Tag Archives: The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls

No refuge: how webcams and cell phones ratchet up the pressure to be perfect

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In my women’s studies class yesterday, one young woman asked me about the changes I’d seen in my students over my years of teaching. I thought for a moment about how much the world has – and hasn’t — changed since I first came to lecture at Pasadena City College in 1993, and thought of all the possible answers I could quickly give. And then it occurred to me that one of the most troubling of recent developments about which I hadn’t yet spoken or written was the loss of safe space created by the advent of webcams and cell-phones.

Count me among those adults who think that the frenzied anxiety about “sexting” is both prurient and overblown. Frankly, I’m more worried about the motives of school principals who go through students’ cell phone photos than I am about the photos themselves. And as someone who rejects the “one mistake will ruin your life” warning that is foisted onto kids (girls in particular), I suspect that most teens whose naked photos make their way into the public domain will survive the embarrassment just fine. We’re only three decades away, at most, from a presidential candidate being confronted with images and video from her impulsive adolescence — and I strongly suspect the reaction will be a collective yawn. So my problem with webcams and cell phone pictures has very little to do with sex.

My problem is that for countless young people — again, particularly for girls — their “private spaces” are no longer as private as they once were. Just a decade ago, a girl’s bedroom or bathroom were hers alone (even if shared, say, with a sibling.) In the looks-obsessed culture of American teenagers, the bedroom was a refuge. A young woman who had been scrupulous about her appearance all day could return to her bedroom at night, change into what was comfortable, and have at least a little waking time where her looks didn’t matter. Since the 1950s (if not before) a high percentage of teen girls have had telephones in their bedroom, but until the past decade, those phones didn’t transmit visual images. You didn’t have to get dressed up to talk. That’s all changed.

A 2009 survey suggested that an astonishing 71% of teens used webcams in their bedrooms. In commenting on the study, the primary media concern was with the potential for sexually explicit video chat, as boys cajoled girls into stripping for the camera. No doubt the pressure to sexualize webcam conversation is real, and no doubt some young people end up doing what they regret — only to find that the images or video have gone viral. (By the same token, “webcam sex” — like phone sex before it — has a lot of potential good to it as well, allowing for the safe expression of fantasy and for connection in long distance relationships. I dealt with that topic here.) But the real problem has nothing to do with sex. The real problem is that the webcam has stripped the bedroom and the bathroom from their role as safe refuge from the beauty-obsessed culture. The real problem is that now, even with the door shut, a young woman’s looks still matter.

The self-portrait in the bathroom mirror is one of the iconic images of the 2000s. First on Myspace, and then on Facebook, these photos were — and to a great extent still are — de rigueur for young millenials. Some of the photos are sexy, some are silly, but because these photos are taken by desperately image-conscious teenagers, all are posed. In 2007, I asked the kids in my high school youth group about these self-portraits, asking how many snaps they took on average until they found the right one to upload as a profile pic. Most reported taken dozens if not more, carefully striving for that right balance of attractiveness and teenage insouciance. It’s not new that kids want to be seen as cool. It’s not new that kids study themselves in the bathroom mirror. It is new that they are expected to share those poses with everyone else. It is new that so many of us expect to see and share the contents of these bedrooms and bathrooms. It is new that these most private of spaces are now at least partly public.

I write a lot about the crushing pressure to be perfect which afflicts so many teen girls. (And I always recommend Courtney Martin’s superb Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.) There’s no question that technology has exacerbated that pressure. The ubiquity of cell phones has meant, for example, that young women are expected to be constantly available to their boyfriends — and to each other. Friendship maintenance, so crucial to so many young women, may require dozens of texts a day, each of which “needs” to be replied to promptly. For those who are raised to be people pleasers, technology simply means that the people one needs to please can now make demands more incessantly than ever before. Being at school, being in the car, being in one’s room is not an excuse any longer for being unavailable.

And being in that bedroom or bathroom is no longer a respite from the pressure to be pretty, to be sexy, to perform.

“The Skinny Bitch Discourse”: on mean girls, sexualization, thinness, and the cult of competitive individuality

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UPDATE: This is now also posted at Jezebel, where the comments section is much more active.

