Our church is doing a 40 Days of Love study for Lent. The idea is to improve our marriages, our relationships in our families and also our relationship with God. Madly In Love With Me is encouraging 40 Days of Love for one’s self, where you’re encouraged to forgo self-deprecation and running yourself ragged with busyness.
I was reminded of that post I wrote about two weeks ago, Talking to Kids About Love, where I encouraged you to talk to your kids about love: what it is and how it can be appropriately expressed as a way to protect them from sexual predators, bad boyfriends, battering husbands and also just your general run-of-the-mill selfish jerk.
I’m encouraging you to join in the Love Fest with The Girl Revolution 40 Days of Love.
Spend 40 days talking to your kids about what love is (and what it isn’t) and showing them you love them.
Some ideas might include:
Reading Disney’s Princess stories and talking to both girls and boys about what you wish those princesses had done. Perhaps expressing to your daughter that you don’t think it’s romantic to give up her voice like Ariel or fall in love with a kidnapper or abusive boyfriend like Belle.
Talking about Twilight and explaining that girls usually don’t “pass out” from the passion of a kiss and it’s definately not romantic if her boyfriend’s “natural” instinct is to kill her. Explaining that, there’s a difference between a romance novel and real life and in real life you hope she keeps her dreams, educational goals, family attachments, and well . . .her mortal soul and doesn’t abandon them for a boy.
Outlining exactly what kinds of touching is not appropriate from relatives, friends, and boys. Explain to her that some people are bad and unfortunately and inappropriately attracted to children. Tell her their trick: the tell little girls it’s okay to touch them because they love them. But, girls should not believe them. If they ever hear that from someone they will know that person is a liar and trying to trick them and hurt them. This goes for Grandpa, Dad, Cousin, Uncle, Friend, Mom, Grandma, Aunt, EVERYONE.
Talking about how she’ll know if a boy is right for her: does he share the same faith, have a work ethic, write her romantic notes. There’s nothing wrong with telling girls what kind of boy you hope to see her with.
Talking to her about self-defense and some of the ways boys tried to pressure you to sexually experiment and some of the ways she can resist.
Asking her about love and what she hopes for her future. What boys does she think are cute and why? How do boys show girls they like them at her school?
Talking about different kinds of relationships: parents, siblings, friends, romantic partners. How can she get better at love and how can you love her better?
Talking about what her Love Language is. What makes her feel most loved? What makes her feel unloved? Share your experiences with her. Listen.
The other day a group of junior high boys were laughing about having pantsed a girl.
One of them had pulled her pants down and it was extra-hilarious that she was wearing a thong.
I told them that was actually the criminal offense of sexual assault. I told them if I were the principal, I would have them prosecuted in criminal court for doing that.
But, she liked it! They told me.
No she didn’t, I told them. Girls don’t like it when boys rip their clothes off without their consent.
Yes, she liked it! They insisted.
I told them if I were principal I’d have them sent to detention for saying something so stupid.
Gee, I wonder where boys might get the idea that girls might like it?
Could it be the same places, stories, where girls get the idea that it’s hot for boys to harm them, that it’s a natural turn-on for boys to want to destroy them, silence them, isolate them, give up their futures?
It’s necessary to say: It’s not sane to love someone who treats you poorly, hurts you or threatens to hurt you or humiliates you in public. It’s not hot to mix sex and violence. Violence against yourself or against a girl you like is not a turn on. It is not sane to love your abuser. It is not sane to abuse someone you love.
It’s fundamental.
But, I think it’s come to this, parents need to repeat these messages to both boys and girls.
Oprah’s discussion with sex offenders got me thinking.
Hopefully it had this effect on you.
Stranger Danger is . . . well, it’s very unlikely harm comes from a stranger. In fact less than 10% of all rape, molestation and battery of girls and women comes from a stranger.
So how do parents walk the fine line between protecting their children from friends and family without inhibiting all close relationships with men?
Certainly one can see that being hyper-vigilant and suspicious of all male contact will have a damaging effect on girls and their future, appropriate, grown-up relationships.
Still . . . no one wants to risk allowing a perpetrator free access to their daughters just because they have the title uncle, grandpa or cousin.
The weapon of choice for all four men on the Oprah show was Love Distortion in some form.
If you love me . . . you’ll let me touch, lick or have sex with you.
If you love me . . . you won’t tell.
I love you more than your parents. No one understands or loves you like I do.
I love you so much that I want to do these “loving” things with you.
When it comes down to it this is my primary complaint with the Disney Princess Culture and the Twilight Series. They distort what love looks like, what it should feel like, they misrepresent the cues and signals girls should be looking for.
Take Ariel who silences herself and gives up her family – she’s the perfect statutory rape victim really. She’s the ultimate battered girlfriend. Isolation is a perpetrator’s method and silencing her is how he gets her to give up her own power.
Or Belle. She’s kidnapped and falls in love with her own abuser. Turns him into a prince even. Um, held against your will should not be confused as a signal of “love,” but a signal of abuse. Yet, by three or four girls are inundated with the idea that kidnapping could be a very romantic scenario. Is it really a mystery why girls get confused when someone they love or someone who professes to love them while harming them touches them inappropriately? The promise of The Beast turn Prince is what every battered girlfriend and wife believes in.
