Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [153]
No girls escape the hurricane. The winds are simply too overpowering. Fortunately no storm lasts forever. By late high school the winds of the hurricane are dying down and trees begin to right themselves. Girls calm down. Their thinking is more mature and their feelings more stable. Their friends have become kinder and more dependable. They make peace with their parents. Their judgment has improved and they are less self-absorbed. The resisters and fighters survive. When it’s storming, it feels like the storm will never end, but the hurricane does end and the sun comes out again.
Chapter 15
A FENCE AT THE TOP OF THE HILL
On a misty Monday night Sara and I sit on the floor of the Georgian Room at the YWCA. It’s a lovely room with high ceilings, peach carpeting and a grand piano. Baskets of dried flowers and an ancient grandfather clock adorn a marble fireplace. This room was designed for tea drinking by ladies wearing hats and gloves, but tonight twenty of us, dressed in sweat suits and tennis shoes, are here to learn self-defense.
There are several mother-daughter pairs, a trio of adolescent sisters, some college coeds and middle-aged women. Our teacher, Kit, alias Kitty Kung Fu, asks how many of us have hit another person, and two of the teenagers raise their hands.
Kit is aware of our anxiety and keeps the tone funny and relaxed. She hands out materials on prevention. She shows us whistles and Mace and warns us to read the instructions before we are attacked. She teaches us the vital points of the human body and how to punch, kick, break a stranglehold and escape when grabbed from behind.
We pair off and practice. Under crystal chandeliers, we attack each other and struggle to break free. At first we are wimps. We giggle and punch the air with gentle womanly moves; we apologize for our accidental aggression. We have to be reminded to scream, to go for the groin and the eyes.
Gradually we improve. We stop being ladylike and learn some power moves—the Iron Cross and the Windmill. We marvel aloud that these moves might really work. As we practice, Kit walks among us, correcting, coaxing, giving us something we have never had before—instructions on fighting back.
After our self-defense training we sprawl on the floor and watch a film on date rape. I’m gray-haired, I have been married for twenty years and I am unlikely ever to go on another date. This film doesn’t hold my attention, so I look at the fresh faces reflecting light from the television screen. These young women are the granddaughters of the ladies who curled manicured fingers around china cups in this room. Their grandmothers never had lessons in how to bite, kick, scream and scratch. Perhaps some needed these lessons, but most led violence-free lives. These girls are growing up in a world where one in four women will be raped in her lifetime. I allow myself to hope this class will improve their odds.
There is something eerie about teaching our daughters how to fight off rapists and kidnappers. We need classes that teach men not to rape and hurt women. We need workshops that teach men what some of them don’t learn: how to be gentle and loving.
I remember a poem about gender differences from my nursery school days. Little boys were made of “snips and snails, and puppy dogs’ tails.” Girls were made of “sugar and spice, and everything nice.” I didn’t ever dream that poems like this could become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Last week my friend Randy listened to a group of sixth-graders identify what living creature they would like to be. The boys all wanted to be predators: wolves, lions, grizzly bears and pumas. The girls chose soft and cuddly animals: pandas, koala bears, bunnies and squirrels. One girl said softly that she’d like to be a rose. When I heard that choice, I thought that the damage has already been done. Roses can’t even move, and, while beautiful, they don’t experience anything.
In order to keep