In last Friday’s Guardian piece on sexualized rebellion, I briefly touched on the media-driven discourse of “compulsory individuality”. As contradictory — and as familiar — as it sounds, compulsory individuality requires women (and teen girls in particular) to navigate the paradoxical demands to “fit in” while “standing out”. This isn’t novel — but as I wrote last week (following Marjorie Jolles), the ever-more-sexualized nature of compulsory individuality is transforming young women’s self-image, not necessarily in helpful ways.

A related point can be made, of course, about skinniness. It is not new to point out that “thin is in.” The longing to be slender and the obsession with dieting goes back to the 1920s, and is due in part to radical changes in fashion and culture brought on both by World War One and pre-war innovations in style. In the USA, five generations of young women have now come of age surrounded by diet books, and what were once considered problems for middle-class white girls only (poor body-image and eating disorders) are now found in every racial and class demographic.

The key change in the past decade around skinniness is the explicit recognition of thinness as a marker not only of status, but of proud isolation from other women. Adolescent girls whose bodies come close to the fashion ideal have long been aware that they are, at least at times, the object of other young women’s resentment. “You’re so thin… I hate you!” is a phrase that many slender women have heard, with the only variation being the degree to which the second part of the statement is said with genuine loathing as opposed to mild, teasing envy. Lots of thin girls grow up being called “anorexic”, regardless of the presence or absence of an eating disorder. The mix of jealousy and resentment and pity often includes the refusal to believe tha a “skinny girl” has any problems about which to complain. (Think about what often happens when the most slender young woman in a room remarks that she “feels fat”.)

In the past decade, we’ve seen the appearance of what we might call the “mean girl narrative”. In addition to the now canonical (for millenials, anyway) Lindsay Lohan film, books like Queen Bees and Wannabees, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, and the newest media darling, Twisted Sisterhood: Unraveling the Dark Legacy of Female Friendships all make the popular case that girls are, well, mean — meaner, certainly, in ways that boys simply could never be. It seems likely that this “discourse of female cruelty” works in tandem with the narrative of compulsory individuality to suggest to young women that theirs is a hyper-competitive world where success is a solitary and sexualized pursuit. Whether it’s chasing grades or getting guys, even your sisters are nothing more than “frenemies” at best.

The positing of thinness as a competitive tactic shows up in books like Rory Freedman’s Skinny Bitch. Freedman’s title reflects (or, one suspects, subtly reinforces) the reality that achieving the ideal body will invariably invite animosity from other women. It is taken for granted that it is better to be envied than to be liked. One imagines that the subtitle could have been this brutal but unmistakably powerful false dichotomy: “Would you rather be fat and liked or skinny and hated? Is that even a question?” Freedman uses this discourse of inter-female hostility to market a plan for success in this brutal, mean-girl world. (I like Freedman’s emphasis on a plant-based diet. But as a vegan, I’m not interested in using women’s fear of fat in order to transition people away from animal protein.)

The latest manifestation of the marriage of women’s enforced competitiveness and the cruel dictates of fashion comes from Bethenny Frankel, like Freedman a chef and animal-rights advocate and now a reality-tv sensation. Frankel, whose marketing term is “Skinny Girl” (slightly less confrontational than Freedman’s) just introduced a onesie for infants with the slogan “Future Skinny Girl” emblazoned across it. Frankel wanted it for her own daughter, and in a statement, insisted that she was motivated by concern for her little Bryn’s health. The pushback has been obvious and expected, and all of it drives attention to Frankel’s books and merchandise. Continue reading →

“Do what I wish I had done”: mothers, daughters, and discourses of perfection

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A son is your son ’till he gets him a wife,
but your daughter’s your daughter
for the rest of her life.

– Old English Proverb (16th c. or earlier). Bold emphasis is mine.

Last week, I reprinted this post about fathers, daughters and emotional incest. Several folks commented or wrote in that they’d like to see me touch on that same issue, just with a focus on mothers. With the obvious and whopping caveat that I am not a mother, I’ll oblige as best I can.

