Girls

We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.

- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Today, I listened to a podcast of a talk that the feminist playwright and activist Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) gave last year at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe. She discussed many things, including the horrifying atrocities committed against women around the world, with particular emphasis on the Congo.  She also talked about something she's found in her travels that she calls an international mandate for women to always have to please. Ensler maintains that girls around the world are trained from infancy that they have to please everybody, everywhere, to do what others want them to do, whether that "other" is their culture, or religion, or parents, or boyfriends, or peers.

I sense that there's a lot of truth in that.  I can only imagine the enormous pressures women and girls must face every day to look like they're "supposed" to look, act like they're "supposed" to act, and speak (or not) as they're "supposed" to, to laugh at jokes that aren't funny but not to laugh at real situations that are, and all to an ever-changing and almost arbitrary set of rules and expectations.  Men are also expected to behave and to act in certain ways, but there's vastly more room for self expression, and far more leniency for deviation  from the norm.  An unattractive man who's a millionaire is still considered successful; an unattractive woman who's a millionaire is often considered to first be homely, "but" rich. 

The enormous pressure on girls to please everybody, everywhere manifests itself in many ways.  Being skinny in order to please the dictates of fashion is one example.  Being submissive at work is another.  Strapping on explosives and becoming a suicide bomber is yet another.  Girls find themselves staying in violent and abusive relationships in order to please boyfriends, or to not displease family and peers with the knowledge that the relationship is imperfect.  Pleasing others is having sex on a date even when the girl doesn't want it, or agreeing not to use a condom when she knows better. 

This universal compulsion to please, Engler says, comes from the pervasive lesson that it will somehow lead to security.  If they are pleasing, girls are taught, then someone will come along and take care of them, and provide for them, and protect them, and love them.  This message is taught over and over again in fairy-tales and children's stories, and later in books, in movies, on television, in magazine articles, and even in places of worship.

But the joke is that we're never really secure.  First, if a girl agrees to pretend to be a certain way rather than who she  really is, is she herself really being loved or is it just the fantasy that she's created?  And even more, sickness, old age, and death still lurk out there.  Impermanence is swift, not to mention infidelity, divorce, bankruptcy, homelessness, crime, violence, and other disasters on the long laundry list of all the things that could go wrong in life (perhaps we should add "laundry" to that list).  Ultimately, we're never really protected and we're really never secure.

So should we attempt to "please" by doing what others want?  While there is merit in kindness, in generosity, in cooperation, and in helpfulness, although these actions may ultimately please their recipients, the self-destructive, soul-crushing conformity that has been held to be the way for girls to please really has no merit whatsoever.

"I want to change that verb, please," Engler says. "I want us all to change that verb.  I want the verb to be educate. Or activate. Or engage, or confront, or defy. Or create. If we teach girls to change the verb, we will actually enforce the girl inside us, and the girl inside them."