“Like A Girl”

Society dismisses teenage girls’ interests, when, in reality, they compose the bulk of pop culture. One continual example of this is boy bands in the music industry. Boy bands even in their peak popularity, are often overlooked and dismissed due to their fanbase, composed of mostly teenage girls. Growing up during the One Direction era, I remember whenever One Direction released an album and it dominated the charts, it was always credited to their appearance and not their musical talent. However, despite the constant dismissal from my male peers, One Direction won 242 awards and were nominated for 366 awards in their career. Another great example of this phenomenon is The Beatles, one of the most popular bands in modern history, who faced a very similar backlash during their era. Critics constantly bashed their fanbase, calling girls “crazed” and even alluding that their passion for The Beatles was similar to a disease, calling it “Beatlemania.” Yet, according to Insider, The Beatles are the best-selling musicians of all time. Nowadays, people of all ages call The Beatles one of the greatest music groups of all time. However, they tend to overlook the fact that teenage girls were the first to bring them to mainstream audiences. Despite the constant mainstream and financial success boy bands have showcased throughout time in the music industry, they all face the same criticism.

Music is not the only industry in which girls’ interests are looked down upon. Many movies and TV series suffer the same tragic fate as boy bands. Romance films are another victim of society’s warped view of women. Because they are primarily targeted towards women, they are immediately seen as superficial and mundane by others. One example of this is the Twilight franchise, consisting of four novels and five films. Despite constantly being shunned as ridiculous by everyone except it’s teenage girl audience, it grossed $3.3 billion worldwide and quickly became part of the top 20 highest grossing film franchises of all time. No matter how someone feels about vampires and werewolves, they must admit that for a franchise constantly being diminished by film critics and people everywhere, it was clearly enjoyed by many.

Society’s instant reaction to dismiss anything cherished by young women is very clear to girls everywhere, and yet, is not acknowledged by many. No matter the generation, no franchise or music group is safe from the harsh judgment they will face if they have an audience composed primarily of women. But, it is this audience that continuously works together to make these franchises, music groups, book series, and beyond, mainstream and historical in their own fields. I advise everyone to start paying more attention to what a teenage girl likes, it most likely will be the next big thing!

The first time she saw a pig die, she thought she could be brave. She stood there, boots pressed into the soft mud, watching like it was something out of the Bible. It was the hammer that changed things. Why use a hammer when you have a gun? It makes everything intimate, or brutal, or both because, really, what’s the difference? She never wanted to know what flesh felt like under the weight of a hammer. She already knew what it sounded like.

Pigs cry like humans. She thought: I can’t tell the difference between my screams and hers.

–

He tells me that he is looking for a nice girl to settle down with. By this, he means he is looking for a girl who will not cause problems. Nice, which is to say malleable. Which is to say easy. Say soft, say submissive, say I am looking for a wife but also for a mother, say sex but only on my terms, say an object. A nice girl is what he says. Which is to say, not me.

But he takes me anyway. To dinner, to his bed. (Not in that order). I keep telling myself that this means I am a nice girl, or at least that I can be, for him. Everything I say starts and ends with him. I hand my body over, I say surrender, I say I don’t need it anymore now that I have you. I say take it, take it, take it.

And he does.

–

For days after watching the pig die, she would toss in her sleep, her dream-self running through mud, leaving footprints, heavy with pig-blood, in her path. In her dreams, she yelled, her throat supple, merely a place to be sliced, the site of a botched excavation. She would run and yell (run and yell, run and yell, over and over and over) until she wasn’t sure whether she was running for her own life or for the pig. She didn’t even know where the pig was. Had there been a pig? But then there was all that blood. She started running again, yelling louder now:

I am the pig! She was me! Why didn’t you hear me screaming?

–

The first time we have sex the blood runs all the way down past my ankle, pools at my big toe. He tells me he loves me but only when he is inside of me, and every time he says it looks like it hurts. I feel bad, even though I’m in pain, even though I told him please don’t, even though he promised it would feel good. He says I love you like it’s a bandage or a blindfold. Then he takes me from the back, so he doesn’t have to look at me. I am hog-tied, squealing, sweaty under the sticky mass of him. His hands on my throat feel like a blade.

I love you, Dolly. I keep trying to listen to him when he says it, but all I hear is a slice.

