because no woman, apparently, can ever, ever be enough

[rm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/education/01girls.html

Comments

[manycolored.livejournal.com]

I think I'll go stab myself repeatedly with a butter knife now.

Lately I've become hyperaware of how inadequate I feel. Not particularly brilliant, talented, hardworking, ambitious, creative, unique, well-read, well-traveled... I even feel bad for having boring, overdone neuroses and for not being all better already.

Comparisons are hell. Competition is hell.

If I compared myself to my sensei in any way, I might as well just blink out of existence right now. It is a much better idea to learn from him, because he somehow manages to impress on me that I'm worthwhile and nifty. I suspect I could feel inadequate about that too - why can't *I* be that kind, gentle, and insightful? Eh, he's just a gift from the Universe, to the Universe.

But one thing he's not is *me*. He can't have my point of view, my flavor of interaction, the wisdom from the lessons I've learned at a cost only I could pay.

One of the many problems with this idealization of the "perfect person" is that commodified, imitable traits become a rigidly restricted lexicon of human potential. In acquiring and advancing in these prescribed areas of excellence, competitors deprioritize and may not even know that they are missing other opportunities for learning, growth, service, fulfillment, etc.

Another is that the ideal is not achievable, at least not consistently. Struggling to maintain the illusion of achieving it becomes the norm. It often involves cheating, self-medicating, and other activities destructive to self, loved ones, and society.

Another is that the ideal is wholly unnecessary except for one purpose: it fills the pockets of some pretty big industries. Otherwise, what does it produce? For every great and influential figure it may produce, it produces so many more cheats, burnouts, and miserable cusses. Most of the greatness is nothing more than an expensive and damaging light-show anyway.

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

Reading this article was deeply upsetting to me. I remember my senior year of high school and the stupid, moronic, pointless pressure (peer and otherwise). Of my friends, I was the underachiever - I ran Latin club, helped out in tech support, and spent most of my spare time on the internet or being sick. The salutatorian of my class was one of these girls, and ended up being publicly humiliated after she'd told everyone in our class that she was valedictorian and then, well, wasn't. She was the best diver in the state all four years of high school.

What's the point of all this? Sure, it's great to challenge yourself. But it's only now that my course of study is directed by interest rather than "Is this class weighted? will it positively impact my GPA?" that I find myself actually learning and growing, finding all of those little corners of myself that I had to shut off to attend to the goal apparent.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

On the positive side, this quote: “I hate it when girls dumb themselves down,” Gabe Gladstone, the co-captain of mock trial, was saying one morning to the other captain, Cameron Ferrey. was encouraging, although it's difficult for me to say if that's what most boys of that age actually believe or merely what they know they are supposed to say.

OTOH, dear gods, the descriptions I've read here and elsewhere are even worse than the pressures on people are my high school, which was quite similar, but also almost 28 years ago. From this and several other articles I've read the pressure is significantly higher on young women than young men. In a word, ugh.

[phaenix-ash.livejournal.com]

that was weirdly depressing...

[annablume.livejournal.com]

Well, at least that's finally getting some attention.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

I have a lot to say about this, since it echoes life in the "advanced" academic track in my high school. But the difference is that we didn't have this weird pressure to be "effortlessly hot." I blame, of course, the media.

My high school prided itself on breeding Ivy League students, and God help you if you went to vocational school or decided to go into the military. Or if you were, like me, really smart but with grades too low to get into Smith or Wellesley or Princeton, or if your parents - shame! - couldn't afford to send you without huge scholarships. Le sigh.

I like this girl Esther, I hope she does OK on her own.

[rm.livejournal.com]

My class for Sing! wrote a musical about how if you got below 1400 on your SATs you didn't get into heaven. The protagonist died dring the test, scoring only a 1390 (what I got, because I couldn't be fucked to deal with it), and as trying to get out of purgatory.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

Exactly. But we were also giving lip service to the lower-tracked kids, like, it's okay to be what you want! but it's not really, becaue you'll get the crappier teachers while we cultivate the smart and/or economically advantaged kids.

I got a 1230 on my SATs. It seems I shouldn't remember that. 720 verbal, and I was mad because it had been a 740 on the PSAT.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I no longer remember my split, oddly. THis was life or death stuff at Stuyvesant. It still gets talked about at reunions.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

That does not speak well to adult life after Stuyvesant.

My split was large, and further evidence that I was not good enough for certain schools, so it's sort of burned into my brain. Remember, I was getting nudged towards Bard, and Hofstra came up only because of the New College within it. I was "special."

[rm.livejournal.com]

Many, many many people I run into from Stuyvestant now strike me as either still or newly deeply unhappy. And they tend to look at me like I have three heads. Why should I be happy? With this?

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

I'm struck that the reality that SAT scores don't matter much after college doesn't set in.

The thing about the girls in this article is that they have such rich cultural lives, however enforced - will they be able to recreate or continue that joy later, or will they drop out and become stoners just to get a break? Will they only associate it with achievement?

Our after-school drama program won awards, but I am forever indebted to our director for imbuing us with this secret (which, I believe, led to the awards): "If you are having fun, the audience will have fun. They will not care if you screw up. They probably won't even notice." It liberated us from this competetive edge. For better and, you know, for worse.

I'm glad that girl went for more Latin even though she was "supposed" to take a science. Yay Latin.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

This was pretty much me in high school. Top scorer on the Honors Level for Academic Decathlon, newspaper editor, state AP scholar (5s on 5 tests, 4s on two tests), debate captain, had a play accepted for a reading at Young Playwrights in New York and ... it always felt like I was an underachiever. I barely missed graduating in the top 3 percent of my high school class -- with a 3.945 gpa. I was devastated when I got a 28 on my ACTs (36 is a perfect score), and still feel like an idiot because of that. The math brought me down. Also devastated because I won only a one year scholarship to my (state) university. I wanted to go Ivy-League, but I had a nervous breakdown after graduation and had to stay home so I wouldn't committ suicide.

I didn't do as well in university thanks to being sick and pretty much continuously, clinically depressed and inadequately treated (one therapist tried to basically blame the way I felt on me because I had a "personality disorder". Heh.). Didn't even graduate cum laude despite having a 3.8 gpa.

I still feel like a loser because of most of that, and I've been out of school for 3 years. Feeling like I do has prevented me from applying to a grad school as well because I don't think I'm good enough to get in. And I really want to go.

So, yeah. This isn't a newfangled 21st century phenomenon. It happened to girls who aren't too much older than these kids. It still effects them.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

But, yeah. Depressing comments aside (I'm still young and admittedly, openly deeply unhappy because of a lot of things, so don't give all that too much weight, yeah?), I don't think this is healthy. The "effortlessly hot" part aside, I think this is just another form of misogyny, but a less recognizable one now because it doesn't have the traditional "be beautiful and snag a good man!" baggage attached to it. It's still telling women that they're only good for one thing (though in this case it's how hard they can work or how smart they are), and that they have to be perfect. I'm honestly a little surprised their mothers don't see this. Though maybe I say that because there are two generations between my mother (she's technically a baby boomer) and me and most people's mothers are younger.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

You know, I deeply, sincerely don't understand how people survive such a life. I would kill myself if I had that little free time. Or no- long before I got to that extreme, I would throw a spoiled fit and start dropping out of things. I couldn't make myself so unhappy.