The Future is Female

I have lived a life that is dominated by women in many ways. Art history is largely female in my experience, and out of a department of about sixty people, there were two, maybe three men - the tiny minority, by a wide margin. I went to an all-girls’ high school, where male teachers were rare, and any jobs that needed doing (sports teams, science fairs, provincial exams, the yearly musical, art shows, fundraising, Spirit Week, holiday parties and concerts, volunteering, letter-writing campaigns, you name it) were planned, organised, populated, advertised, and carried out by women and girls. Math and science were not ‘male’ subjects: all the classes everyone took were, of course, counted as ‘girly’ subjects because we were girls, and we were taking them, so… you know.

People sometimes assume that girls, when grouped together, become catty and aggressive with each other. I don’t remember that being the defining feature of my social life at school at all. Instead, I recall a kind of shedding - not a pleasant image, but suitable, I think - a shedding of the expectation, the demand, to be pretty. It’s a rent that women are expected to pay for the privilege to exist in public, but for at least five days a week for six years of my life, that rent was forgiven. In seventh grade, the earliest a girl could start at this school, we earnestly tried to do our hair and look cute in our terrible uniforms, and eigth grade inevitably brough on a wave of kilt rolling to ensure the shortest possible skirt (and a roll of fabric around one’s middle), but from then on, there was a distinct drop off in fussing over looks. Perfectly coiffed waves? Absolutely not - we opted for ponytails, braids, or broccoli-shaped buns twisted at the very top of the head, caring little for loose strands - anything to keep your hair out of your face. We also generally ditched daily makeup of any kind - mostly, the logic seemed to be that an extra few minutes of sleep each morning was vastly more valuable than a face full of foundation. At a certain point, we all seemed to accept that there was no way to look cute in the uniform, so we gave that up, too. A girl in a knee- or calf-length skirt was either in seventh grade, because her kilt was new and not yet hemmed, or in twelfth grade, because she wasn’t trying to show off her legs anymore, and didn’t care.

Instead of hyperfocusing on looks, I remember an air of earnestness. It was generally a good thing to be at the top of the class, and my classmates became invested in school projects, classroom discussions, and studying for tough exams. Participation was cool - or, perhaps more accurately, participation was fun, and we didn’t care so much about being cool. We wept openly when we watched Little Women in class, and there was no retaliation, no teasing, no shame in it. Now, it wasn’t a utopia: did every girl get along with every other girl? No, of course not. Was everyone good at everything? Obviously not. A good friend of mine was a ferocious volleyball player, and I was terrible at sports and gym class. But there wasn’t a feeling that somehow her upcoming match was more or less exciting than my weekly choir practice - especially considering she was in choir with me. The clique-y, rigid expectations for teens that tend to show up in John Hughes movies just didn’t seem that important in my experience.

I put that down to the lack of boys. There was no one to impress, so we got on with other stuff that seemed a lot more important - like what class costume we could come up with for Halloween, or how to get away with wearing sweatpants under our skirts without detention. As we learned in this week’s episode, yes, single-sex education was developed out of a biological misapprehension about women’s bodies, but the outcomes were great, at least for me. There are apparently studies that show that single-sex education is wonderful for girls, but terrible for boys, and the reason seems to be that when left without their usual targets (women), boys turn on each other. The reaction from some quarters to this news is that we ought not to have single-sex education, to protect boys and young men from violence and bullying, so that women can assume that burden, keeping the boys safe? Cool. I’m more inclined to wonder if we shouldn’t convince boys to stop targeting anyone at all, but hey, what do I know? All I can tell you is that I have enjoyed a distinctly female life, learning, working, studying, and growing alongside women who are funny, ferocious, smart, driven, kind, empathetic, loving, and more.

Jennifer