My own mother is flying into L.A. tomorrow for her annual visit with her older son and his family, so I’ve got mama on my mind. But my regular living arrangement gives me plenty of opportunity to reflect on mother-daughter relationships in particular. My wife and I live with her mother and our daughter. We’ve got three generations of women under the same roof, interacting every day. I’m an intimate witness to my partner’s relationship to her mom, and the relationship of both of these grown women to our little Heloise.

Teaching women’s studies to a predominantly female student body means that I hear and read lots of stories about mother-daughter relationships. It is axiomatic that reflecting on feminism involves reflecting on one’s own mother. The conflict between Second Wave feminist moms and their Third Wave feminist daughters has been well-covered, and I dealt with that issue at length in this 2008 post. (Jessica Valenti — herself the mother of a newborn daughter — had a great piece in The Nation last month on this topic, and Naomi Wolf is hosting what looks like a fabulous panel of young feminists talking about intergenerational conflict next month in New York. And those really interested in this topic must check out Astrid Henry’s Not my Mother’s Sister, which I reviewed back in 2007.)

For many of my students who weren’t raised in feminist households, whose mothers — like my Colombian-born mother-in-law — grew up with deeply traditional values about gender roles which they then passed on to their daughters, embracing feminism is almost always emotionally fraught. For my large number of Latina, Asian, and Armenian students whose mothers were born abroad, “claiming the name” of “feminist” frequently involves a complicated and delicate rejection of their mothers’ values. I note that the most emotionally charged classroom discussions that I’ve ever facilitated in a women’s studies class revolved not around abortion, or body image, or sex — but about mother-daughter relationships.

If there’s one narrative that has the potential to do tremendous damage in mother-daughter relationships, it’s the one in which moms give the “Don’t make the same mistakes I did” speech to their growing girls. This discourse isn’t quite universal among women, but I suspect it’s not far off. Generation after generation of young women come of age, hearing warnings from mothers, aunts, and older sisters about the many perils that lie ahead. Occasionally, the discourse takes a positive tone: “My darling, I’ve found a great deal of happiness and fulfillment in my life by doing x, y, and z. Though I’ll support you whatever you do, I think doing x, y, and z is a very good idea. It certainly worked for me.” Far more frequently, the message is negative: “Don’t be a fool like I was! I got married too young/married for love/didn’t marry for love/slept around too much/slept around too little/focused too much on school/focused too little on school/took too many risks/played it too safe/had kids too early/waited too late to try to have them.” Continue reading →

The list isn’t life: some thoughts on the crushing expectations of a written chronology (and on Ed Miliband)

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On Saturday, the Labour Party in Britain chose Ed Miliband as its new leader. As a dual citizen with a keen interest in UK politics, I followed the election with some interest, and was not surprised at the result, which had been widely predicted in the days leading up to the party balloting.

But I also greeted the Miliband ascension with a mild degree of chagrin. The new Labour leader was born in 1969, and is more than two years my junior. He becomes the first major UK party leader to be younger than I am (though to be fair, Nick Clegg and David Cameron, the deputy PM and the PM respectively, are both less than a year older than I.) It is only a matter of time, obviously, before both of my countries are led by men and women who came into this world after I arrived.

I confess that throughout my life, I’ve always felt a twinge of jealousy, however minor, when I see someone younger accomplish something extraordinary. As emphatic as I am that men do well to accept and even embrace aging (particularly when it comes to seeing much younger women as daughter figures rather than as potential sexual partners), for years I was haunted by a sense of not quite living up to my potential. Until recently, that sense tended to be exacerbated whenever I saw someone younger than I was achieving fame and recognition.

I first felt this feeling of jealousy when Boris Becker won Wimbledon in 1985. The shock victory of the unseeded 17 year-old, still the youngest All-England men’s champion ever, stunned me; the red-headed German sensation was just a few months my junior, but he represented a generational shift away from the Borgs, the Connors, and the McEnroes who were comfortably older than I was. Becker was younger than me, and on the cover of newspapers across the world. My ego, prone to grandiose fantasies, was strangely bruised. As a result of Becker’s victory, I developed a penchant for rooting for the oldest athletes on the field, regardless of anything else. (Hence I’m a Brett Favre fan these days, though the NFL’s only grandfather is also a couple of years younger than I am.)