–

When she woke up (soft with sweat, throat raw as a slab of meat), he would make her drink Gatorade—the boring orange type— ignoring her pleas. He would call the priest from across the street to kneel against her the next time she slept, praying into her ears. Hoping to pray away the screams. But it was too late. She knew, then, that she was marked with an expiration date, the same as the pack of meat in the freezer, or the gallon of whole milk dripping with condensation on the counter. When the priest asked if she felt better, she responded with a smile and went back to dreaming about a butcher’s knife.

–

One day in the spring he tells me that he is in love with another woman. He tells me that she is nice, so of course, I should have expected it. A week later he tells me that he cannot live without my body. I know I shouldn’t be happy but I am. So he is dating her, pining like a puppy, and fucking me like he’s in heat every other Thursday. So I’m happy but only sometimes. He doesn’t say he loves me anymore, but he repeats my name and I tell myself it means the same thing.

Dolly, dolly, dolly. Yanking at my hair. Dolly, dolly, dolly. My face against the cold tile floor. Dolly, dolly, dolly. In the back of a car, sweating against the leather. Dolly, dolly, dolly. Until my skin doesn’t feel like skin. Dolly, dolly, dolly.

Until I learn to cry at the sound of my name. Until Dolly turns into Doll turns into Dorotea turns into nothing.

–

She understood that there were few things more important than consumption. It was a tale as old as cavemen. The craving for meat is enough to turn lover on lover. Carnivore instincts tell us: you can have this heart and hold it, or you can eat it. Nine out of ten times men choose to eat it. She understood this. People keep telling her that men are like beasts. They can’t help themselves. It is natural. She keeps thinking: if men are beasts, why are we the ones sent to slaughter? But she understood that there were few things more important than hunger, and women are all flesh: tender meat stuck between crevices of teeth, his canines rupturing veins.

To have and to hold or to eat. Semantics. She understood this.

–

The night that it ends I have dinner at his mother’s house. It goes like this:

Here is the pot full of butternut squash soup. Here is the girl (me) at a dinner table that is not hers. Here is a mother (not my mother) stretching her mouth open with a fist. Here is the butternut squash soup barreling down her esophagus. Here is the nausea. Here is a reminder to be polite; she is a guest, after all. Here is the boy watching her gag. What else to say about the butternut squash soup? Well. There is a lot.

When she goes to the bathroom she decides three things. The first is that she is definitely about to vomit. The second is that she will never see him again after tonight. Mostly, she decides she hates butternut squash soup.

Here is the girl as she leaves the bathroom. Here is the girl two hours later in a car (not her car). Here are the new stains in the backseat. Here are the fluids and here is the blood. Here is her body pretending to be a body. Here is the boy.

Where is the girl?

–

She wants to be more than flesh. But then there’s the problem of all the blood; if a rock can be eroded by water, worn down to a pebble, then what of the human body? What of her body, that her mother always said could be kneaded like dough, the flesh of her arms so soft and giving, meant more to be trampled than loved?

–

They never find my body after that night.

The way he tells it, I was hysterical. I was yelling. I was the crazy one, accusing him of unspeakable crimes. He was the one who had to escape me. The way he tells it, he dropped me off on the street in front of my house and never saw me again. He doesn’t know what happened to me after that, he swears. The way he tells it, he never did anything wrong. He cleaned off the stains from the backseat, sold his car at a discounted price. The way he tells it, it turned out well for him in the end.

There is an empty grave somewhere marked Dolly. There is a body somewhere with no face, no name.

I couldn’t tell you if it was me.

When we look at the stars, we get a glimpse of the past. During the long nights of a pandemic in the winter, I find myself constantly looking upwards. Every star is like a miracle in the sky. They are thousands and thousands of lightyears away, shining across the universe, somehow making their way to me.

I often struggle with feelings of uselessness. It’s like I am constantly running into a wall when I talk about women’s issues. The people who need to hear what I have to say the most are not the ones who want to listen to me. Someone once asked me what the point of teaching a womens’ empowerment course at Duke is if only women already interested in the topic are going to take it. At the time, I honestly didn’t know how to respond, because I had been wrestling with the same issues.

I look into the stars and see the past. I can see back thousands of years every single night. I watch history in the sky. That light had no idea it was going to fall upon me when it was released those thousands of years ago, and yet, the glimmers and the constellations fill my nights with beauty. As if the stars were releasing light just to make me happier.

