Solana Pasqual
Trigger Warning: Rape, Sexual Assault, Pedophilia, Slut-Shaming
As a collective, we have conditioned, and been conditioned, to encourage and enforce girls to become little womxn. Alcott drew on the phrase “little women” in order to represent where “… childhood and elder childhood were 'overlapping' with young womanhood” [1]. But I am using the term in the very literal sense - girls as physically small womxn. I believe that most girls are never given the change to overlap with young womanhood or experience this discomfort for a very long period of time.
I believe this because of the way girls tend to be brought up in Western societies. Emotionally, girls are asked to take on the burdens of others’ perceptions of them, and it is when this happens that innocent childhood is taken away and replaced with the responsibility of being a part of a collective society. There are a lot of minute details that subtly enforce the forced growth of girls into womxn, but I want to bring to attention three very broad areas that give evidence to the emotional burden of being little womxn.
Body Perceptions
I personally cannot understand the general discourse on dress coding in schools - I believe that it enforces a viewpoint that prioritizes male comfort and cognitive focus over the freedom and education of girls. This lends example of the general societal idea that men must be made comfortable, and that their successes are their own but their failures are collective. And I do not agree with this archaic opinion of fabric on bodies. However, this policing of girls’ bodies suggests a darker reality that turns girls into sexualized womxn - it promotes the idea that girls (young as six, “old” as seventeen or eighteen) personify sex appeal.
Take a moment to think about what “distracting to boys and male superiors” really means. What if I phrased it differently: “distracting to boys and male superiors due to outfits that create feelings of sexual appeal.” How does that sit? For me, not well. Because when we tell girls to dress modestly, we are telling girls that their bodies are inherently sexualized and they are at fault for being subjugated to the male gaze. When we dress code girls, we are telling their male peers and their adult male superiors that it is not their fault for sexualizing girls - it is the girls’ fault for gratifying and indulging them.
What has led us to compare the spaghetti-strap tank top of a twelve-year old girl to the sexualized images of womxn that we see in movies, TV shows, and ads? How can we justify dress coding unless we justify the predatory lens in which we view the bodies of girls? We have normalized girls and womxn as sexualized beings to such a great extent that they are no longer seen as human, but as objects. We have so normalized this lens that instead of protecting girls and womxn from these perspectives and these perpetrators, we instead join in on the emotional burden that creates the conditions for these predatory perspectives to fester. And what do we call these girls and womxn?
Sluts.
We insinuate that girls are sluts when they choose to wear dress-codable clothing because instead of judging the rule, we judge the rule breaker. Instead of acknowledging that you do not have to be a bad person to uphold bad values, we turn the blame of the rule breaker. And when the rule breaker faces the consequences of a society who inherently works against their best interests, who are we to judge?
For those who are concerned about the increasing number of girls in middle schools and in high schools dressing like adult womxn, instead of using this as a justification for dress-coding, take a minute to understand the history of the progression of girls’ and womxn’s clothing and meanings behind them. If a girl is accused of playing to men’s desires when she is twelve and wearing shorts, how can we turn around and be surprised when girls then choose to wear what they want because they will be judged and sexualized anyhow.
This is the core of the discourse of dress-coding: we view it from the male gaze. Instead of understanding the logical and realistic reasoning for articles of clothing on girls, we understand and empathize with the emotional perspective of a predatory male and then inflict it upon the previously innocent body.
Media Labels
This leads me to media perceptions. How the media labels girls is directly correlated with the ways in which we label girls in education, at home, and in broader social settings. I am speaking directly on the emerging discourse on how huge newspapers like The New York Times and New York Magazine labelled the girls that Epstein sexually assaulted as “underage women”[2]. This article is not a criticism of these media outlets, their politics, or the politics of those Epstein fraternized with. This is a criticism of the broader societal viewpoint that has normalized sexualizing girls’ bodies to the point where instead of girls, they are “underage women.” The underage woman only exists as a societal abstract - she has no foundation in female biological science, and in modern society, cannot be justified as a body radically different in abilities compared to her male counterpart.
So, why do we call girls “underage women”? To me, this suggests an empathetic viewpoint both towards the girls who Epstein sexually assaulted, and interestingly enough, also towards Epstein and every male who has performed the same acts as he did.