Perhaps my sense of “not living up to my potential” began even earlier, when my father told me the story of Mozart, who had composed his first serious works at five. I was perhaps seven when I heard the story, and felt an awful sense of having failed at something. I looked worried enough that my father, an amateur musician and passionate classical enthusiast, had to reassure me that he wasn’t expecting me to match the genius from Salzburg.

I thought about Becker and Mozart again on Saturday when I heard the news of the Miliband victory. And I thought also of the many young women with whom I work who suffer from something similar: the terrible sense that they are running out of time.

I’ve written often about what I call the Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls. One feature of the Martha Complex is the urge to make lists, particularly those that include the ages by which the young woman expects to accomplish key goals. A high school senior might write in her journal that she wants her B.A. by 22, her M.A. by 24. She’d like to meet “Mr. Right” by 25, marry by 27, and have her first child before she’s 30. Often, the chronology is more compressed than that, but the inclusion of educational, romantic, and reproductive goals is very common. Usually, there’s a lot that’s expected by 30! Continue reading →

Reprint: Fat, Slut, Selfish

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This first appeared in June 2007.

I’ve been teaching women’s history here at Pasadena City College for more than a dozen years now, and throughout that time, have made journals a critical part of the course. It’s a lot of reading for me, but I remain convinced that my own teachers were right when they told me that putting my words down on paper is the single best way to figure out what it really is I think, feel, and believe.

Over these twelve years or so of teaching gender studies, of meeting with countless students in office hours, of listening, of reading student journals and reflecting on what I find there, I’ve noticed some fairly clear patterns. And the pattern that’s in my head this morning is the ubiquitousness of self-doubt and self-criticism that I see in so many of my female students (and youth group kids).

As my students will confirm, I’m fond of insisting that there are “three key points” to be made about virtually anything. (Too much Trinitarian Christianity; too much of the “three-column system” in Kabbalah; too much Hegel… or three divorces. Take your pick.) And if I were to try and sum up all of the negative self-talk I encounter from my students in just three words, it would be easy:

Fat, Slut, Selfish.

Let me be very clear that I’m not claiming that most women regularly beat themselves up with all three of these. For most of my students and youth group kids, one or two of these three words is particularly haunting. The fear of fat is much commented upon, and in looking back over the last twelve years of journals, the best that I can say is that that crushing anxiety about the body has, at least, not gotten significantly worse. Of course, it couldn’t get much worse. (I do notice more of my male students admitting to body dysmorphia and a desire to lose weight or change their shape.)

If the label “fat” still has tremendous power to wound, there are signs that at least among some young women, “slut” is losing at least a little of its force. From what I can tell (and to generalize enormously), we’ve done a marginally better job of helping young women claim ownership of their sexuality. Compared to what I was seeing, hearing, and reading in the mid-1990s, I see slightly more acceptance among young women (and their male peers) of the notion that women have the right to be sexual subjects rather than objects. Of course, as many feminists worry, when it comes to “sex talk” it’s often difficult to distinguish between false bravado and a genuine embrace of erotic agency. One role of feminist mentors (and youth group leaders) is to provide a safe environment where students can get honest about sexuality. It’s in these safe environments that those who are merely “talking big” about their comfort with their sexuality can begin to acknowledge that some of that apparent confidence is a facade; it’s also in these environments that those who are anxious or confused about their own sexuality can begin to unburden themselves. Continue reading →

Holly dyed her hair: more on myths of female frailty, our fear of women’s anger, and what happens when the truth comes out

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I posted earlier this year against the “myth of female frailty” and the lie that “one mistake will ruin your life”. The topic of that myth arose again this week when I met with one of my former All Saints youth group kids, “Holly.”

