Girl-ness

I must've been 7 or 8; I don't know where I was, or who the kid was, but I do remember his question. "Are you a boy or a girl?"

I was taken aback, and for some reason I could not name, ashamed. Maybe because I thought it would be obvious, or should be, that I was a girl. Looking at old pictures, I can see now why he was confused. I had my hair cut short most of my childhood, was tall for my age, and detested skirts and the color pink. I had no "signifiers to be read" as my lit crit professors would say, none of the trappings children are taught to associate with "female." Certainly no figure at that age. No makeup. My face no more "soft" or "feminine" than any boy's, my eyelashes no longer. I was androgynous, outside the categories. And because kids are the Great Classifiers, he needed to know where I belonged.

It was an episode that came back to trouble me through my childhood and adolescence, even though becoming a member of the bra-wearing set by age 11 made it easy for people to place my gender. Still, I was never terribly good at being "femmy." I wasn't any good at sports or mechanics either, which denied me the comfort of being a tomboy. I was bookish, shy, uninterested in clothes and makeup (though I tried not to be.) Worse, I argued aggressively about things I cared about and was no good at playing stupid. I liked some girl things and had girl friends, but when we played House or any game which needed a male role, I was usually called upon to do it. I would go along, but it wasn't a skill I talked about or was proud of. Instead it made me feel like the freakish one of the group, the one relegated to the secondary Ken-doll roles.

It's shocking to a lot of people when I say that I had no friends at all in junior high and high school. I spent those six years in a near-perfect solitude brought about by my family's moving a lot and the general weirdness of adolescence. My parents were concerned when I spent every night alone in my room with books, not dating, not hanging out, a teenage hermit. Waiting to grow up and get out. I had stopped trying to be a girl, or even a normal teen, and dreamed of being an eccentric writer with an exciting life. I assumed I was too freakish, too ugly to change and be a success as a girl.

Their attempts to help me "out of my shell" came to nothing, and were painful besides, but they didn't know what else to do. Well-meaning female relatives did their best to teach me all the girly things; lipstick (which I still hate), base, blush, and eye makeup that I wore to hide pimples and my "too pale" skin, pantyhose, high heels, teased 80's hair. But it never looked right or natural. Either I ended up looking too much like my mom (I got mistaken for a teacher more than once) or like someone who'd heard about fashion once but never quite grasped the concept. I had no one my age to give me fashion advice. I was like an anthropologist trying to blend in with a group of chimps; no one was fooled. As a girl, I was a failure.

Now to some, the logical outcome of this would be my discovery that I was in fact a lesbian. Because that's what non-femmy girls are, right? But like "tomboy", "lesbian" was a label that did me no good whatsoever. I was and remain a lustful appreciator of the male sex, which I find irresistibly...well...yummy. I didn't want to be a guy, but there were many, many guys I wanted. A feeling that I never had about a female.

But getting out of high school, and living the life between then and now, has largely healed my self-image. Fewer people expect me to giggle or mince, and a serious attitude is no longer a curiosity. I've stopped wearing makeup except for ceremonial occasions. I've been happily single. I've married a man who wasn't interested in cutesy-pie girlishness. Nowadays I look forward to the ravages of age, in a way, making it less and less possible for me to do anything about my appearance, because then I will feel even less pressure to do anything the least bit girlish. I've graduated to "woman", a place that is less defined and less restrictive, and I never have to go back. All they can add to it now is "old", which doesn't bother me in the least.

Which is why I can't help having mixed feelings about the use of "girl", "grrl", "gurlz", etc. as feminist labels, along with an affection for the color pink and makeup pointers. There's nothing wrong with it technically, and feminism should certainly embrace any woman who makes her own choices and believes in herself. But to me, "girl" is a prison I was glad to escape from, an attitude that had nothing to do with who I really was. When I read perky "girl-power" articles that revel in obsessions with clothes and makeup, I am just bored and irritated. It's not that I don't enjoy both of those things in a dress-up sense; despite my fashion failures, I was always good at costume, and loved Halloween. But I like to do so once or twice a year, not every frikkin' day.

Even at this stage of the game, even with women I otherwise agree with politically and ideologically, I find myself marooned on the far side of what it means to be a "girl." Paired with that is the knowledge that advertisers encourage magazines to push "girl power" to give feminist cover to what is basically another lipstick ad.

It's strange that "girl" should be seen as a powerful word, if you think of it. Girlhood (as opposed to childhood), is a time when you are confused, vulnerable, ignorant of the world and yet under its spell. It's the time of the "clique", rankings of "best" friends, deciding to make someone the goat and then ignoring them out of pure meanness. Those slumber parties everyone remembers with fondness were also when your "friends" tried to humiliate you by freezing your bra or putting toothpaste on your pillow. When you ran to the bathroom to try and stop yourself from crying, which would make the disgrace worse. When you wondered why friendship hurt so much, why you were so ugly and stupid that others would want to pick on you. When you hurt them just as much if you got the chance, and tried not to feel ashamed. Every friendship made came with hidden trapdoors, and letting your guard too far down could mean your secret confession was all over school the next day.

Maybe I was never good at being a girl because my pre-girlhood years lasted longer (and were lonelier) than a lot of kids'. Until about 2nd grade, I had no long-term friendships because I traveled with my parents and was partly home-schooled. I'd gotten used to amusing myself with books and dolls and stories, and had no inkling what spending time with other girls my age was like. When I re-entered their society, it was too late; I'd lost my chance to be indoctrinated. Therefore, I didn't respond the way I was supposed to when girls tried to shame me by ignoring me. It was easier to shrug and walk away, and eventually to not approach them at all. By junior high this was such second nature that I had difficulty even trying to make friends; the costs were so high and the benefits so uncertain. It didn't seem worth it, even if I was desperately lonely sometimes, and felt the sting of being outcast.

But in those hours spent alone or seeing others get hurt, I comforted myself by developing a strong ideal of friendship. I pictured something self-sacrificing, where secrets were sacred and two (or more) people could join in a spiritual way that had nothing to do with the social cliques, that was in fact opposed to them. Who wouldn't want a friend like that? Who wouldn't want to be a friend like that? But real friendship, like real love, is exceedingly rare, and I hardly ever stumbled across it. It may even be getting more rare nowadays, since it gets so little good press. The friendship promoted in movies and "girl-power" articles is often so shallow, or sentimental, that it's a cliche, not even worth having, a waste of time. Not real at all.

Someday, should I ever have a daughter, I'll have to deal with girlhood again, and watch her be confused, and angered, and hurt by it. I'm not looking forward to that. But I do have hope that I can teach her that it doesn't matter how successful you are at being a real girl, just so long as you do your best to be a real person.