Remember the Gifts of Girlhood: Women’s History Month

My girl childhood was full of wonder. Alone in my pink palace, I walked on plastic, blister-guarantee princess heels, their platforms raising me an inch, a mile closer to the top of the world. I was an engineer, drawing tracks and road lines and parking spaces for my pink Barbie Jeep to cruise on. In the books I read, I was a witch, a voyager on the tumultuous whitecaps of the seas or a heroic princess sent to slay a dragon. Sometimes I was a model, flaunting full-body mismatched tie-dye and two different shoes, (just like one of my heroes, Punky Brewster). I went on secret quests and tried to catch ghosts in my house. I was fascinated by killer whales and Greek gods and how on earth hand sanitizer worked. I believed in unicorns and people who were good. I wanted to know everything, be everyone. I thought the world, with all its wisdom, was something I could swallow. 

And maybe it was. Maybe there was a window of my life where no part of me ever doubted I could be anything and everything. There is a time when I, we, girls, exist in a state of mind and body that only belongs to us. That state is called girlhood.

Girlhood is something sacred. It contains magic, multitudes and sometimes sparkles. It is extremely important. Girlhood changes with each era of our lives, and I argue that we have so much to learn from it. The word “girl” implies an innocence, a patronized naivety. But is there anything wrong with that? Is ignorance bliss? Or is there some lesson to be learned from our younger selves: the selves that cared, trusted and dreamed harder than we ever will again? 

Girlhood allowed us to be unapologetically ourselves, before we began to see the expectations and judgments present for us in society in womanhood, and it taught us to see no problem in others doing the same. We don’t realize the beauty in ingenuity before it is gone. 

Another key factor of girlhood is the way we loved both ourselves and our friends. When I think about the friends I held close and the self I was when I was younger, I can’t think of anything but unconditional, whole-hearted love. The only thing we expected out of our friends was loyalty and laughter. We friendship-bracelet knotted our soul ties so tight that no harm could ever come and gave grace to simple mistakes,  because we didn’t know how to judge our faults. So what if we never lost that? What if we all cared about each other and ourselves the way we cared about our best friend when we were 13? There is no greater love than this: a love fastened with eternal care and sealed with a pinky promise. Loving and caring is harder when the world we live in doesn’t value these ideas, and therefore it is especially important that we reclaim our girlhood now, for a continued connection and support between women.

If society as a whole claimed the values we had in girlhood, I sincerely believe we’d be in a much different place. Women have felt the force of oppression for lifetimes, and today we face a scary reality. We have grown to understand that the world does not put us first, or even close to it, but seems to thrive off stripping the rights and freedoms that women have fought for, harrowingly and endlessly.

Carol Gilligan, an ethicist and psychologist, has researched and developed a framework called “The Ethics of Care.” This framework centers around the idea that as humans, we relate. We all have human experiences and therefore should care about others’ human experience. This correlates to women and feminism, as it incorporates emotion into reasoning. Over time, women have been deemed too emotional, too confessional. But doesn’t emotion and the ability to respond to problems with kindness and empathy sound like a good start? I am not suggesting a divide but rather a unification of everyone on the basis of these ideals. 

This Women’s History Month, my heart is heavy but hopeful. As girls grow into women, we have to become stronger and more brave to combat the decreasing care and protection of us and our rights. I have witnessed first-hand the impact of women who care and believe in each other, themselves and the future of us. I see it in our history, in bar bathrooms and in clusters on street corners. It is evident that sisterhood and solidarity is not lost among us, and we must fight to keep it this way and to grow our strength together. Our girlhood has given us a foundation for the way we treat others and see problems. It stands for unity and individuality, for care and beauty, which is present in all of us.

Female influence and connection is powerful. We don’t ever have to lose the beauty that girlhood gave us, and we can’t afford to. The freedom, fun, mystique and kindness it offers to us and our lives is far too important to let go of. 

This Women’s History Month, remember the girls and women who shaped our lives: mothers, sisters, trailblazers and fighters who cared.