’ve been terrified, hurt, or worse.

In comparison, all I’ve faced is a little tightness in my chest from running hard in this poor air we’ve got, with a little stinging around the eyes. Not much to worry about by comparison. Some friends and I did the 8.6 mile Mt. Wilson trail early this morning, and coming down we could see the brown haze of smoke and other pollutants sitting on top of the entire L.A. basin.

So, last night I finished Courtney Martin’s Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating your Body It’s a powerful book, even as it revisits familiar ground. This is a long post, so the rest will be below the fold. Continue reading ‘A long and enthusiastic review of “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters”’

More on young women and perfectionism, people-pleasing, and the enduring fear of the “slut”

Published
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Hugo Schwyzer
on April 25, 2007
in Favorite posts 2007, Feminism, Sexuality, Teaching, The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls and Youth
. 15 Comments

It’s a busy day here, and the great disappointment of the next few hours is that I won’t get to see any of the Liverpool-Chelsea Champions League semifinal.

I saw Courtney Martin on MSNBC this morning, talking about her book. I’ve got her book, and Jessica Valenti’s new one, both coming in the mail. I look forward to reviewing them both on this blog. Based on excerpts that appeared here, I had some comments here and here about the Martin tome.

I am so glad that a larger discussion of women’s perfectionism and people-pleasing is really taking off in the blogosphere. Of all the posts I’ve put up this year, my Fourteen Marthas, not one Mary is perhaps the one of which I am most proud. And I was delighted to read an outstanding take on this same subject, also inspired by the Martin book, from Amanda Marcotte. Read the whole post, but this insight is key:

My theory is that perfectionism is the tribute that women with opportunities pay to sexism.

Read the rest of the post to see that idea fleshed out.

One of Amanda’s commenters got me thinking, asking:

Any thoughts, Amanda, on the connection between perfectionism and purity? I sometimes feel as if perfectionism is the new purity, or the traditional demand for female purity in new clothes, or women’s response to still-current demands for female purity, but I’m wondering if you see this connection as well.

Amanda hasn’t answered yet, but I’ve been mulling it this morning.

One aspect of perfectionism and people-pleasing that I haven’t touched on is related to the “purity” obsession, and that’s the tendency I’ve noticed in many young women for perfectionism (and compulsive dieting) to be closely connected to sexual guilt. Bear with me, as I’m musing here — this is a theory in process of being developed, but it’s grounded in years of teaching and youth work.

A disturbing number of young women still seem profoundly conflicted about sex. Statistics tell us — and my own experience as a pro-feminist gender studies professor and longtime youth leader tells me as well — that a great many teenage girls and college-aged women are “having sex.” Some of them come from conservative backgrounds in which pre-marital sex is seen as immoral and sinful, and some come from more liberal environments where “safety” rather than “purity” is emphasized. Some speak (and write in their journals) enthusiastically and positively about their sexual decision-making, while others seem tormented by ambivalence, anxiety, and guilt.

It’s remarkable how persistent the notion that “good girls don’t” has proven. Young women born in the last two decades, a generation after the sexual revolution, and raised in tolerant, even feminist households, still sometimes quietly report (and again, folks, this is all anecdotal based on my teaching and mentoring experience) guilt and conflict over their sexual choices. Even when they didn’t absorb the “True Love Waits” message from parents or pastors or peers, they couldn’t help but pick up the romantic ideal of “waiting ’till marriage” from somewhere in the broader culture. Though Disney movies never explicitly reference virginity before marriage, the girls I work with “assume” that the “princesses are all virgins.” And the number of high school and college-aged young women whose views were partly shaped by the “princess” culture — which is surely part of the “purity” culture” — is stunningly high.

Again, all anecdotal: I think there is a connection between guilt (or at least ambivalence) over pre-marital sex and an intensified perfectionism. Far too many of our little sisters, far too many of my students, still internalize the message that having sex too early makes them into “bad girls” and “sluts.” And whether or not they articulate that sense of undeserved shame, it seems to me that many of them overcompensate by trying all the harder to be “perfect and pure” in other areas. The desire to mold the body to more closely meet an unobtainable ideal often seems to intensify once a young woman becomes sexually active, and I don’t think it’s always because of an anxiety about pleasing a boyfriend. It seems at least partially linked to a desire to prove that “even if I’m having sex, I’m still a ‘good girl’, and I prove my ‘goodness’ through self-denial, through exercise, through even more of an effort to live up to a societal ideal.”

