From Dab, Response to 1st two readings: “The human female is bombarded with advice on how to wield those feminine wiles.”

I found that this quote in “Pink Think” to be an important statement regarding the socialization of girls into womanhood. Some time ago, someone defined the “feminine” and I can only think that it was defined by someone other than a woman, but disguised as a woman.  The quote tells me that women are taught to be conniving and manipulative to win something. They were taught to compete for a ‘man.’  This competition over time does drive the spirit of meanness.  The sad part of this is that these ideas or ‘cultural myths’ do not go away. As a matter of fact, it seems in some sad way, they are stronger than ever. Women are vying for the bachelor, looking at how to ‘win’ his heart through a night in the hot tub. What is even more disturbing is that the whole narrative is watched by millions on tv. Such reality shows describe something that could be written in ‘pink think.’ Only today it is overt sexuality and conspiracy against each other that is the selling point. That is, in earlier times girls were ‘taught’ that any kind of forwardness was wrong with regard to their sexuality. They must ‘wield feminine wiles’ in ways that no one recognizes it as manipulative. What a magnificent thing to learn for future career skills.

Girls were forced to hide the fact that they had sexual feelings. Today, girls are told they must be sexy in order to win the prize, but the dualities of the messages still linger, ‘you must remain a virgin or he will think you are bad.’ Such a double message is confusing. Girls must suppress any natural feelings that they have in order to be good and ‘feminine.’ As Thomas says, ‘society dictates your girlhood.’ Such ideas from earlier times remain the clear message. A girl is not free to learn who she is unless it is what society deems to be correct. Girls still seemed to be chained to old models of thought .

The difference, and the undertones of the ‘Mean” article is that all girls/women cannot share some of the cultural attitudes defined in Pink Think. Clearly, or not so clearly, “pink think” was not written for all classes, races, and ethnicities. One of the things that I would want to explore is the different learned patterns for different people and how that would affect the rise in girl violence, and or a different kind of violence such as a more manipulative mean covert violence in different  girls that could be even  more dangerous than physical violence.  This latter idea, I feel, would be important for the academy to explore.