Victim

Last night, I traumatized my eleven-year-old niece with my trauma. As soon as she was born, the first time I held her in my arms, I began to worry about her becoming a young woman, the Lolita-aged girl/woman who is, in a misogynist world that preys upon feminine flesh, made for violation. I began to worry about a baby’s destiny as a sexualized surface, objectified even by herself with her desire for too-tight jeans, half-tops, enjoying the lascivious stares from predatory men long before she knows where they so easily lead. I have never had this fear with my nephews. In patriarchy, boys are allowed to be boys for much longer than girls. Boys have always had the good fortune of just being, of just growing up, and are not instantly transported into what I pray will never be my niece’s future. My psyche is damaged goods. But there is wisdom in that damage because these concerns so often come true.

Social media started the whole thing; it opened my wound and started hers. Having been her age in the late 70s, I didn’t have to negotiate the pressures of cyberbullying that adds to the in-real-life bullying, the imposed obsession with one’s online representation, the careful maintenance of a surface, the enforced prioritization of sexuality, the duck lips, the porn star posturing, girls pressured to be women long before their time. She has a good mom who tries to monitor her daughter’s online presence. As we sat between dessert and another game of Hide and Seek, ‘the cool girl’ filled the screen of my niece’s first phone in all her premature, self-sexualized glory,

“Show your Auntie Karen this!!” the mother commanded, undoubtedly thinking my feminist self would say something helpful. Far from it. My ire was instant; I told her the whole truth in brutal chunks, and it ended up that my words were more about me than her. I was on the stand again, fiercely telling the truth, but this time my audience was a girl I love.

“I know you admire her. I know everyone thinks she’s cool. I know you feel you should be like her. This all must be so confusing for you. But dressing and representing yourself like her is very dangerous. People will think of you as only a surface. Not valuable. Not the substantial and special creature you are. You will be stereotyped as only good for one thing because you ‘choose’ to represent yourself that way, like a slut. And then boys and men will rape you.” There you go. That is what I said to an eleven-year-old girl last night.