I want to be a lawyer. I want to be a lawyer who prosecutes sexual assault crimes. I know the pain of adults deciding you’re not worth protecting, you’re not worth getting justice for, you’re not worth anything. The justice system, the reporting system, the way society views sexual assault and harassment, the way the victims’ character and actions are put on trial by the public and by the court, the way sexual predators and rapists have power over me politcally, the way I wont’t be able to get justice for the majority of survivors. It’s all wrong, and it’s all so screwed up. And yet, how can I change it? I want to dedicate my life to fighting sexual assault, but what will I accomplish? Can I change so many systems pushing against me?

That star I’m looking at might be gone. It could have blown up several hundred or thousands of years ago, and I’ll have no idea. That star doesn’t know the beauty it holds, even after it’s gone. It doesn’t know of Earth, much less me, but each star impacts me nonetheless.

I feel like I won’t ever be able to make a change.

Night after night contemplating the soft glow of the starlight, I realized that these stars don’t know the impact that they have had on my life. The nights have always been hard for me. Being alone in the darkness with only my thoughts was always scary. Still, the stars give me hope and beauty to hold onto even at the worst of times.

I don’t have to always look to the sky, though, I see stars in my own life all around me. Women who don’t know the impact they’ve had on my life. My tenth grade math teacher doesn’t know she’s the reason why I had the courage to study math. She made me believe in myself, just in her actions. In the way she believed in me. I once told a woman in my life about being sexually assaulted, and she immediately tried to get justice for me. However, the system was against me, and I was retraumatized throughout the entire process. Person after person, even women, showed me he was more important. His story was valued over mine. However, there was one woman who believed me and wanted to protect me. Even though she only did one thing, her reaction told me I was worth something. Last semester, I almost had to quit a team because they refused to kick off a boy who had sexually harassed me and several other girls on the team. Though it felt like the team was against me, some of my friends told me that they would quit with me. I can never express my gratitude to them. They reaffirmed my value. It only took one sentence from them to bring me to tears of gratitude and happiness to have people like that in my life.

I want to be a woman like them. They are my stars, and I want to be that for other girls. I want to grow up and fight my hardest everyday to get justice for survivors so that they know they are worth my all. And I’ll make sure to tell them they are worth even more than all I could ever give. I might not be able to change the system. I might not be able to change the way society views and deals with these issues. However, I can make an impact.

Stars have no idea where their light will go. They just shine outwards, day after day till the end. Even after they’re gone, their light still reverberates through the universe, and somehow some beams find their way to me. Just like the stars, I might never know my impact. Some days I might feel alone in the universe, but I can’t give up. I can only do my best and have faith that it spreads. Even the smallest things, like little circles in the dark sky, add up and can change lives. I would not be the person I am today without all the stars that have made their way through my life, without all the women shining upon me. They are my stars, and I could be someone else’s.

“Boys have cooties!” The first and last times I heard a girl utter these words were when I was in early elementary school. The idea that boys had “cooties” meant that these young boys carried some contagious disease, and girls were to stay away from them to avoid contracting the cooties. But after these boys grew up, all of a sudden they became men girls all sought validation from. In middle school, we suddenly became jealous if Sally went on a date or if your crush John liked someone else. When we became even older, some women started tearing each other down to get attention from men. How did we evolve from “boys have cooties” to hating ourselves?

I recently had a conversation with some of my girlfriends late at night about the “pick-me” girl. The pick-me girl pines for male attention and approval, subverting typically “feminine” characteristics to prove that she’s “not like the other girls”. Previously, I never understood why the pick-me phenomena was so problematic. I firmly believed that all women were allowed to have individualist characteristics outside of what was expected for women to act. It wasn’t until my friends talked about their encounters with past friends that fit the pick-me girl trope that I realized there was an enormous difference between acting authentically and acting for a man’s attention. To be authentic means to genuinely act yourself. Pick-me girls reject what other girls do, and then put these other girls down for acting like themselves.

One recalled when she was with a couple of her male friends and a girl came over to chat with the guys. When my friend tried to greet her, the girl didn’t even bat an eye to her. At that moment, my friend felt infinitesimally small.

Of course, nearly everyone hears the story of girls who pick up hobbies for the sake of impressing a boy. These fake skater girls and pro-gamer girls become too busy to put time into their previous interests. I’m not criticizing the girls who genuinely love skating and gaming, but rather emphasizing the girls who all of a sudden cast the girls who put on makeup everyday and wear miniskirts as “basic”. To avoid and insult “girly” or “feminine” trends or stereotypes for the sake of receiving male approval infers that they believe there is something unworthy about acting feminine.

Recent media and commentary have denounced pick-me girls and many people poke fun at the line “not like other girls”, but few discuss why the phenomena of pick-me girls exist.