Even in our own relatively liberated era, pre-marital virginity remains an explicit ideal for many and an implicit ideal for many more. Many of my students talk boldly and confidently about their sexual decision-making in one breath, and express occasional wistfulness about “a white wedding” and “waiting until then” in the other. (Some, of course, are completely unconflicted, and I don’t mean to diminish them. Then again, there are some young women who don’t feel tortured by the ideal of slenderness either. Would that their numbers were greater!) Many of them seem to feel as if by choosing to become sexually active, they’ve fallen short. And some of these seem to compensate for their own perceived failure in this one area by redoubling their efforts in another. Call it the “if I’m earning straight As and I’m volunteering 20 hours a week and I’m on this committee and president of that club and playing this position on that team and keeping my body at that weight, then I can’t possibly be the bad girl that somewhere inside of me I’m afraid that I am” syndrome.

Some of my secular feminist allies may doubt that this guilt (and the concomitant compensation with perfectionism) is linked as closely to sex as I suggest. My conservative friends may embrace the theory as further “evidence” that pre-marital sex is bad, particularly for young women. If even women who weren’t pressured to “wait” by their families still seem sometimes to feel conflicted about their sexual choices, my right-wing buddies will no doubt argue, isn’t this evidence that pre-marital sexual activity violates some natural desire on the part of all women to save themselves for their husbands? I am reluctant to give that old canard any credence at all, and I fear that I may be doing so here. (After all, it’s obvious that chastity is no prophylaxis against anxiety or people-pleasing; spend time in any conservative evangelical community, and you’ll run into lots of exhausted, weight-obsessed virgins.)

I write as a professor and a mentor who has been teaching classes on gender and sexuality for well over a decade; I’ve read countless student journals and led innumerable small group discussions with both college and high-school women. I am convinced, as Courtney Martin is convinced, that guilt, perfectionism, anorexia, and people-pleasing are epidemic among young women today, and that that epidemic extends to every strata of American society. I am worried that despite generations of progress to create a more egalitarian society, many young women today still feel a crushing pressure to live up to unobtainable ideals. The shame and guilt they struggle with is different, perhaps, from that with which their grandmothers wrestled, but it is no less debilitating. And I am at least somewhat convinced that the ancient, ugly, lingering stigma of the “slut” and the “dirty girl” plays a considerable part in the “perfection projects” of a great many young women today.

Some thoughts on Courtney Martin, young women’s exhaustion, “if/then” thinking and the corporate appropriation of feminist language

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 23, 2007
in Feminism, The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls and Youth
. 25 Comments

Since I posted yesterday on this excerpt from Courtney Martin’s new book, I’ve been thinking more about this one phrase of hers that troubled me:

We are the daughters of feminists who said, “You can be anything” and we heard “You have to be everything.”

On the one hand, I recognize the truth here — so many young women do hear the first message as the second. And Martin is right that for a particular generation of feminists — those raised in the 1960s and 1970s, the mothers of today’s young perfectionists — the “you can be anything” message was absolute gospel. But (and I say this not having read the entire book yet, only this excerpt) I’m worried that casual readers might come away with the impression that organized feminism is somehow chiefly to blame for the crushing, exhausting burdens our little sisters now carry in their hearts and in their bodies.

