Growing Girls With Purpose
February 21st, 2012 — Disney Princess Culture & Fairy Tales, Reviews & Giveaways
I would love it if you would review Love Distortion: Belle, Battered Codependent and Other Love Stories on Amazon.
It is a collection of blog posts, so if you follow this blog at all, you’ve likely read at least one post.
Also, please buy the book and read it. Books should be read, don’t you think?
If you leave a comment on this post or the TGR Facebook page saying that you left a review I’ll draw two winners and send them a free book! Great bargain huh?
August 20th, 2010 — Body Image & Self Esteem, Reviews & Giveaways
You remember Kevin and Ericka? The Unofficial The Girl Revolution Teen Romance?
A brief recap: Kevin made an inappropriate comment about Ericka’s curvacious bod. Ericka slapped him back in line. He wrote to The Girl Revolution to find out why Ericka didn’t like her curves. I wrote back, saying maybe Ericka is groovy with her curves – but, didn’t like strange men ogling them and treating her like an object at first meeting. He said he was sorry and asked her out. Ericka agreed to give him a second shot.
They’ve had a wonderful summer dating.
Ericka has since kept in touch. Sending me an email every now and again, giving me updates and asking for advice. I’ve asked her permission, and Kevin’s, to publish some of our conversations for a few reasons.
First, I think you all might have some great advice for them.
Second, I’ve received a few comments from other young men saying they find the stream helpful to their own navigating respect and dating.
Please, leave comments if you have further advice or experience for Kevin and Ericka.
Ericka:
Hi Tracee. Don’t mean to bug you, just checking in. It’s always nice to be able to talk to an adult other than my Mom. Kevin and I are having a great summer, trying to take advantage of the outdoors with swimming, hiking, etc. We do have lots of fun together. I want to take things slow. He gives great foot massages and back rubs and we have kissed many times but that’s as far as it has gone. Does it sound like I’m doing the right thing? Just wanted to make sure. My friends aren’t as conservative as me when it comes to dating. I even got teased by my friends the first time I met Kevin. “I can’t believe you slapped him, you’re such a prude, you really need to lighten up.” But I was proud of how I handled myself and I think Kevin respected me more for it too, so in the end it all worked out.
Tracee:
Go slow. You’re right to respect yourself. I only know this because I was more like your friends as a teenager and it caused me a great deal of heart-ache. When you’re young, you don’t really understand that your actions and behavior, choices and consequences, will follow you far into adulthood. Most of my regrets showed up when I had a daughter and I realized the high price I paid by being promiscuous. I mean, I would never, ever want my daughter to go through the pain I went through.
One thing that sticks out in my mind is something I recently read in a Christiane Northrop book. She’s a world-class OB/GYN and scholar on women’s wisdom and women’s health. She wrote of a study that shows women have a chemical in their brain called Oxytocin which spikes when they have sex with someone. Anyone. Everyone. When women go through oxytocin withdrawal it is as painful as withdrawal from drugs. She said it can take 2 years to get over it. It chemically alters her brain, her body, her psychic energy – not just her emotions. So imagine having casual sex and having this emotional and physical rollercoaster over and over. That’s not really a fun ride for girls. I know. I rode that ride.
Kevin does seem to respect you. It’s not prudish to guard your body, mind and soul from casual sex and pain.
I thought it wouldn’t matter when I was younger. I thought it was just a game.
Take that advice for what it’s worth Ericka. Know that you make the best decisions for yourself.
Ericka:
Gosh Tracee, I don’t know how to thank you for this. It must not have been easy for you to share all of that. We’ll definitely go slow. I don’t think sex has to be an important part of our relationship.
There is something that’s quite personal that I wanted to ask you about. If you’re not comfortable with it, that’s ok. My friends say that Kevin will eventually lose interest if I at least don’t allow him to massage my breasts. I’m a little nervous about it but maybe they’re right. If you have any thoughts let me know, if not that’s cool too. This is all so confusing and tricky. Life was so much easier before puberty, lol.
Tracee:
Kevin will not lose interest if don’t let him massage your breasts.
