breaking out from the pack

Last week I was bombarded with emails from the alumni office at my alma mater, NYU.  It was time to donate money again.  I was ignoring the emails until one arrived that I just had to open.  It was from a girl who had grown up in a traditional community in India - much the same as my experience growing up in a traditional jewish family in NY.  Both her parents were educated, and it was certainly her mother's hope that she would be able to pursue an "intellectual life" but not so encouraged to do so. OK, it was slightly different for me as my mom and dad made it pretty clear that I was going to college - but at the time, I did not have the role models around me that would support that effort.   This woman made it to NYU and was only able to graduate with the help of the donations from people like me (well, probably people who give far more money than me, since I still think of the joke my dad made about writing his checks to NYU Inc.)

But what got me thinking was not so much about education but this:

"I never could have arrived at NYU without my mother’s sacrifices. She was determined that I should develop into the person I’m supposed to be, not the one society tells me to be."  

That is how I feel too because as amazing as it is that girls today can walk around feeling like the way

Lena Dunham feels, particularly about their bodies - it is only recently that we have seen the positive changes from that, and still - it is not enough. Our girls are told that their "thighs are too thick" and those same mean girls think nothing about trying to make our girls feel badly about how they look or feel during the awkward signs of puberty, like body odor, hair on their legs...so this letter moved me.  It resonated for me.  Because it was not that long ago when my mom insisted that I shave my underarms on my wedding day.  ok, maybe she was right, it just plain looked better - but still, we can do better.  And I know that my sacrifices are not the end of the story and the same with my daughters, but it is a mission, that I feel is worth being part of.

Girls, mean girls, bullying and social media.

My daughter is in middle school.  What a year it has been. Not sure which is harder 6th grade or 7th.  For her or for me.  Last year she spent the year pretending to like the "group" she, by default was part of.  She is my youngest of three kids. Mira is bright, energetic, funny, kooky and incredibly kind.  None of that mattered, she was bullied the entire first year of middle school.  

I'm not sure who cried more - me or her?  I work from home so I was able to respond to her urgent phone call last spring: "mom, (between sobs) can you pick me up in town? the girls I was supposed to meet are not telling me where they actually are - they tell me, I go then they are not there..." get the picture?  I'm out the door before she can finish. Out of the 4 girls, one apologized (via text) one told her mother she had nothing to do with it, (her mom, a psychiatrist actually believed her). The others eventually texted "we are at … we were just kidding, " but the bully kept bullying; that night she posted a selfie of her and the other 3 girls with a tag line "best day ever in town with my BFF's." The many mean comments about Mira's body (she is not stick thin) or her hair (she's a curly girl) and the fact that I let her double pierce her ear had become the norm. 

Mira got her period just shy of her 12th birthday.  A week later we threw her a surprise swim party.  I invited NO one from school.  How could I?  The day after her period began, she went off to school exited, with her pack full of period equipment. She was nervous and anxious about how she was going to manage it, but up for the challenge. She obsessed over what to use, what to bring. She was afraid of being caught.  As far as she knew or could tell, she was possibly the first kid to get her period in 6th grade.  Still, she was proud and happily went off to school.  Mira returned from school that day, turning the corner into our driveway seeing me, she burst into tears. Not the first time this year.  "I'm pretty sure everyone is going to know by tomorrow that I got my period." How is that possible and why should that be bad? Well, on one of Mira’s many visits to the bathroom that day, aware of the girl in the next stall, anxiously opened her bag, found the pad, opened the package, removed the strip and threw out the soiled one in the metal bin ... when Mira emerged from the stall, the girl waiting outside said "This is the stall I use” and pushed mira aside to go in. Mira had a strange feeling and turned around to see, through the crack, the girl opening the bin with the discarded pad. By the next day all the girls in her grade seemed to know that she got her period.  When confronted, she lied and said no. I marched into school the next day to meet the VP.  First time I have ever had to do this. I could see how upset and angry the VP was, she could see how angry and shocked I was. I was not too happy with the schools reaction to the very first incident, in town. But this was hideous and I insisted she call the parents of this girl. She said she could not do that. I threatened to blog the incident if she did not call the parent of this child.  She agreed.