I worry about this interpretation because it’s one I sometimes hear from my more conservative students in my women’s studies course. These young women are keenly aware of the pressure to be thin and beautiful, independent and multi-faceted. Like their sisters, they are often raw and tired and frustrated. But somehow they’ve picked up the impression that feminism is to blame for their exhaustion. They come into the course with a sense of the past (picked up from both the mainstream and conservative media) that is idealized and sanitized. And their sense is that not so long ago (usually, they point to the supposed halcyon days of the 1950s), women had fewer pressures. One young woman wrote in her journal a year or two ago (I remember her words fairly vividly, though this is surely a paraphrase):

I wish I lived fifty years ago. I would then only have to be a wife and a mother. I could be curvy, like Marilyn, instead of super-thin. I wouldn’t have to worry about both a relationship and a career. I wouldn’t have to cope with the mixed message of “love is all you need to be happy” and “don’t rely on a man, stay single and free.” I wouldn’t feel so much pressure to please everybody, instead I could just focus on pleasing my husband and my children. Yes, I would have much less freedom to do things, but I would have so much more freedom from pressure. And maybe this course will prove me wrong, but it seems to me that feminism, by asking us to do everything men do as well as what women do, has made things worse for us.

(By the way, perhaps in honor of FDR, I often talk about “freedom from” and “freedom to” in the context of feminist history. That dyad comes up early in the course, and my students get sick of hearing about it.)

My student — and perhaps Courtney Martin, though I can’t gauge the latter’s intent until I read the whole darned book — makes a serious and common mistake. On the one hand, many young women today have no authentic sense of just how rigid, stifling, and fundamentally unsatisfying domesticity was for millions of American women two generations ago. I give them excerpts from The Feminine Mystique, but many of them remain captivated by the fantasy that a good marriage and healthy children (perhaps with a nice house, white picket fence, and so forth) is all that any woman needs for deep and enduring happiness. While they admit to considerable cynicism about the chances of finding “a good guy”, many of them speak wistfully and nostalgically of a golden age when women could be softer, rounder, and less pressured to perform in the classroom and the boardroom. Trying to convince them that that “golden age” existed only for a privileged and fortunate few is sometimes hard work. Some folks just don’t want their bubbles burst.

I call these students my “if/then” kids, because so many of them say something like “IF I met the right guy, THEN I would consider getting married and staying home with the kids. It’s what I’d really like to do, but I just don’t think I’m likely to find someone. But if I did, then…” If/then thinking depresses me no end, because it seems to suggest that women’s pursuit of independence is only a response to the lack of honorable, decent, reliable men. If/then thinking suggests that “if only more men were reliable and willing to settle down and stay committed, then feminism wouldn’t be necessary.” It suggests that the goals of the women’s movement were developed entirely in response to bad male behavior, and though there is some historic truth to this, the “if/then” analysis completely underestimates what many feminists (including this one) argue is the healthy and perfectly natural desire for women to be self-determining agents in every aspect of their lives.

So back to the point about feminism and pressure. It’s absolutely true that feminists have told young women “You can be whatever you want to be.” It is absolutely true that the feminist movement has opened up extraordinary possibilities for women, possibilities that simply would not otherwise have existed. And it is true that with more choices there comes the inevitable pressure to make a choice; that’s part and parcel of growing up But no feminist I know now or in the past forty years has pushed the “superwoman” complex onto her daughters! That complex is pushed by a variety of decidedly non-feminist forces (big media, the consumer products industry, big fashion) which realized that women’s spending patterns are heavily driven by insecurity. A woman who is happy in her own skin is inclined, all things considered, to spend a good deal less on clothes, make-up, accessories, diet pills, and so forth. Women’s anxiety and corporate profits are clearly, almost inextricably linked at this point.

Feminists did, as Martin says, tell their daughters “You can be all that you want to be.” But it was Vogue and Elle, MTV and the WB that told those same young women, “yes, you can be anything you like, but here’s our narrowly defined, elusive, unobtainable ideal. Come chase it!” The magazines and the televison programs learned that cloaking their marketing in a thin veneer of feminist rhetoric made it exciting, edgy, palatable. And not surprisingly, many young women today feel alienated by the language of female empowerment because for as long as they’ve been alive, that language has been used to sell them something else that is “indispensable”. They confuse authentic feminism, which is desperately concerned with women’s happiness and self-determination, with a corporate culture that skillfully appropriated that language of personal fulfillment merely to increase its own profits. They don’t fully trust the message because the message has been stolen.