Want to know why men don’t calls girls back after sex? It’s not that he doesn’t “respect” her. It’s that he already achieved his goal.
Men are weird. They want you more if you don’t do stuff with them. When he achieves his goal, he makes a new goal. Breasts, down your pants, sex, etc. Then it’s new girl = new goal.
You should do what you’re comfortable with. For your own pleasure. Responsibly – emotionally, mentally, physically – responsible to your own self. Knowing that men are goal-oriented creatures. Not allowing him to achieve his goal right away is how you keep a guy interested and trying. Women and girls get far more attention and affection from men when they DON’T have sex with them. (Because he’s still motivated to achieve his goal.)
How old are you again?
Ericka:
Thanks again Tracee. To answer your question, I’m 17. I wouldn’t say Kevin has put a lot of pressure on me, other than me having to push his hands away from my bra area a few times. He’s never said anything about it. All of my friends allow their boyfriends to do that, some fully clothed some not, and obviously some of it goes beyond massaging, so I am starting to feel like a nun, lol. But, I think we’ll keep things right where they are because that’s my comfort level. Plus, we’re having lots of fun together in many other ways that don’t involve anything sexual.
September 23rd, 2009 — Reviews & Giveaways
Red: Teenage Girls in America Write On What Fires Up Their Lives Today
“Its high time people stopped writing, talking and worrying about teenage girls and just let those girls speak for themselves. This book gives voice to many talented young essayists, who . . . richly deserve to be heard.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
To which I might point out that it’s super-easy not to worry about girls when you’re not responsible for any of them. But, I love Elizabeth Gilbert and I agree, girls do richly deserve to be heard. Reading some of these essays, I did have this thought, why are girls so angsty? Then I answered myself, “because some genuinely sucky things happen to them.”
The Impostor’s Daughter: A True Memoir
We don’t draw in books, I told him and put it on a higher shelf.
The next day another book showed up.
I want to see the naked girl, he said. I showed him. What is the big deal anyway? He also likes to see the naked mommy holding a naked baby in a skin product ad in O Magazine. I like to see them too. Bodies are interesting and pretty.
I must admit that my reaction might have been more relaxed than it is when my daughter sees sexual images. I’m not shy about human sexuality with her. I’m just more aware that in the images of our culture the girl is most often the object and I want to protect her identity as a three-dimensional whole and sexual human being.
I very excitedly ordered a book by Pastor Rob Bell titled Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality
March 19th, 2009 — Media, Marketing and Advertising, Reviews & Giveaways
My husband and I declared date night and thought it would be an extra-special treat to spring for dinner and a movie. We couldn’t even remember the last time we went to a movie together.
We didn’t have many choices, so I caved to Watchmen. Supposed to be about super-heroes he said. There were girl/women super-heroes so I was interested.
Guess what happens to the girl super-heroes? Violently raped and beaten by one of the a-hole male super-heroes. Another female super-hero was violently raped and beaten and then murdered by pornographers, but “she deserved it because of her whorish-lifestyle.” At least I think that’s what happened, it was cryptic and I had my eyes closed and my ears plugged to avoid ingesting more violent rape of women on-screen.
In fact, most the super-heroes were really violent, angry, mean, cruel, heartless murderer-slash-rapists who dressed up in costume to commit their crimes and yet kept talking about how they were “saving the world.” Huh?
About half-way through the movie one of the super-heroes shoots a Vietnamese woman he impregnated. She asks him to acknowledge his coming child and refuses to disappear so he shoots her in cold blood. Kills his own unborn child and its mother. He’s remorseless.
“This movie should be called ‘Plotless Gratuitous Violence,’” I muttered.
“Want to sneak out and go see Madea?” my husband suggested.
“Yeah, that will be funny and light. It’s PG-13. Tyler Perry’s funny,” I say.
I sit through another preview – ears plugged eyes slammed shut - so horrifically violent that even my husband closes his eyes so as not to take in a graphically violent depiction of Satan and evil spirits torturing and killing an entire family.