I believe that most people have an aversion to pedophilia and performing or imagining sexual acts on girls and children. I think that unless you have directly been affected by pedophilia, and/or predatory behaviour, we are all privileged in being able to distance ourselves mentally and emotionally from these acts - they are unspeakable. Our society also has a big issue with reporting emotional truths; we tend to sugarcoat and skirt around dicey issues because they make us uncomfortable, and with that discomfort, we unknowingly participate in marginalizing these acts to a point where we do not even believe they exist when we have the proof. So, instead of reporting rape and sexual assault on girls, media outlets report it as rape and sexual assault on underage women. Because we can understand the sexualization of womxn. We can understand why we find sex appeal and gratification in womxn. It’s the same reason we dress-code. We dress-code so that the societal conditioning of sexualization on all perceived female bodies is not predatory, it is simply upholding the rules. We say “underage women” so that we are not uncomfortable with the idea that our internal socialization of the sexualization of all female appearing bodies has led to the pedophilia and the predatory acts by Epstein and his friends.
There is another reason for the term “underage women.” People, and especially mxn, are very hesitant to label behaviours and mentalities as sexual harassment, abuse, sexual assault, and rape because they themselves have performed these acts or microaggressions or thought these things. We as a society have so normalized the predatory and abusive behaviours of mxn that when we do break the mold and actually report on these issues and label them as “issues,” it implicates a lot of people. One of the main reasons why people do not believe survivors of sexual assault and rape is because if they admit that the act was sexual assault and rape, they would have to admit that they were/are perpetuating and/or directly engaging in that behaviour. When media outlets report girls as “underage women,” it alleviates a lot of emotional toll and responsibility on those who have committed these acts but have gotten away with it.
Legal Convictions
Speaking on Epstein and his crimes leads to my last point - the legal convictions of girls tried as adults. I am talking about the case of Cyntoia Brown. Brown, who was homeless at the time, met 24-year-old McGlothen, who would pimp her out and then beat and rape her if she didn’t come back with money [3]. In August 2004, she met 43-year-old Allen who paid her $150 for sex and showed her his gun collection which prompted Brown to fear for her life [4]. She killed him while sleeping, and stole his truck, wallet, and guns, which she maintains was for her pimp so that he would not hurt her [5]. At the age of 16, Brown was tried as an adult for murder, and was only later granted clemency at the age of 31 [6].
Brown also went on to say in her memoir Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System that until she was studying for her degree while in prison, she had never realized that there was no such thing as a “teen prostitute” [7]. She goes on to say: “Why are teenagers who are trafficked like [I was] being exploited and taken advantage of, but society has just been telling us we’re bad, that we’re promiscuous?”[8].
What Brown is saying directly pertains to the argument that girls are viewed as little womxn. They are given the burden of the whole world, and expected to maintain this responsibility with the poise of an adult womxn, and are punished like an adult womxn when they fail. Why are we blaming the actions of a 16-year-old girl instead of the actions of the two predatory mxn who abused her, and the legal system who refused to acknowledge the fact that she was a child? If your main point against Brown is that she needed to be held responsible for her actions, you are directly perpetuating this system that creates environments that encourage dangerous, predatory behaviour without consequences. Instead of questioning the methods in which girls have chosen to defend themselves, think about why they needed to in the first place.
"The body which only a moment before I inhabited with such ease now floods my consciousness. I have been made into an object" - Bartky, 1990.
References
[1] Google Books. (2019, Nov 18). Little Women. https://books.google.ca/books/about/Little_Women.html?id=CrToDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y
[2] Garber, M. (2019, August 15). The Myth of the ‘Underage Woman’. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-and-the-myth-of-the-underage-woman/596140/
[3] Hodal, K. (2019, October 23). Cyntoia Brown: trafficked, enslaved, jailed for life at 16 – and fighting back. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/oct/23/cyntoia-brown-long-trafficked-enslaved-jailed-for-life-at-16-and-fighting-back
[4] Hodal, 2019
[5] Hodal, 2019
[6] Hodal, 2019
[7] Hodal, 2019
[8] Hodal, 2019
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