Making Women out of Children
Yes, there are differences between 15-year-olds and 8-year-olds. By the time you’re a 15-year-old girl, you will know at least one person who has had sex. You will know how society classifies that person when the news surfaces. You will hear the judgments passed behind backs in the cafeteria. Spilling secrets over Stanley cups about the latest wellness trend your friends follow to morph their bodies into those of Instagram models, the ones you’re expected to look like at 15.
By the time you are a 15-year-old girl, you will know what it’s like to be cat-called on your way home from school. And when it happens, you will finally realize just how dangerous it is to have a female body. A girl is a dangerous thing, a being that men will try to dominate or manipulate for their own pleasure. When you’re a girl in a woman’s body, men start to notice you. Everyone tells you to be flattered.
You don’t think it’s flattering. Not when you feel most self-conscious wearing your school uniform in public, because “men just love the schoolgirl look.” So you’re told to wear something over or under your skirt, don’t put yourself in danger. Men are going to look at you and fetishize you. Instead of worrying about your math test or your mental health, you’re worried about the creepy men who eye you on your way to and from school, wondering if you’ll ever be safe. Wondering how many layers of clothes it will take to disappear into the background.
When you’re 15, the mirror becomes your enemy. You become a victim of more than just the male gaze but of your own. You scrutinize your appearance, doing everything you can to make yourself feel better, more beautiful, less immature. You hope that if you change your body, it will fix everything. It fixes nothing. But you’re still a child, so you don’t know that yet.
At 8-years-old, it’s assumed you don’t know anything about the world around you. At 15-years-old, you’re thrust into the real world because if you act like an adult, they think it isn’t a felony to treat you like one.
When you’re eight, and people call you an old soul, you take it in stride. When you’re 15 and people revel in your maturity, you embrace it. Trying to fit into the role they’ve cast you in. Desperate for the self-assurance that your worth goes beyond just your body.
At 15, you don’t know that being in high school doesn’t change a man’s mind. You don’t know that when people call you a woman, it’s a threat.
You don’t know yet that one in four women have experienced rape or attempted rape during their lifetime. You don’t know yet that over 80% of women will experience sexual harassment. Because you’re not a woman yet. And that’s okay. You have tests to study for, colleges to tour, crushes to kiss, games to win. You don’t have time to worry about statistics. Until a man makes you one.
Yes, there are differences between 15-year-olds and 8-year-olds. At 8 years old, you hope you’ll get your fairytale ending. At 15, you have a sneaking suspicion you never will. But you’re still a kid, and that hope lingers. It permeates every conversation with a cute person, every interaction with your high school crush. Until it happens to you.
