The Girl Problem

In the most recent issue of The Standard, an opinions article was written about a "girl problem" that we seem to have in our community. The author of the article, Benjy Mercer-Golden, definitely makes some bold statements and argues that "Being academically competitive is in many ways harmful to your social life" (13). And what I took from this is: "Girls don't want to be academically successful because we care too much about our social lives. So we basically have no drive, no ambition, to succeed academically." Well I can tell you first hand, that this is completely false. Not only do I believe that girls in our community have academic drive, but I believe that sometimes they have more drive than the boys. Girls care so much about their academic lives, and it is much more apparent in them than in the boys. For example, I will most always walk down the hallways of school and hear a group of girls talking about grades they had just received, projects they had been assigned, or just interesting classes or teachers in general. But if I walk by a group of boys, I may hear something about school, but usually the rumblings of the most recent football match are creeping from them. Now this is not to say that boys in our community don't care about school, because they do. I do hear groups of boys talking about school, and I know that they worry about school probably just as much as the girls do. But the fact that Mercer-Golden has claimed that girls don't care, causes me to take a step back, and really look at the situation. New students at this school are often astonished at the amount of drive that my fellow peers and I have. We know that to get into a good school now-a-days, you need to work hard in high school. If that means missing one party in order to finish an essay, than so be it.

In the last paragraph of his article, Mercer-Golden states that: "Girls need to stop thinking of themselves as objects of desire for their male classmates and start taking themselves seriously" (13). When reading this article, I was astonished at what he thought about the girls in our school. And what angered me the most is how he blamed it on the girls, with no reference or acknowledgment of the fact that this issue has been engrained in our society for decades. I know that I don't see myself as an object of desire. I like to dress up, or put make up on to make myself feel good. Yes, there is a part of me that addresses the fact that people in our society judge others based on looks, especially if meeting for the first time. But I don't make myself look good just for others. It gives me confidence and energy. The way we dress can say a lot about a person. And a lot of girls at our school care about themselves and about what other people think. So of course they are going to make an attempt to look good. But we don't think of ourselves as "objects of desire" and we do take ourselves seriously. Our lives don't revolve around the thoughts or our male peers. We have our own goals in life, that don't have to do with the guys in our community. And when Mercer-Golden mentions that, "Almost without exception, if you are a good-looking girl you are popular; if you're not, you're not" (13). Our community does not revolve around looks. We value so much more in our fellow peers. And for someone to claim that if you are pretty, you automatically slip into the "popular" crowd is outrageous in my opinion.

In light of this article and the issues that have been brought up because of it, our school held a meeting where a panel of students discussed the issues in front of us and we had the opportunity to ask the panel some questions. I found this to be helpful in the fact that my peers were taking control, addressing the issues, and showing a desire to change them. We won't see change right away, but hopefully by creating awareness in our community, change will start to happen. But this doesn't just apply to our community, it applies to every community and society in the world. Small steps lead to big change. Even though I didn't agree with Mercer-Golden's article, I am almost glad that he had the courage to publish it. It raised so many apparent issues that we have in our community and without raising awareness, nothing can change.