Aside from the pot-smoking uncle and the wanton criminal behavior of Madea it’s almost appropriate for 13-year-olds, you know, if they are 25-year-olds.
Then there I am – plugging my ears and smashing my eyelids together – trying to avoid ingesting yet another very graphic, long violent rape and beating of a woman. Tyler Perry takes 13-year-olds (and the rest of us) through an examination of prostitution, how a smart college girl might end up on the streets, how she might be raped and beaten into submission by a pimp (he shows us how in graphic and horrific, bloody detail). How she’ll need a Pretty Woman moment to save her.
Hysterically funny, really.
There was a 9 or 10-year-old girl, with her family, sitting right in front of us and no one bothered telling her to close her eyes and plug her ears.
I spent nearly the whole “romantic evening” with my eyes closed, shoulders hunched up, and fingernails digging into my ears to avoid taking in and internalizing the atrocities in these movies. Of course, the most violent and horrific of these atrocities were committed against girls and women. But, you know, sometimes they “deserved it” because they were “just whores.”
What the Bleep is going on in the distorted, jumbled, sick and violent minds of film-makers?
How are people watching this kind of graphic violence against women (or humans in general) as entertainment?
How desensitized have we become as human beings?
Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.
I guess that rules out the movies entirely.
January 28th, 2009 — Feminine Heritage, Reviews & Giveaways
I’m pleased to introduce Alexis Saint as a Guest Writer on The Girl Revolution. Alexis is a personal friend of mine. She holds a Master of Arts in Counseling and Guidance and is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Intern. She is also the mother of five-year-old Sarah, one of our beautiful Poster Girls in the rotating header.
By Alexis Saint
The four of us were crowded into a public restroom at a high traffic big box store and I was wrangling my three small children, all under 36 inches, up to reach the sink. Attending to the business at hand which was getting all 40 fingers washed when my oldest son, four at the time, asked if he could have some candy while pointing to the feminine products vending machine.
Having already decided to handle questions pertaining to sexuality in a very matter-of-fact way, I answered that the machine did not have candy in it. It had pads, kind of like small diapers, to catch the no-longer-needed lining of a women’s uterus if there was not a fertilized egg inside of it already.
He seemed satisfied with my answer, but just then a woman came out of one of the stalls with a very embarrassed look on her face, glared at me and made straight for the door, without washing her hands, I might add. I wondered if starting her period as an adolescent had been somehow bound up with shame, secrecy and fear.
In that moment I decided that my daughter’s period would be a source of honor and celebrated as a benchmark on her path to womanhood.
Although she was only 11 months old at the time, I started a collection of items that I thought would be appropriate for the occasion. So, in my quest to honor her as a maiden, as a contributing member of the earth’s life force, and as my prepared, informed and confident daughter, I began collecting things in a wooden lock box decorated with pixies. The box is big enough to encompass the following…
A dream journal…a collection of multi-cultural stories about how menarche is celebrated around the world…letters written to my daughter from my trusted and loving sisters about their feelings/experiences of femininity, menstruation, and growing up…these are to give her sense of the community with all women.
A lunar calendar...to illustrate the harmonious cycle of the earth and the women on it.
Bath salts…tea bags…a candle…a mirror…for alone time to reflect and relax.
A well-written book on female sexuality…for practical education.
A new package of dark colored undies (period panties)…pads and tampons…for self care on the big day.
And finally an OTC pain reliever for cramps..lets be real, cramps and PMS happen.
My hope is that my daughter will grow to revere and embrace her full inheritance as a woman.
In celebration of this special moment in a girl’s life, Marianne Impal, of Red Goddess at www.redgoddess.org has offered to give one Red Goddess Box to a reader of The Girl Revolution.
This Red Goddess Box, which retails for $49.99, includes:
LEAVE A COMMENT about how you’ll handle your daughter’s period or a story about how your parents handled it for you and you’re entered to win.
This post is entered in Bloggy Giveaways. This contest will run for 7 days, and shipping to the United States and Canada are accepted. Enter for a chance to win another popular Fit Girl shirt on Blog Fabulous.