It is undeniable that young women are under colossal emotional pressure these days. The guilt about food, the guilt about failing to people-please, the guilt about letting down everyone around them; it’s all crushing. And it’s true that many of these overworked and anxious young women wouldn’t have the same pressure to succeed if there hadn’t been a feminist movement. But the anxiety they feel isn’t rooted in women’s liberation, it’s rooted in young women’s susceptability to the overwhelming pressure from media and market forces, forces that see a bottomless gold mine in the increased buying power of women. But that buying power will only lead to corporate profits if young women can be kept anxious, unsatisfied, and filled with self-loathing.

Fourteen Marthas, not one Mary: a retreat report and a long meditation on girls, pressure, parents, and people-pleasing

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 12, 2007
in All Saints Pasadena, Christianity, Faith, Favorite posts 2007, Feminism, The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls, Youth and Youth ministry
. 23 Comments

I’m in my office, just before 8:00 on a Monday morning. Daylight Savings Time has arrived early, as almost everyone knows, and I am happy. (Even if getting up this morning at five for my boxing session felt particularly challenging.)

I had a wonderful time once again with the All Saints confirmation class this weekend on our retreat in the San Bernardino mountains. (I’ve written about past retreats on this blog: here are the 2005 and 2006 reports.). I was a bit disappointed by the abnormally warm weather and the nearly complete absence of snow, despite the fact that we were up in the mountains three weeks earlier than usual.

Though in 2005 we had more boys than girls in our confirmation class, this year our gender ratio was wildly skewed. After a couple of cancellations, we ended up taking fourteen girls and one boy up to Big Bear for the weekend retreat. (The boy, a very outgoing and relaxed kid, was more than delighted at his unique status.) In our intimate and emotional discussions Friday night and Saturday, one clear pattern emerged in the stories these young women were telling about their lives.

After years and years of teaching confirmation classes, I’ve noticed that each class has a slightly different “feel.” The 2007 “Seekers” confirmation class is not merely notable for being overwhelmingly female; this year’s crop is also marked by an often frantic desire to live up to the expectations of the outside world. Never have I gone on retreat with so many young women who were so completely exhausted! I’m not talking about temporarily underslept; I’m talking about girls who are 14-16 years old whose daily schedules are as demanding as that of a young Japanese businessman trying to climb the ladder at Sony.

Never have the youth leaders had to work so hard to convince so many kids to take a weekend away! These girls weren’t worried about missing dances or parties. They were worried about missing speech tournaments, SAT prep classes, and biology homework. They were worried about not being able to exercise and stay fit for their various team sport commitments. Many begged to be allowed to bring some books to study from “in our free time.” (We have a fairly strict “no homework” policy; the kids know about this weekend six months in advance.) And the thought of spending forty-eight hours away from their elaborately programmed schedules and responsibilities was terrifying for many of them.

Before a retreat, I always joke with the other youth leaders about “packing plenty of Kleenex”. We expect a lot of tears as we go through our emotional, spirit-filled weekend. But rarely have we had as many sniffles and wet eyes as we did these past few days. On Friday night, as we “checked in” with our fourteen girls and one boy about their lives and their faith journey, it was as if a massive dam had suddenly broken. One after another, they broke down. Some were angry at themselves, others angry at God, many confessed feeling utterly overwhelmed by pressure and expectations. The most common phrase I heard all night was one I don’t always anticipate to be the most common: “I feel so guilty.” These girls had guilt and shame weighing them down. I could see it in the slump of their shoulders, in the puffiness of their eyes.

The specific pressures vary. We have one girl who’s a dancer, a very good one; she’s trying to get ready to audition for professional companies at the same time that she’s carrying a full load of advanced placement classes as a sophomore. Another girl is captain of her debate team and active in student government at her school. Her days begin at five and end at midnight. She does three to four hours of homework a night, tutors underprivileged kids, prepares for speech tournaments and is gearing up to run for class president for next year. She’s a tenth-grader, but her anxiety about not “getting into a good school” and “letting everyone down” is so palpable that when she tries to relax she ends up sitting and shaking rather like a wet chihuahua.

