Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [152]
Some friends of Maria’s came in and she waved at them. “Another thing I don’t like is competition. I love sports, but not competitive sports. Alberto’s the same way. I think we learned that from our folks. They both try to set things up so that everyone wins in our family and no one is competing for anything.”
I asked about sports. “Alberto and I like to play Ultimate Frisbee. We play on a volleyball team on Wednesday nights. We avoid school sports—too much pressure. We want sports to be fun.”
I asked about the future. Maria said, “I’m dreading Alberto’s graduation this year. We’ve been so close that I’ll feel lost without him. He plans to go to Iowa and study writing. For myself, I want to be a political scientist. I am excited about graduation, but also scared.
“I will miss seeing my grandparents every day. They have helped me through things and now they are getting old. One of my sisters starts junior high the year I go to college. I wish I could help her through it.”
I thanked Maria for our interview and told her I thought her “coolness quotient” was quite high. She rolled her eyes and laughed. When I said good-bye, Maria handed me a flyer for the protest against the situation in the Balkans. “Maybe you would be interested in this.”
Both Maria and Evonne have extended families who have played an active role in their lives. Both girls felt close to their families and admired their parents. Their parents had experienced problems—Evonne’s fought against racism and poverty in their youth, and Maria’s grandparents had narrowly escaped death squads in El Salvador. These girls respected their parents’ lives as separate from their own. They didn’t have the belief that their parents were here to make them happy.
Both girls grew up as members of minority groups. This intensified their identity struggles in adolescence. In their cases, it sharpened the issues and helped them discover who they were. When they were young, both girls suffered from people who judged them because of their color. They learned to consider the source and discount such judgments. They were less overwhelmed by the idea that others might judge and reject them. This had happened to them before and they had survived and developed the inner resources to deal with it.
Because of race, Evonne and Maria were different from their peers. Instead of weakening them, this gave them strength. Evonne had a rich tradition of strong black women to draw upon as role models, and Maria had a mother and a grandmother who fought back. Neither of the girls seemed slavishly obsessed with peer acceptance.
Neither of these girls had been a victim of violence or premature sexuality. Both were reluctant to date and had not been sexually active by the time of our interviews. They had resisted pressures to define themselves as sexual. It’s interesting, given how mature they were compared to their peers, that they didn’t feel ready for sex. Likewise they both felt comfortable with their appearance. Evonne had lovely clothes and was beautiful. Almost in spite of herself, Maria was pretty. But neither defined herself on the basis of appearance.
This chapter tells the story of five strong young women: June, Margaret, Caroline, Evonne and Maria. It’s not accidental that two of the young women are black, one is Hispanic and three are poor. Properly faced, adversity builds character. All of these women are fighters. June fought back by talking to her mother’s memory. Margaret would not join a peer culture that was destroying her. Caroline fought her way out of an environment that could easily have trapped her forever. Evonne and Maria forged their own self-definitions independent of peer pressure. I’m reminded of that old chestnut “That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
Unlike Ophelia, most girls recover from early adolescence. It’s not a fatal disease, but an acute condition that disappears with time. While it’s happening, nobody looks strong. Even the girls in this chapter were miserable in junior high. From the vantage point of high school,