Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [133]
Also, I am not claiming that I lived in the good old days and that Cassie lives in the wicked present. I don’t want to glorify or to “Donna Reedify” the fifties, which were not a golden age. They were the years of Joe McCarthy and Jim Crow. How things looked was more important than how things really were. There was a great deal of sexual, religious and racial intolerance. Many families had shameful secrets, and if revealed, they led to public disgrace rather than community help.
I left my town as soon as I could, and as an adult, I have been much happier in a larger, less structured environment. Many of my friends come from small towns, and particularly the smart women among them have horror stories of not fitting in.
What I am claiming is that our stories have something to say about the way the world has stayed the same and the way it has changed for adolescent girls. We had in common that our bodies changed and those changes caused us anxiety. With puberty, we both struggled to relate to girls and boys in new ways. We struggled to be attractive and to understand our own sexual urges. We were awkward around boys and hurt by girls. As we struggled to grow up and define ourselves as adults, we both distanced ourselves from our parents and felt some loneliness as a result. As we searched for our identities, we grew confused and sad. Both of us had times when we were moody, secretive, inarticulate and introspective.
But while some of our experiences are similar, many are radically different. Cassie’s community is a global one, mine was a small town. Her parents were divorcing, mine stayed together. She lives in a society more stratified by money and more driven by addictions. -She’s been exposed to more television, movies and music. She lives in a more sexualized world.
Things that shocked us in the 1950s make us yawn now. The world has changed from one in which people blushed at the term “chicken breast” to one in which a movie such as Pretty Woman is not embarrassing. We’ve gone from a world with no locks on the doors to one of bolt locks and handguns. The issues that I struggled with as a college student—when I should have sex, should I drink, smoke or hang out with bad company—now must be considered in early adolescence.
Neither the 1950s nor the 1990s offered us environments that totally met our needs. My childhood was structured and safe, but the costs of that security were limited tolerance of diversity, rigid rules about proper behavior and lack of privacy. As one man from a small town said, “I don’t need to worry about running my own business because there are so many other people who are minding it for me.” Although my community provided many surrogate parents and clear rules about right and wrong, this structure was often used to enforce rigid social and class codes and to keep people in their place.
Cassie lives in a town that’s less rigid about roles and more supportive of autonomy, but she has little protected space. Cassie is freer in some ways than I was. She has more options. But ironically, in some ways, she’s less free. She cannot move freely in the halls of her school because of security precautions. Everyone she meets is not part of a community of connected people. She can’t walk alone looking at the Milky Way on a summer night.
The ideal community would somehow be able to combine the sense of belonging that small towns offer with the freedom to be oneself that small towns sometimes inhibit. Utopia for teenage girls would be a place in which they are safe and free, able to grow and develop in an atmosphere of tolerance and diversity and protected by adults who have their best interest at heart.
Chapter 13
WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM LISTENING
Fourteen-year-old Brandi was marched into my office by her mother, a tired-looking factory worker from a nearby town who insisted she come for at least one session. While Brandi rolled her eyes and grunted, her mother explained that Brandi had been sexually assaulted by an alcoholic