Holly, whom I’ve known since she was in eighth grade, is now headed into her senior year of high school; she’s 17. When I first met Holly, and indeed for the next several years, Holly “presented” outwardly as the pretty, outgoing, poised and popular blonde whose passage through adolescence seems almost unfairly graceful. Holly was much sought after as a friend (and more) by boys and girls alike; at our Wednesday night youth group meetings, I often saw not-very-subtle attempts by kids of both sexes to sit on “Holly’s couch” and be near her.

Of course, Holly was far more than the walking embodiment of a stock American stereotype. Not only was she exceptionally bright and a particularly talented writer, her childhood had been touched by tragedy and loss to a degree that set her well apart from most of her peers. A few — a very few — of her friends got to know the depth of that loss and its impact on Holly’s life; I was one of the small group of adults to whom she also regularly turned. I watched her struggle with the disconnect between how the rest of the world perceived her and how she felt on the inside, and we talked often about her frustration with the realization that she was the object of desire, admiration, jealousy, and envy when for the most part, she felt out of place and frequently lonely. Holly’s is not an unfamiliar story — at its most extreme, call it the “Richard Cory” phenomenon after that famous Edward Arlington Robinson poem so loved by generations of misperceived adolescents.

This summer, Holly broke up with her first serious boyfriend, got her first lead in a play, and let go of a great many of her old friends. When I met with her earlier this week, her long blonde hair was mahogany brown. Despite the heat, she wasn’t wearing the short skirts that had been her trademark since junior high school. She wore corduroy pants, a t-shirt, and a vest. Not a trace of make-up on her face, but when we met at a local coffee shop, there was a sense of real happiness behind her eyes. Holly’s making changes; the outside shift reflects an inner transformation — and the brunette tresses a greater willingness to expose to the world the darker, more complex aspects of her personality. Continue reading →

Sixteen hours per week: boys, girls, video games, and expectations

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Amanda at Pandagon linked last week to this summary of a study from the journal Sex Roles, reporting that college-aged women spent considerably less time playing video games than their male counterparts. No surprise there, but the key explanation for the discrepancy is chilling:

“Our findings suggest that one reason women play fewer games than men is because they are required to fulfill more obligatory activities, leaving them less available leisure time,” said Jillian Winn of MSU’s Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media, and one of the co-authors of the study.

To be precise, the study found that college-aged women did sixteen hours “more work” per week (chores, jobs, and so forth). As Amanda pointed out, that finding dwarfs the discussion of video games; it points to further evidence of what Courtney Martin talks about in her marvelous Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters and what on this blog is called “The Martha Complex”. Young women today are increasingly likely to be over-worked, anxious, and beset by fears of failure; a growing percentage of their brothers are hooked on pot, porn, and Playstation, prioritizing “chilling out” over virtually any other waking activity. And an extraordinary number of these lads have women in their lives — mothers, sisters, girlfriends — cleaning up after them (a traditional sex role) and providing for them financially (something of an innovation.)

This time discrepancy is rooted in many things, it seems. Of course, some of it is rooted in the contemporary cultural ideal that, as Courtney Martin says, tells girls that they “can be anything” but implies that in order to do so, that they must somehow “do everything.” Over-caffeinated, over-achieving, and over-scheduled, a great many women are beset by anxiety. But it would be wrong to suggest that the problem is primarily in women’s heads. The time gap that forces so many college-aged, childless women to work a “second shift” is indeed frequently a result of direct pressure from parents and the community.

The lower the expectations for male behavior, the higher the expectations for female success and self-control. This is not only obvious and axiomatic, it has real-life repercussions in the lives of a great many young women. Many of my students come from immigrant families in which there are strict household divisions of labor; women cook and clean, men take out trash and fix cars. Given that cooking, cleaning, and laundry are daily and time-consuming activities compared to mowing lawns or emptying garbage cans, many of my female students take the same academic loads as their brothers while doing twice as much work at home. In many families, a young man is encouraged to do his homework so that he can then go out with his friends and play video games; his sister is told to help with the chores, and when everything else is done, she can then turn to her own homework. Continue reading →

One mistake will not “ruin your life”: thoughts on “onesies” and the myth of female frailty

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I’m on a fairly steep learning curve as a first-time father. Having changed fewer than five diapers in my life before a fortnight ago, I’m an increasingly efficient middle-of-the-night cleaner and re-coverer of baby behinds. I consider myself nearly an expert on working with teenagers, but this infant business is new stuff to me. Our beautiful daughter is teaching me a great many things.

