"COME INTO MY PARLOR..."

        Many thanks to all of you who told your stories of how you were conditioned by your culture. Here are some excerpted, representative samples from your posts.  A positive aspect to the internet is that we can learn and take support from each other:

        "...the impact of the tremendous influence our misogynist culture has on each of us hit home when my strong, smart, beautiful and (I had thought) confident THREE YEAR OLD daughter told me, in tears, that she was not pretty and never would be pretty.  It definitely scared me.  It showed how invidious is the culture's value of women based only on their appearance, and reminded me of what a hard, and heartbreaking, battle we have to continue to fight to keep our daughters strong and their self esteem high."  [J]

        "My mother very much believed and told her two daughters that 'You have to suffer to be beautiful' and being beautiful was the end-all for her.  We learned that if we were beautiful, life would give us everything through men.  If we were not attracting men to us, it was because we were inferior and surely not suffering enough.  Instead of patterning my life after my mother, I decided bit by bit that this was not for me and that I admired women who made life good for themselves.  I admired women who didn't accept limits and didn't "depend on the kindness of strangers."  I decided to educate myself and make my own life.  I Am woman. Hear me Roar!!"  [P]

        "My fave -- 'horses sweat, men perspire, ladies glow'... Bull! I sweat.  :)  I worked hard, played hard, and frankly, sweated like my horse (still do).  haha  Thoroughly rattled my mother when I said 'then I'm no lady!' at the ripe age of 10.  Another one is "boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses."  O.K., blind as a bat, inquisitive little boys snapping bra straps and chortling...  Overall?  If it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger -- I think I was a feminist before I knew what it was.  :) " [S]

        "How about, 'he won't buy the cow if he can get the milk for free.'  Or something like that.  I figured this meant marriage (where you get bought) was nothing more than legal prostitution.  That stuck with me for many years."  [L]

        "I was so glad to see that other people share similar thoughts about women's "upbringing."  My favorite part was regarding body shaving.  I came to the U.S. from Moldova, a former Soviet Union republic, and was appalled by the obsessiveness of American women with body shaving.  Of course, I've heard about this feature of American women, but I didn't think it's so bad.  :(  Fortunately, women in the S.U. were not "recommended" to do that. Some of them did shave, but it wasn't a must thing to do.

        "During W.W.ll when women couldn't get hosiery, they used leg make-up and soon were encouraged by Gillette (who had excess steel available) pushed the shaving for women bit.  Before that only women on stage did that and they were considered "fast."  I'm not positive about this trivia but that's what my Mom told me.  And, then when the war ended, we got nylon instead of silk for hosiery."  [N]

        We thank all of you who shared your childhood conditioning stories with us and even as we keep getting more posts, we discern patterns that far from receding seems to be continuing into the next generations.

        It's not only the media, books, magazines, friends, family and society now, it's spread to the internet, the WWW and it's infecting our daughters with the same distructive bugs we were exposed to.

        MELPOMENE INSTITUTEWhat is out there to attract girls?  Mostly it is "Barbie" type pages and chat groups that deal with dating, makeup, being beautiful, being and keeping thin, any and all things to turn a person inward, insecure, and into a helpless object ..."and the beat goes on."

        Why do we continue to teach our girls that their role in life is to be an object -- sexual and usable?  How about more Web pages that encourage them to be HUMAN BEINGS?

        THROUGH THE GLASS WALLMost girls are not attracted to the rank violence of the usual computer games.  When you've slashed your way through a program and let all the cyber blood out of everything in sight, it gets old pretty fast.

        However, girls ARE interested in games that test theirGIRL GAMES, INC.skill, help them to be creative, and surely, if they were to be found, girls would naturally turn toward this kind of challenge.

        Instead, the big, fat old SPIDER -- CULTURAL CONDITIONING -- sits as WEB MASTER over the entire World Wide Web, smiling enticingly at all the Little Miss Muffits. Dr. Nancy' Faulkner's PANDORA'S BOX

        Who are sitting on their tuffits in front of their computers eating M&Ms -- unaware of the SPIDER who has cleverly learned not to sit too close and "frighten Ms. Muffit away."

        talkintrash.com-- unaware that this is the same SPIDER that supports ADULT pictures of women being tortured and killed, as well as tons of KIDDY PORN."

        Twanda@ConnRiver.net

        1999-015

        Copyright 1999 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: twanda@ConnRiver.net.

        G e n d e r G a p p e r s   T M