Then there’s Edward of the Twilight series, who’s main desire is to destroy Belle. It’s his instinct, he can’t help it just like batterers claim.. All the erotic scenes describe in great detail how it would feel to her and to him for him to crush her fragile lovely body, for him to drain her of her life’s blood. And it made girls and women hot. We have a whole generation of girls who are now turned on by their own physical destruction and earthly demise. She begs him to kill her and he just won’t do it . . until what? Book three or four? Plus, that deathly-erotic description in book two about her near-death. Why, I have to ask, is it a turn-on for a guy to want to destroy you? Why are we training daughters to be desperate to give up their lives, futures, relationships with parents and friends, college, future jobs, and children for pretty boys or vampires?
As a survivor of dating violence myself, I can attest that the language of a violent boyfriend, and the lies I told myself about his behavior, is almost verbatim of the dialogue of Edward the die-worthy vampire and his suicidal girlfriend Bella.
Herstory – Ourstory – feeds the rapists, child molesters, girl friend and wife batterers. The fairy tales we read to our daughters at night groom them to believe in a really distorted and dangerous definition of Love.
When Oprah does a wife-battering episode she is known to say, Love doesn’t hurt. Yet in all the above examples we’ve, as a culture, romanticized a distorted version of love that does hurt. We glamorize the pain, make it romantic and sexualize it until it turns us on.
It would be so much smarter and beneficial to tell our daughters other, healthier things about love. Our sons too – so they don’t get confused and start hurting their girlfriends in a screwed up attempt to be a murderer/protector like Edward or an asshole who promises to change like The Beast.
Just yesterday a group of Junior High boys told me they pantsed a girl and it wasn’t wrong, or sexual assault, because she liked it. Gee, I wonder where boys might get the idea that girls like it when boys hurt them? Could it be our infatuation with the victimization in princess stories and Twilight?
It may seem obvious, but we need to talk to our kids about fundamental things like, What is love? What does it really feel like? How will they really know it’s True Love? What are the cues of boys who truly care about girls? What cues should boys put out when he cares about a girl? When a girl falls in love, what kinds of feelings can she really expect to feel?
1 Corinthians 13:4 describes Love: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
Other translations include: Love isn’t jealous. It doesn’t sing its own praises. It isn’t arrogant.
This is key because many, many abusive boys and men use jealousy and arrogance to put girls on the defensive and make them feel they “deserve” to be beaten or raped. They fly into jealous rages and become arrogantly possessive of their girlfriends, not allowing them to see friends or family.
I would encourage parents to sit down and think about what Love feels like to them. Does it feel like meaningful sacrifice, like methodical work, like a warm bed, like a soft place to land, like a physical rhythm or a shelter from a storm? Does it feel different from sexual arousal, different from primitive adolescent hormones, different from a new infatuation? How is it different? Then talk about it to both sons and daughters.
Love is not Disney. Love is not Twilight. Love is not Gossip Girl.
My name is Kevin and I’m 17 years old. I discovered your website and thought you might have some good insight on an experience I had involving a girl’s image of her body. She was a girl I had just met at a dance a few weeks ago. We talked for a good half hour and seemed to be hitting it off. Then, things suddenly went downhill. I commented that she had a “really nice, hourglass figure”. I thought she would take it as a compliment but instead she became deeply offended. I went into damage control mode and tried to clarify my comments but I think I only made things worse when I used the term “healthy”. With a look of complete disgust, WHAP!, she slapped my face and departed. She had a classic hourglass figure – large bust, narrow waist, shapely hips/legs. I guess she had interpreted “hourglass” as meaning big/overweight/full figured. Why can’t girls embrace their curves?
My response:
I don’t know Kevin. It’s mystery to me as well, why girls can’t just love what they’ve got? I, personally, have always striven for an hour-glass figure. But, I’m not in your generation.
Evolutionarily, scientists use the hip to waist ratio as a measurement of beauty and attractiveness. Hour-glass is the evolutionary ideal.
Perhaps, though you misread why she was offended. It’s possible – and I wasn’t there, so I can only guess – that she wanted your focus and interest to be on her self, the whole package - brains, personality, mutual interests, shared values, and body – rather than on the shape of her bod or her physical appearance. Especially, so soon in your interaction.
Next time, save the hot body comments for a more intimate moment, when you know each other better and she’s sure you’re not just in it for her shapeliness. Focus on a new girl as a three-dimensional and interesting person, a friend you share things in common with. What did you discover about this girl in the 30 minutes you chatted? Did you both enjoy history or love to watch Sci-Fi films or enjoy the same literature? Were you both going to the same college, or have a similar family background or religious affiliation? Do you both love to swim, golf or fish?
Focus on those things next time. Ask a girl out on a date, doing something of mutual interest, and you most likely won’t get slapped in the face.
If you, or your daughter, have a difficult time connecting to a little self-love and self-care you might sign up for the Self-Love Kit or take two of the Self-Love Dares.
If your confused and think self-love has something to do with masturbation, read the Self Love Manifesta.
Why would anyone start a self-love movement as their mission? Christine Arylo, you might remember her from the book she wrote, Choosing Me Before We, tells you why, right here. It’s pretty self-less.
Which is the beautifully juxtaposed thing. Self-Love isn’t Selfish, it’s the kindest thing we can do for others. Take care of you so you can take care of them. If we all did that, well, there’d just be a lot more love on this here planet. This here planet is in need of some love. Start in the one, single, solitary person you have complete autonomy over – YOU. It is where you are most powerful.
