Why Your Daughter’s Version of Body Autonomy Might Look Different Than Yours

And how to bridge the gap

photo by Garin Chadwick on Unsplash

My daughter, like me, is deeply attached to the mantra “my body, my choice.” For me, that mostly conjures reproductive rights and the ability to move safely through the world. To her, it means free rein to bare her midriff and whatever else, when she so pleases. It’s true, female bodies have been subject to evaluation and blame for far too long. It’s also true, as I once said to her, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar but a crop top, dieting, or Brazilian wax are never as simple as free choice. To better understand how empowerment has become a sometimes performative, superficial “Yaass queen” culture, prioritizing individual (sexualized) expression over critically examining women’s subjugation, we have to go back in time and examine the rise of girl power.

[kids are] right, most choices are valid but without an understanding of the unseen forces at play, they’re often not real choices.

Girl Power

The 1990s was an era full of contradictions, producing both a record number of elected female candidates and the rise of “heroin chic” fashion models. The decade began with punk’s Grrrl Power that addressed issues like sexuality and domestic violence and ended with The Spice Girls’ highly feminine, sexualized, and commercialized Girl Power. In the latter version, girls no longer had to sacrifice their femininity to be powerful—a good thing—but they were reminded much of that power comes from being a sex object. And from shopping.

The 90s were supposed to be the “decade of women,” but women who had the audacity to make headlines were pilloried by the media. In the book 90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality, journalist Allison Yarrow argues, “the music, media, and products freely portrayed women as bitches and every nasty offshoot imaginable. The generation’s youth, and girls in particular, internalized this term and saw its power to offend and undercut even the most powerful women — the first lady, the secretary of state, and the attorney general, to name a few.” She goes on to say “Anita Hill lied, Monica Lewinsky was a tramp, Marcia Clark was unqualified, and girls were supposed to ‘go wild’ for cameras.” It was a cautionary tale: this is what happens if women are sexual like Monica, speak out like Anita, are openly empowered wives like Hillary Rodham Clinton. Safer to stick with shopping.

Choice Feminism

Girls’ freedom to own and elevate their femininity felt good, and was perhaps a response to second-wave feminism that eschewed makeup and sexiness. These young women would not be mistaken for hairy, man-hating feminists! Instead, the feminist mantra became choice. It valued individualism, embraced sex positivity, and vehemently opposed body shaming. Most important, supporting women’s choices began to mean all women, not just white women. Thanks to legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, feminism demanded we pay attention to power and oppression at the intersection of gender, race, class, ability, etc., acknowledging people experience multiple forms of discrimination (or privilege) based on various aspects of their identity. Still, the push toward individualism and materialism—frequent culprits of feeling empty—was forceful.

In other words, girl power began as a call to empower girls to speak out against inequality and abuse, moved toward pride in their femininity and sexuality, and has morphed into the notion that all choices are empowering, and therefore feminist, whether that means wearing nothing on top but a bra to school, getting vaginoplasty at 16, or trading blowjobs for popularity (but that’s for another essay).

Girls’ willingness today to stand up for theirs and others’ choices is impressive and gives me hope for a truly inclusive and less judgmental future. Their confidence in their ability to say “hands off!” is comforting. But their budding feminism may be more of an identity politics, lacking analysis and real-world experience. They’re right, most choices are valid but without an understanding of the unseen forces at play, they’re often not real choices.

How has the feminist message gotten so diluted?

The Co-optation of Feminist Ideals for Profit

The advent of the internet took the commodification of feminism and injected it with steroids. From the time girls first hold a cellphone in their hands, they’re being sold a hollow, corporate-serving ideology of beauty as sexiness and a generic sameness. The beauty industry has cleverly reframed beauty as self-care which fit seamlessly into a culture that prioritizes individualism and self-centeredness. This, of course, bypasses the reason such “self-care” is needed in the first place: because “flaws” and aging are bad (which explains why 10-year-olds are using retinol and swarming Sephora stores around the country.)

The fact that girls are real people in the midst of the important and intricate task of forming identities is irrelevant to corporate America. In fact, it behooves it to interrupt that process by making girls feel badly about themselves so they’ll buy things to feel better—all while convincing them it’s empowering. Credibility and confidence are just one new (hip-length) dress or lash extension away!

