When do girls give up their dreams?

Happy Women's History Month, I guess

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March is Women’s History Month, and my kid brought home a handout about important women in history from their school, where they were also taught that women are more maternal and there are “dad jobs” and “mom jobs." The irony felt like a cold bucket of water in the face. Here we were celebrating Women’s History Month in a state that is limiting the rights of girls and women through trans-exclusionary policies and pushing to outlaw abortion.

In this week’s discussion thread I asked people what things they are healing their relationship with. For me it’s watching sports; your answers ranged from carbohydrates to watching TV. But I was struck by how many answers involved women reclaiming things they previously loved, like the color pink and pop music — things that are often extremely girl-coded and seen as “less than.” Oh sure, it’s cute for a little girl to love pink. But a grown woman decked head to toe in pink, despite the best PR efforts of Barbie and Elle Woods, is seen as ridiculous.

I once joked to my therapist that I spent a lot of time and money getting back to the toddler version of myself. The one who demanded things, liked what she liked, made no apologies, and threw herself down on the floor for a cookie.

When do we lose those things and passions that make us happy? Research says it starts as early as kindergarten. That’s when young girls begin to think of themselves as less smart and capable than boys. This doesn’t come about by accident. History books are less likely to tell the stories of women. Parents are more likely to think their sons are gifted and talented than their daughters. Google search results from parents reveal they are concerned about their sons’ intelligence and about their daughters’ weight.

It’s depressing research. But even more depressing is that Mattel has taken that research and is using it to sell toys.

The “Dream Gap” project, sponsored by Mattel, emphasizes teaching girls they are strong and capable and can do anything. Mattel gives money to nonprofits that encourage girls to dream big; it partners with corporations and provides a curriculum and, of course, a line of role-model Barbies that you can buy to show your daughter that she can be whatever she wants. But while representation is good, the emphasis on selling dolls to encourage girls completely ignores the ways in which our daughters actually can’t be everything they want to be. Not in this climate.

Visibility is important, yes. But it’s no substitute for systemic change. 

Trend reporters like to say that 2023 was the year of the girl. Alpha male influencers like Richard Cooper argue that the world is geared toward women and girls, but that’s just the sales pitch. The reality is girls get to be unlimited in their dreams as long as companies can profit off them, but adult women are stymied by a culture that refuses to give them basic rights like autonomy and equal pay. Let me just lay it out.

• The pay gap is real. 

• Teen suicide and depression are up.

• States are passing laws that make trans kids targets and force 10-year-olds to carry pregnancies to term.

• We passed a child care tax credit expansion that lifted children out of poverty and then took it away.

And we’re told the answer to all this is we just need to believe in ourselves and see a Barbie that looks like us? No wonder we lack confidence. We live in a world that pulls the rug out from under us once our girlhood grows into womanhood.

It seems cruel to tell little girls the world is limitless only to have them grow up and smash their heads on the glass ceiling because we are more interested in the rhetoric of equality than actually making an equal society. More interested in selling self-help books about how we can just “Girl, Wash Our Face” than agitating for systemic change.

The Dream Gap Project reminds me of the pay gap rhetoric, which exhorted women to simply ask for raises from the bosses. If there is a pay gap, you can fix it by being a confident girlboss who asserts herself at work. Except, the reality — is as recent studies have shown — is that , women do ask for raises. They do — they just don’t get them.

Doing research for my book, I read about the consciousness-raising groups of feminism’s second wave. The groups were designed to get women to share their experiences and realize their problems were not individual but systemic, and that by banding together they could achieve change. And they did. But eventually consciousness-raising groups morphed into group therapy sessions. That shift from radical storytelling to therapy underscores a change in focus from systemic solutions to individual ones.I’m struck by the shift from radical storytelling to therapy, which focuses on individual solutions rather than systemic ones.

I am fascinated by rhetoric that seeks to teach young girls to dream big even as we expect, while expecting grown- ass women to do everything, even the work of the social safety net. Exhorting people to bootstrap themselves out of systemic problems elides the need for societal change — which is, of course, the point.