Last week, I was changing her “onesie”, and was quite tentative about it, not wanting to bend or pull her little arms too briskly. My mother-in-law, who has been immensely helpful, came to my aid: “She won’t break, Hugo”, she said; “babies are less fragile than you think.” It was a reassuring thing to hear, though I’m still a bit frightened to pull too fiercely on any part of my daughter’s frame.

But my mother-in-law’s words reminded me of an essential feminist point: women don’t break as easily as we imagine. On Friday, I posted a rebuke to the sorry Zoe Lewis op-ed in the London Times which suggested that feminism led women astray with promises of independence, fulfillment, and satisfying relationships all at once. Part of the discourse anti-feminists like Lewis push isn’t just about feminism, however; they also peddle the notion that the bewombed are particularly easy to break. At 36, less than halfway through an normal lifespan for a woman in the Western world, Lewis is convinced that feminism has “ruined her life.” She’s wrong about feminism, of course, but she’s also wrong about something more fundamental: that women are easily ruined “for life” by either their own poor choices or their early capitulation to certain cultural messages.

In a post about how my students responded to Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism (a piece that played a small part in one of the many internecine wars to which the feminist blogosphere is lamentably prone), I noted that some of the most enthusiastic responses I received were to the author’s brief but memorable defense of making mistakes. Jessica wrote:

I’ve had more than a couple of embarrassing moments in my life and sexual history — but isn’t that what makes us who we are? Do we really have to be on point and thinking politics all the time? Sometimes doing silly, disempowering, sexually vapid things when you’re young is just part of getting to the good stuff.

I’ve had several excellent class discussions about this section of FFF since.

Thinking about Jessica Valenti’s book and about changing my daughter’s onesies reminds me of an essential truth: we tell a great lie to young women when we issue dire warnings to them about sex, men and other choices if we accompany our warning with the phrase “you might ruin your life.” I often ask the young women whom I teach and with whom I work how often they’ve heard “Don’t do x, or you’ll ruin your life.” Most raise their hands. Far fewer of the young men to whom I pose the same question respond affirmatively. Even now, with almost a decade of the 21st century under our belts, our culture still clings to destructive myths of female fragility. Girls born as recently as the Clinton Administration are taught that adolescence and young adulthood consists of a series of pitfalls to be avoided, and that one false step could mean a lifetime of heartbreak and regret. Do the wrong thing, this discourse suggests, and you’ll end up (for the literary minded) like Dickens’ Miss Havisham (possibly with the same fiery demise.) Continue reading →

Blue book essays and the Martha Complex: on time management, test-taking, and letting go of perfectionism

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I’m grading summer midterms today, with an eye to passing them back Monday. I gave all three of my summer classes their midterms on Tuesday. In each class, including my women’s history course, the midterm was designed to take ninety minutes. Within that time, students were to answer two out of three essay questions within their blue books.

Yesterday, after my 25B (Women in American Society) class, two of my students asked to meet with me briefly. Both young women were very concerned that they each had done poorly on the exam for the same reason, namely that they had spent too much time answering the first question leaving themselves little time for the second. I gave them my standard spiel about the importance of time management, and reminded them that no matter how poorly they had done on the midterm, a strong final exam could go a long way towards lifting their course grade.

But we also talked briefly about perfectionism. For years, I’ve given the same classic exams: “blue book” essays, with students required to complete two prompts within a given period of time. Each essay is worth 50 points. And I’ve noted that my female students, particularly the very bright ones, often have a great deal of trouble managing their time effectively. Part of the trick of doing well on these exams is learning to let go of the perfectionist desire to write one flawless essay. Spending the full class period crafting one beautiful, elegant paper will earn the student a poor grade. One “50″ (a perfect score) and one “0″ is an F grade; two “35s” will earn a C.