 However, she had to endure relentless bullying by a kid who would not stop, despite Mira moving to a somewhat nicer group to sit with at lunch. Her comments about Mira’s body continued; I hovered I worried but mostly encouraged her, admired her beauty and strength of character and her wit. I want her to love her body – and even through all of this I think she does.  She pulled up her shirt one day and said what’s up with this pointing to the one breast larger than the other. I look directly at the smaller breast and say - hey you better catch up! We fall into each others arms laughing into a GIANT HUG.   My brave girl made it through most of the year with fewer tears, and less often asked for a "HUG."  

People would often say to me – It’s middle school it will pass. But will it?  And while I will never have to deal with this again, some other parent will and won’t.  And for Mira? She will definitely encounter this at whatever age appropriate version of this phase, where she is made to feel uncomfortable about her body. This resonates for me now as we hear daily the many girls and women who have suffered because our culture continues to see girls and women as objects free to comment on or touch or shame whenever and however.  Whether in middle school, or on the Senate floor, as a joke or something more sinister, we have to deal with this and now. And btw – I never did hear from that parent.

I need a hug

Body Project w/ Miralena 

It's 1977 and I feel really good about my body until my mother...

Yesterday, I was with my younger sister's best friend from our childhood.  We have not seen each other in about 25 years and were sitting around her dining room table with her children reminiscing about our childhood growing up as young girls in a sleepy town on Long Island (NY).  She told our husbands a story about me, how at the ever so rebellious age of 17 I refused to wear a bra!  It was 1977 and the boys back then all had afros and I had very long frizzy/curly hair (that I finally convinced my mom to stop ironing!!).  We were wearing hip-hugger bell bottoms and tank tops with no bras!  So the story is that my mom, who had given birth to four girls, one  every two years, was crazy with trying to keep us from the dangers of discovering our sexuality...and one saturday evening as I was just about to pull out of the driveway with a group of friends she came running out of the house screaming "phyllis, get back in here and put a bra on  RIGHT NOW!!!!"  To say that was embarrassing was truly an understatement!  But I managed to get through high school and college without ever really talking to my mother about my body;  getting my period, having sex, guys and girls and how I felt about my body or how she felt about her body in any really meaningful way.  I probably learned everything I knew from my two older sisters, and of course as it turns out, my younger sister Ilene apparently learned ALOT from me.  

Fast forward today...I have three beautiful children - two of whom are girls.  But before having these children I spent many years trying to undo and redo the affects of both misinformation (my dad always said that it was impossible to get pregnant without being married!) and not enough information - or rather the kind of information that I am committed to giving my girls and all girls now.

Early on in my career as a photojournalist I was drawn to stories that had to do with women, feminism and rituals.  I photographed religious ceremonies, coming of age rituals for girls and encouraged each reporter I worked with to consider the female side of the story.  I looked up to famous photographers like Donna Ferrato, who really broke wide open that Domestic Violence was taking place among people of all financial means in the 80's and 90's.  I saw many women and children in homeless shelters who were either hiding from abusive men or were just simply living in poverty with no self-esteem and many children on their hips. I read about and witnessed young girls making a pact to get pregnant because that made them feel good about themselves and their bodies.  They were going to have children to feel needed but also with intentions of raising their children differently than how their mothers were raising them.....how familiar is that?

I fought really hard for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) while in college and pounded the pavement for NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League). There is so much progress to protect but there is still so much we have to do to tend to our girls and their growing and changing bodies.

I love hearing and telling stories.  I look forward to sharing mine, here with you.  Welcome to our girls, their bodies.

Alex Katz/Poster from the Art Exhibit and Sale for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, NOW/NYC 1982

The ERA was first introduced into every Congress between 1923 and 1972, when it was passed and sent to the states for ratification.  The original seven-year time limit in the ERA's proposing clause was extended by Congress to June 30, 1982, but at that deadline, the ERA had been ratified by 35 states, THREE states short of the 38 required to put it into the Constitution.  It has been introduced into every Congress since that time. (http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/)