First, men have made fun of women for nearly every interest or activity catered to them. You like to dance? “As if that’s a real sport.” You only like romance movies? “Grow up! That’s so childish.” If you’re a woman who enjoys putting on makeup, be prepared for nasty clown or vile cake-face jokes. When a hierarchy has been created where anything men do is superior to women, many girls grow up realizing they have to act like men and denounce feminine interests in order to get male approval.

Second, women live in a system that constantly perpetuates the importance of receiving male validation. We grow up watching films that portray us to be weaker, damsels in distress that need men to come save us. From a young age, societies reinforce the idea that all women need a strong man. Because we live in a country where few women are in high leadership positions, we are often subordinate to men. Many women forget to focus on becoming the leaders of our system, instead prioritizing how to be the better subordinate to a man than their female counterparts. Consequently, in the workplace, dating life, and in other day-to-day occurrences, women are pitted against each other. Thus, it’s no wonder that pick-me girls are desperate for male validation.

Furthermore, the highly-critical nature of what a woman should be like often turns women off from acting like a girl. For me, I can certainly attest to growing up in a harsh household that required me to be skinny, gentle, and delicate because I was a girl. When I was young, my options of interests were limited because my mom thought soccer was for boys only. Even as I entered college, my potential career was limited by my father who thought engineering would be a poor career choice because it was a field dominated by men. Our society creates norms that frame what is expected, and consequently gender norms constrain what women can and can’t do. Because of these limiting expectations, many women are turned off from the prospect of ever acting girly or engaging in feminine interests.

Many may believe pick-me girls are not misogynistic because men can fall under the “pick-me boy” category too. Pick-me boys manipulate women into dating them, by using rhetoric that coerces women into believing they are “nice” guys. They utilise gaslighting and manipulation strategies to undermine themselves in a way that convince females to uplift them and grow closer to them. While these men seek validation from a woman similar to the pick-me girls that seek validation from men, the belief that these are the same phenomena ignores the fact that we live in a patriarchal system.

Pick-me men will never have to revert from their gender norms to seek attention from women. Instead, they must pretend to be “woke” and alert to social justice issues like gender inequality in order to gain the attention of a woman. In movies or popular media, nearly all male characters who engage in “feminine” interests are depicted to be homosexual, while female characters like Gracie Hart in Miss Congeniality or Cady Heron in Mean Girls are praised for their non-girly characteristics. Women being complimented for following male norms deeply perpetuates the idea that men are superior to women.

While it will take a long time before we fully erase gender norms, for now, we ought to all treat each other far more kindly. There’s no need to put another woman down to get a man’s attention. After all, he probably has cooties.

For a few months now, I have had the privilege of knowing two bright, young village girls from rural eastern Turkey. Ilknur and Gülefer are such a delight to talk to, mainly because of their relentless hopes for the future and their love of the country that they call home, despite the challenges that they have faced throughout their lives. There is no doubt that they have had setbacks, but they serve as an inspiration to all of us who feel that we cannot lift ourselves up or make a change. In essence, these two teenagers, who have entered my life quite recently, embody the idea of going through everyday “like a girl.”

Not only were Ilknur and Gülefer very excited to communicate with Duke students, but they also seized the opportunity to practice expressing themselves in English during this interview, which is something that we have been working on.

I want to make this piece a platform for their voices to be heard outside of their villages, especially since they have never been physically far from their respective bubbles. We all live in bubbles, of course, but we also share experiences with girls like them, halfway across the world—yet just one click away. Through the act of reading their thoughts, perhaps we will become more conscious of our own.

What is the shape of your day?

Gülefer: “I wake up at 7:30 am and prepare for my online classes. Then, I have breakfast, and when my classes end, I do homework, study, and read my books.”

Ilknur: “I wake up in the morning thinking about what I have to do during the day. I plan my daily responsibilities in my head and write them down on paper. Then I have a nice and healthy breakfast. I prepare for online lessons, but I am in favor of face-to-face education. The information we learn in-person becomes more permanent, and we also have a more pleasant time. I have to concentrate in order to be sufficiently active and to listen to the lectures, so I need enough regular and balanced sleep the night before. After the lessons, I repeat the topics I was taught that day and do my homework. Later, because it is good for me to take care of my siblings, I braid my sisters’ hair. That makes me very happy, and them also. When it comes time to sleep, I take my book and read it in bed. This is my day. I always smile at the end of the day because life is beautiful when you smile.”

What are your academic goals?