There’s a method to this madness, and its rooted in more than a desire to inflict upon my students the same testing techniques that were inflicted on me. Learning how to write well under time pressure is an important, even vital academic skill. From a pedagogical standpoint, we can debate whether or not that’s as useful a skill as some academics imagine it to be. But there’s little doubt that my students, as they transfer on to four-year institutions, will continue to be exposed to tests that evaluate their competence at writing effectively under time pressure. And as long as these tests are given at places like UCLA, I have an obligation to prepare my students for those exams.

But there’s another purpose too, one that ties in to feminist work. I’ve written a lot about the “Martha Complex”: the relentless pressure that so many young women feel to be “perfect” in every area of their lives. This perfectionism shows up in disordered eating of course, but it also shows up in the tendency of many of the best and brightest to overload themselves with work, volunteer activities, and family obligations. Classic symptoms of the Martha Complex include near-constant anxiety and exhaustion. Not surprisingly, those with the Martha Complex feel a huge pressure to do well on exams. So knowing this, why do I offer the particular sort of tests that I do? Continue reading →

On “Warrior Girls”, knee injuries, and the tangible costs of adolescent perfectionism: some thoughts on Michael Sokolove’s article

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The New York Times has a preview up today of a long article coming out on Sunday in their magazine: The Uneven Playing Field. It’s by Michael Sokolove, and based on his forthcoming book Warrior Girls: Protecting our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports. (I’ve pre-ordered the book, and will review it this summer when it comes out.)

In this lengthy adaptation on the Times website, Sokolove writes about what he sees as the extraordinary number of knee (ACL) injuries that are being sustained by female athletes, soccer players in particular. His thesis:

(the epidemic is) part of a national trend in the wake of Title IX and the explosion of sports participation among girls and young women. From travel teams up through some of the signature programs in women’s college sports, women are suffering injuries that take them off the field for weeks or seasons at a time, or sometimes forever.

Girls and boys diverge in their physical abilities as they enter puberty and move through adolescence. Higher levels of testosterone allow boys to add muscle and, even without much effort on their part, get stronger. In turn, they become less flexible. Girls, as their estrogen levels increase, tend to add fat rather than muscle. They must train rigorously to get significantly stronger. The influence of estrogen makes girls’ ligaments lax, and they outperform boys in tests of overall body flexibility — a performance advantage in many sports, but also an injury risk when not accompanied by sufficient muscle to keep joints in stable, safe positions. Girls tend to run differently than boys — in a less-flexed, more-upright posture — which may put them at greater risk when changing directions and landing from jumps. Because of their wider hips, they are more likely to be knock-kneed — yet another suspected risk factor.

The rate (of ACL injury) for women’s soccer is 0.25 per 1,000, or 1 in 4,000, compared with 0.10 for male soccer players. The rate for women’s basketball is 0.24, more than three times the rate of 0.07 for the men. The A.C.L. injury rate for girls may be higher — perhaps much higher — than it is for college-age women because of a spike that seems to occur as girls hit puberty.

At this point, my heart was sinking. Was this going to be anti-feminist ideology dressed up as professed concern for the health of young women? Was Sokolove trying to scare parents into pulling their daughters out of competitive sports? I even wondered if Sokolove was some sort of shill for the anti-Title IX crowd, trying a new tactic in their never-ending crusade to roll back a policy of equal funding for women’s sports. As a passionate sports fan, married to a former club soccer star, I have a deep and abiding commitment to women’s athletics — particularly the “beautiful game” of what the rest of the world calls football.

Happily, reading the article to the end (it is ten pages long) makes it at least fairly apparent that Sokolove is committed to women’s sports. Rather than imploring parents to pull their daughters off soccer teams, he writes sensibly and knowledgeably about the causes of what is undeniably a common problem: catastrophic ACL injuries among young female soccer players. The chief culprits have nothing to do with inherent feminine weakness. Rather, they are two-fold: poor bio-mechanics and the exhausting “club” system in high school and college that leaves many talented girls playing a demanding sport literally year-round. Continue reading →