Dirty Little Secrets - Kerry Cohen [35]
In these situations, though, fathers must find ways to do the opposite. They need to actively engage their daughters, to ask them about their interests, their hopes, and their feelings. They must find ways to push past the discomfort and awkwardness that can at times accompany such interactions. Daughters need their fathers. They need every possible person who might love them—who might care about how they feel or might care what happens to them—to actively show them that they do.
Fathers are likewise in an excellent position to teach their girls about the various ways our culture degrades and disrespects females. They can clarify that they will not treat women that way and that they won’t stand for people treating their daughters that way either. They can address how girls are expected to look good rather than do good. They can encourage them to get involved in something that isn’t about what boys want from them, and they can support their daughters’ talents in sports, arts, and intellectual pursuits.
At the same time, they can be understanding that many of their daughters will want to be attractive to boys, will concern themselves with “typical” girl interests, such as clothes and makeup. They can both be careful to not judge those interests and make clear that what makes their daughters special in the world is who they are, not what they look like. This is a hard one, because every last message girls get from mainstream culture suggests the opposite. Every last message tells girls that they are the sum of their physical parts, that they can tell whether they matter in the world by whether boys like them. Fathers are in a unique position to show them that men can feel otherwise, that girls can be wholly loved simply by being themselves.
An odd response to this effort, though, is the purity ball, which we explored briefly in chapter 3. Purity balls are Christian ceremonies in which girls pledge their virginity to their fathers and fathers vow to protect their daughters’ chastity. Girls wear white gowns, fathers wear tuxes, and they slow dance after their vows. But the reasoning behind the creation of these ceremonies might not be what you expect. In a TLC special about them, Randy Wilson of Generation of Light, the Christian organization that founded purity balls, noted that all girls have the same questions: “Am I beautiful? Am I worth pursuing?” He said that fathers needed to answer this question for them so they didn’t go out into the world to find out from someone else.10 While I can get behind the idea that fathers need to be an active part of their daughter’s self-esteem, this idea that girls need to feel beautiful—and therefore worth pursuing—distresses me. If fathers focus on their daughter’s appearance, just like the rest of the world is already doing, they miss out on the chance to teach their daughters that they are worth pursuing for much better reasons.
Worse, the purity balls drop all the control over who a girl can be as a sexual creature into fathers’ laps—into men’s laps. The message is this: “Men know what’s best for you. Your father decides who you can be sexually.” It would make much more sense to me to have mothers and daughters in such ceremonies, where mothers pledge to share their wisdom and guidance regarding sex, and where daughters vow to communicate with their mothers about their sexual exploration.
Janice’s story is a good example that shows how purity balls, and the intention behind them, miss the mark on what girls need from their fathers. Her father died from cancer when she was eleven, just as she was in the throes of puberty. She has many positive memories of him comforting her when she was scared, playing games with her, and reading to her at bedtime. Janice’s mother was devastated after his death, and Janice remembers those first few years as grief stricken