Girls are no longer just comparing their messy insides with glossy pictures of celebrities, but with the sublimity of bodies spawned by AI that would require liposuction and lip fillers to mimic. One patient I see in therapy complains she can’t stand her looks compared to her filtered self that has bigger eyes, fuller lips and breasts, smoother skin, and a smaller waist. Plastic surgeons call this “Snapchat dysphoria”. The cultural critic, Jia Tolentino, calls it “Instagram Face” or “a single, cyborgian look.”

What Can Parents Do

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

Keeping our kids safe and guiding them to a healthy sense of themselves—without disrupting the process of self-discovery—isn’t always straightforward. As the mother of teens and therapist to many adolescents over the years, the only “answer” I’ve found is ongoing conversation and encouragement to think critically about cultural messages. Hand-wringing and moral panic just make us seem old-fashioned and do nothing to earn our kids’ respect, which is what we need if they’re going to listen to us. Sure, we can forbid them to wear the clothes and makeup they like and that help them fit in, but that does little for our relationships with them. Rather than make it us against the culture, it makes it us against them. The fight over autonomy in general, and presentation in particular, harms too many parent-child relationships.

If we can impart three lessons to our daughters (remember we’re playing the long game here), we might have a chance of grounding feminism in true social and sexual liberation.

Teach them that feeling empowered isn’t the same thing as actual power

Help them understand that being an object of visual pleasure for others is not the same as becoming a sexual being, in their own right. Succeeding at sexiness, especially one that adheres to the straight male fantasy, may feel good, but as feminist critic

Jill Filipovic

wrote in an article in Cosmopolitan titled, “How Kim Kardashian Killed the Term ‘Empowerment’”, it’s “a kind of head-pat to keep us satisfied with subservience.”

Real power is about the fair distribution of resources, political influence, and personal agency. We might express to our daughters, “I want you to feel great in your body and in the clothes you wear, but it’s also important to remember you deserve real power, which doesn’t come from others’ approval for being hot.” When girls understand that, they’ll understand why they can feel simultaneously powerful and disempowered by something as seemingly innocuous as a selfie.

Explain that objectifying themselves can lead to habitual self-monitoring

Girls who self-objectify often scrutinize themselves, viewing themselves as they imagine others might, and increasingly experience shame and anxiety about their bodies. This puts them at risk for eating disorders, depression and sexual dysfunction. Research also shows self-objectification usurps cognitive resources, making it difficult to get into flow states necessary for performance and achievement. And despite the early and persistent emphasis on becoming sex objects, by the time they’re ready for sex, girls are often too preoccupied with how their angles, belly rolls, cellulite, and smells are being perceived to enjoy it. Looking desirable has replaced feeling desire. Too much objectification by others and themselves can supplant the once genuine delight they felt in themselves before puberty.

Remind them that the internet is lying to them about their wellbeing

Girls need to hear that every click, even every pause, they make over certain content is ammunition for advertisers to target their unique insecurities. This isn’t about making girls feel like victims. It’s about making clear that the beauty industry doesn’t care about their liberation and empowerment. It cares only about its bottom line. Actual empowerment is being able to spot the manipulation and deception and recognize who is cashing in on that. Only then can girls make conscious decisions about their appearance and wellbeing.

Even adults are manipulated by advertising, so it can be helpful to have honest conversations with girls about the choices we’ve made, and are making, within a patriarchal system as just that: choices influenced by a system that doesn’t have girls’ and women’s best interests in mind. If we can’t stop spending way too much on skincare or take pleasure in certain sexist traditions, as I do polished toes and eyebrow threading, let’s examine why rather than pretend it’s as simple as something we choose to do for ourselves.

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My goal as a mom has always been to help my daughter think critically about her choices, not to control them. I try to let her make her own decisions but also help her see that those choices are made within a culture that believes girls’ value lies mainly in their sex appeal. At the same time, it’s crucial not to rain too much on their style and social media parade. As

Raechel Anne Jolie

expresses in her brilliant piece “Girl Culture Panic & The Failures of Feminism” maybe a little levity in feminism isn’t so bad. Although she’s talking about “girly things” like Barbie, Taylor Swift, floral-dress wearing tradwives, girl dinner, and bows, I think her suggestion regarding the cries of feminism's downfall — “…if nothing else, we should consider how they are in conversation, without falling into binary panic/defense modes” — can also be relevant in this context. Empowerment comes in many guises. Sometimes a little “Yaaas queen” goes a long way.