Self-Esteem Must Be Earned
‘Girl Power,” it seems, is sweeping the globe. Alas, this movement isn’t so much about boosting feminine solidarity as it is about proving that the gentler sex can be as boorish, banal and egomaniacal as their male counterparts:
In Britain, an all-female pop group called the Spice Girls has become the biggest recording sensation since the Beatles. Their debut single hit number one in 22 countries a few weeks ago; their motto is “Girl Power.”
But just what exactly are these girls made of? The oft-drunken band members sport combat boots and pierced tongues, pull down each other’s pants, and swear profusely. Young female fans nationwide greet the band and each other by raising their fists in girl power salutes. “It’s about not letting anyone judge you,” explains a young admirer of the band. “It’s about no limitations,” explains another.
On the latest Billboard charts, the top rap single in the U.S. is by a fetching but foul-mouthed female gangsta rapper named Lil’ Kim (whom one critic described gushingly as an “egotistical diva supreme.”)
Young Kim poses in fur and panties for the jacket of her hot-pink CD, which is demurely titled “Hard Core.” The opening track is a song in which a man noisily masturbates to a movie starring the rap diva. The rest are raunchy ballads about what she calls “the realness” in a modern girl’s life: sex, drugs, and money.
Lil’ Kim is puzzled by critics who suggest that her work does anything less than empower women. This is equal-opportunity exploitation, she explains, and it’s about time: “Men have been doing it for years,” she complained to MTV last week. “Finally, finally, finally, there’s a woman who comes out, a woman who comes out and takes up for these women, and then there’s other women who are not happy with me taking up for them. Why?” Go figure.
On the Internet, the idea of women taking up for girls (or rather, grrls) is catching fire. During a cursory search of cyberspace, I found hundreds of girls-only gathering places such as “gurl.com,” “G.I.R.L.,” “webgrrls,” “Girl Power,” “Flower Power,” and “Heartless Btches International.”
The presence of “Riot Grrl” fanzines, inspired by the feminist rock movement in Olympia, is also ubiquitous on the Web. Some of the sites are magnificently designed - but most are filled with the bored ramblings of boy-crazy teens and the tedious rants of post-feminist thirtysomethings who swear profusely.
And in New York recently, the federal government launched a new million-dollar campaign aimed at increasing the self-esteem of the nation’s 9-to 14-year-old girls. It’s called - you guessed it - “Girl Power!” U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services-turned-riot grrl Donna Shalala undertook the effort because “too many girls, once full of resilience, somehow lose their very selves and enter the second decade of their lives without the strength that got them there.”
In this age of the Hyperinflated Female Ego, the need for a taxpayer-subsidized public-health initiative to raise girls’ sense of self is highly questionable. And so is the fairness of it all. The feds cite reams of “alarming” statistics showing that girls are not as happy with themselves as boys and attempt suicide more often than their male counterparts. But the girl boosters omit equally alarming statistics showing that boys drop out of school at higher rates, are more likely to be robbed, threatened or attacked in and out of school, and actually succeed in committing suicide at higher rates than their female peers.
While girls fare worse than boys on math and science tests, the gender gap on reading and writing tests is much larger - and boys are on the losing end. (The feds, however, are not planning to launch an analogous “Boy Power!” campaign.)
Don’t get me wrong. Telling young people they are valued is all well and good. But the Girl Power! proponents neglect to make an important distinction between what psychologists call “earned self-esteem,” which is gained through actual accomplishments, and “global self-esteem,” a general sense of pride in oneself that is not tied to any specific skill or achievement.
Contrary to popular belief, the latter kind does not lead to higher academic success. Foreign students consistently beat the pants and skirts off their American counterparts; yet, U.S. students show a consistently higher self-evaluation of their academic prowess than their peers around the world. Conceit and achievement, in other words, are inversely related.
Fighting for equality of opportunity is one thing. Both girls and boys should have the chance to prove their mettle on any playing field. But if the new self-esteem movement leads to equality of arrogance, that is hardly progress. One need look no further than the pierced-tongued Spice Girls and the filthy-mouthed Lil’ Kim, egotistical poster divas of the Girl Power! movement, for confirmation of that.
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