As a feminist and a Christian, the desperate “people-pleasing” of so many of these young women troubles me. Many of them acknowledge carrying the double burden familiar to so many modern women: these girls know that they are expected to live up to traditional feminine standards of behavior and looks, at least much of the time. (Three girls talked quietly about their struggles with disordered eating and body self-loathing.) But in addition to the cultural expectation to be bright-eyed, cheerful, virginal and pleasing, they also feel pressured to be intellectually, athletically, and professionally successful. They all volunteer (often as part of school-mandated community service). Their parents have told them all their lives that they can “be anything they want to be”, which sounds great — until the girls are forced to excel at virtually everything they do in every facet of their lives so as “not to miss out” on any opportunity to succeed. The superwomen complex is alive and well in girls so young that some were born after Bill Clinton became president! That breaks my heart.

As we wrapped up our first session Friday night, I pulled out the Bible. I read two sections. From Matthew, I read my beloved 10:37:

Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

Honestly, it’s often twice as hard to get young women, raised since birth to please and to perform, to grasp this than young men. We are so much more tolerant of male rebellion; we are more tolerant of young men who “take time to find themselves” or who “are going through a slacker phase.” And to put it more simply, more young men seem to have an easier time daring to disappoint their parents. (Of course, there are plenty of boys near collapse from trying to meet other’s expectations. But their numbers are fewer.)

What I wanted the girls to grasp from this passage is that a real relationship with Christ is one that comes unmediated by parents or peers. To live in Christ means to follow Him with the very likely expectation that His plan for your life is not the same as your parent’s hopes. That doesn’t mean that Jesus is an excuse for narcissistic rebellion. But it does mean that if you put pleasing others, especially your parents, ahead of discerning God’s unique plan for your life, then you have missed the point. I made it clear to “my kids”: Christ comes to set captives free, and sometimes the jailers are the very people who love you most.

After praying silently for quick inspiration, I felt called to read Luke 10:38-42:

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Earlier, as our fourteen girls shared, I had realized that I was sitting in a room filled to the rafters with Marthas, with nary a Mary to be found! Like Martha, they are “worried and upset about many things”. They don’t know how to rest; they are “distracted by all the preparations that (have) to be made.” These Marthas — my dear, beautiful, brave, overachieving, anxious, exhausted girls — live lives that are governed by an endless series of “to do lists”. They wake up with “have to’s” and go to bed with “ought to have’s” and spend their days thinking about their “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.” But only one thing is needed, and that is to sit at the foot of God.

It says in Kings, “after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.” The earthquakes and fires in these girls’ lives are all that they hear; they hear only noise, only storm and fury. As I said to them, that “gentle whisper” (what the KJV famously calls the “still small voice”) can’t be heard until you learn to press the mute button at your peers, at your coaches, at your teachers, at Facebook, at Youtube, at Jane Magazine, and yes, at your parents. Martha is too busy to hear the gentle whisper. She worries too much, fearing what will happen if she stops to rest, fearing who she’ll be if she stops her endless motion, her endless people-pleasing. Choosing “what is better” is about placing one’s own spiritual growth ahead of everything else. Choosing Mary’s part over Martha’s is to risk the wrath of some who love and care for you; it is to risk disappointing those who raised you and nurtured you. It is to risk having to confront your own fear of not doing enough. And if you want joy, if you want fulfillment, if you want rest, it’s what you absolutely gotta do.

Thanks to the remarkable success of several waves of American feminism, the girls I work with today have more opportunities than virtually any generation before them. Though they have to confront a misogynistic backlash that has taken root in many aspects of our dominant culture, they have the chance to achieve more and do more and enjoy more than their mothers and grandmothers. But we’ve made the terrible mistake of turning opportunity into obligation. We’ve sucked the joy right out of their over-programmed, over-monitored, over-achieving little lives. True feminism and true Christian faith are absolutely congruent in their mutual opposition to the idea that young women ought to live up to an ever-more demanding set of duties and commitments.

As a feminist and a Christian, I want to see “my girls” becoming more like Mary, less like Martha. And if that means that some of the boys need to go and spend a few minutes taking over Martha’s duties so she can take a break, then they damned well can step up and do it.

UPDATE: My dear mother, long a defender of Martha, writes me today to remind me that many traditions say that Martha ended up in Tarascon, France, where she may well have slain a dragon. It’s a happy thought.