GIRLS
First Edition All Rights Reserved Š 2015 Iona Berry
GIRLS Iona Berry
“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and pat-
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
Age 10
Age 11
Age 13
A survey for the Channel 4 programme Sex Education versus Pornography found 60% of 14 to 17 year olds agreed that “pornography might give boys or Sexual bullying and harassment are routine in UK schools. Almost a third of girls experience unwanted sexual touching in UK schools, and close to one in three (28%) of 16-18-year-olds say they have seen sexual pictures on mobile phones at school a few times a month or more Nearly one in four 16-18-year-olds say that their teachers never said unwanted sexual touching, sharing of sexual pictures or sexual name calling are unacceptable suicide. Over 20,000 girls under 15 are at high risk of female genital mutilation in England and Wales each year An Ofsted survey of 150,000 children found that by the age of 10 a third of girls cited their bodies as their main source of worry As part of some research in 2007 into young girls’ feelings about self-esteem and body image a group of Brownies aged seven to ten, members of Girlguiding UK, were asked to describe ‘Planet Sad’: they spoke of its inhabitants as being fat and bullied because of their weight and appearance
Age 13
Age 13
about their appearance and 20% have avoided giving an opinion in public because of it 30% of teenage girls has experienced sexual violence from a boyfriend 70% of girls believe they are not good enough or do not measure up in some way, including their looks, performance in school and relationships with family and friends 90% of eating disorders are found in girls 92% of teen girls would like to change something about the way they look, with body weight ranking the highest
Age 14
Age 14
Age 14
“People used to say I had a big nose in year 7. It made me quite self conscious for a while, I wouldn’t like sitting next to people as I always thought they were “Not too bad, I don’t hate my body because people always complement me on being skinny. Obviously looking in magazines and watching models makes you “I’m not a very insecure person but I do feel quite insecure about my face like I won’t go out of the house without any make up on. I know I don’t look
the morning. I wish I could stop these negative thoughts about myself as I know
about smiling. Also, I’m insecure about my height because when I’m out with my friends I
Age 14
“Sometimes people make fun of my glasses and call me four eyes but dad told me some “I think I learnt the word fat from my mum, it is a word she often uses about herself, so “Boys teased me for about a year saying I had a big forehead. They kept teasing me to the
I literally dislike everything about myself. My hair, my face, I have moles on my face and
“I am okay with my body but there’s always something I don’t like. So I feel pressured to exercise more and be skinnier. Boys in school talk a lot about girls bodies
Age 14
“I’m from Lithuania and in my country you have to be skinny, you have to please the boys, don’t worry about your personality just please the boys. You have to be the perfect housewife, skinny, good wife, good at cooking but NO I am none of that. I
“The boys in my area have a competition where they take girls virginity and then rate them from 1 to 10. Loads of my friends have been rated and everyone talks about it. Boys compete with other boys to see who can get the most girls.
Age 15
accept me as I am. I wish that every girl felt safe when they went home and this is
Age 15
“During the summer, me and a guy were messaging and it turned into something that made me feel uncomfortable. He was asking for pictures of my boobs and I didn’t really know what to do. I liked him at the time and I didn’t want to upset him so I said okay and I ended up sending him some. Afterwards I felt ridiculously scared about what I had done. I knew he kept the pictures and began dating someone else. And then at this party that I wasn’t at, the pictures got out. Everyone called me a slut and weak
“Boys have shown me porn and I can’t unseen it, it stays in your mind. Porn is not real, it’s fake. It’s like acting but just doing sex, they have to redo the scenes over and over again, then boys think it’s realistic. So then when they do it with a girl they want to perform all the sex moves they have seen, but that might not be realistic, or comfortable or what the other person wants. The amount of pressure makes girl feels worse cause they see this look and boys feel pressure because they think they need to act like they are in porn. I know a girl whose in my year age 13 and she has already lost her V plates, she sent pictures of herself naked to a boy outside school called mini G and
Age 15
“Me and my friend were on the train to Birmingham and it was quite empty but there was a man sitting not far from us. He was staring at us and we kept moving seats and he followed us. He was viciously touching himself and watching porn on his phone. We called “Our dress code at school doesn’t let us wear skirts. I believe a teacher once said this was so we didn’t ‘distract the boys’. At our school everyone wears the same thing, which is supposed to make it equal but they go around now doing uniform checks. One day a teacher came into our classroom and she said ‘I know this is annoying, but can all the girls stand up’ and so we did and the boys stayed sitting down and the teacher walked around the room staring at us and judged whether our trousers were too tight or not. It was so awful and uncomfortable. It even makes the boys analyse you in a way that they didn’t “I don’t think you should judge women on how tight their clothing is, how short their skirt is, how much their boobs are exposed, SO WHAT, you’re the one sexualising her. able to wear exactly what you want despite age or gender, if you are a granny and you
sexy’ and ‘nice legs’ when I am in my school uniform, so they must know that I’m too
Age 15
old. I wore one and people said ‘this is a part of you now’ but when I was 12 I took it headscarf people wouldn’t speak to me or ask me certain questions, people said it put up
when I stopped wearing my scarf. I thought people were going to see me for me and I couldn’t culture. Other Somali girls I know look down on me for not wearing the scarf, but I know they “My mum is a strict muslim and she doesn’t even like me wearing a school skirt. Even the women love to back bite each other. And if there is something wrong with their children, suddenly the mum is to blame, like it’s something to do with the way they were raised, they would blame the mother. So when me and my sister went into care my mother got a bad reputation which has left her feeling nervous around other Somali
“Black boys are going for white girls now. Black girls are pressured to look like white girls now, to have straight hair. And i’m not going to lie, even I want to dress like a white girl. Light skin, blue eyes, it’s what every guy wants and I’m not it. You look in magazines and how many black girls do you see? Loads of girls in my school have tried lightening their
Age 15
Age 16
they are typically bigger and stronger, however getting to know then has made me “For a drama teacher she is incredibly sexist. There are two boys in my year who are both rather short, really lovely boys but incredibly small. One day the teacher was asking for help with some lifting and I was sitting next to the two boys and she called just for them to come and help and kept saying she needed some ‘big strong “The biggest stress for me is school, home work and getting good grades. At the moment the school is making us choose our GCSE options a year early and it’s hard to make such a big decision when i’m not sure what I want to be when I’m older. My parents think I should
“I really dislike the word bossy. Because I feel like a lot of the time a boy acted that way then they wouldn’t be called bossy, which REALLY bugs me. Boys would be called
Age 16
Age 16
“My main goal in life is to become a teacher in either anthropology or archeology. I believe it’s important to help the future generation be the best they can be. I also want to work with young African women, I do not how but I always wanted “I have got a pretty hard dream to achieve with many back ups. I want to be in the foreign languages: however this dream is very hard to achieve as I have done the research “I am aiming to study medicine in the future. I feel so lucky to be living in a culture where women have the potential for a great education. I think people take it for granted that
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