Gülefer: “I want to improve my German and speak English more fluently. My current goal for the future is to become a psychologist.”

Ilknur: “In the future, I want to be a prosecutor, improve my English, be able to speak German as well, and learn more computer science. I want to be of use to people who need help.”

What is your favorite school subject?

Gülefer: “I most enjoy my English and literature classes.”

Ilknur: “My favorite school subject is Turkish Language and Literature. I enjoy the topics in literature class and it instills a habit of reading.”

What motivates you?

Gülefer: “My efforts to become successful motivate me.”

Ilknur: “It is remembering the things I have accomplished before that makes me stand up when I fall. I motivate myself with what I have accomplished while doing something and let go of the thought that I cannot handle this thing if it is something I normally cannot do.”

What do you think you couldn’t do without?

Gülefer: “I don’t think I could do without my books.”

Ilknur: “I can’t do without books. Literature adds a lot to me and gives me a different perspective. When I read, I feel like a director making his own movie. Also, art is an important part of my life. I love engaging in artistic pursuits and I am also interested in the visual arts, which is my hobby. Art is really a necessity in my life.”

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

Gülefer: “When I grow up, I want to be a woman who has a strong career and can stand on her own two feet.”

Ilknur: “I want to be someone who does what she loves when I grow up. I love and agree with Aziz Sancar’s words and way of thinking. For example, this statement by him impressed me: ‘We are not superior to everyone, but we are also not inferior to anyone. Let’s take pride in ourselves so that others will respect us. I do not believe in intelligence. Most people believe in intelligence, I do not. It is labor that separates us from each other. I believe in working…’ I view him as a role model because he also grew up in a village, but his current situation is very good due to his efforts.”

Are there issues with female rights in your village?

Gülefer: “In my area, the biggest problem is a lack of education. Most females here are illiterate, and this is seriously sad. Also, we don’t have an Internet connection in my village, so this is a huge disadvantage for students who cannot connect from home during the pandemic.”

Ilknur: “There are problems with women’s rights in my village, but not as many as in the past. The villagers have negative views towards education. This prejudice starts with grandparents at the very beginning, and children who grow up in this sort of negative environment resemble their older family members, and they do not want to study either. They do not see the fruits of learning, neither in their family nor in their community. Actually, they are hardworking and devoted. They just need a little enlightenment.”

Is there anything you would like to say to university students in the U.S.?

Gülefer: “I don’t have much to say to you, but I hope that I will also go to the U.S. one day!”

Ilknur: “I have the following questions for university students in the United States: Do you have problems with women’s rights around you too? If so, have you ever objected or tried to prevent these problems? What do you think about being involved in the arts? Is there a place for art in your life? I am curious about the USA, especially its universities. What kind of education system do you have? What kinds of foreign languages do you learn? These are the main questions I have for you that I’m curious about. Also, if one day you end up in Turkey, I think you should enjoy it and travel all over, because in my opinion, Turkey is a beautiful country. Each location is filled with unique wonders, so I hope that you get to experience them one day.”

What is your favorite quote?

Gülefer: “Strong is the one who knows her weakness better than anyone else; stronger is the one who can dominate her weakness.” – Confucius

Ilknur: “Although I love Aziz Sancar a lot, I like Rumi’s quotes more. My favorite saying of his is this: ‘Appear as you are. Be as you appear.’ People must really present themselves as they are, not like anything else. If we present ourselves as other people, we can’t be happy, simply because we become a stranger.”

To insults degrading and dehumanizing women.

Profanity related insults to men,

Were so inextricably linked with women,

The insults were essentially the same.

Safe almost nowhere,

Even outside the realm of profanity.

“Sissy,” “Sensitive,” “Girly”

Men were insulted with femininity.

Women were attacked for both having and not having it.

They want to keep us quiet, docile, controlled.

They try to turn femininity from a trait into a cage.

Assertive became aggressive.

Confident became loud.

Passionate became emotional.

The very traits men are praised for

Mark a death sentence in a woman’s career.

Leaving femininity is wrong.

Yet remaining feminine is also wrong.

Throwing like a girl is wrong.

Crying like a girl is wrong.

Emotion seems to be unique to women.

Emotion seems synonymous with femininity.

They tell us that femininity is weakness.

They expect us to believe that whatever we are

Cannot be right.

Simply because we are women.

In actuality

Everything we are is right,

Simply because we are women.

Femininity is not a weakness, but a strength.

Emotions are not wrong, but they are human.

The two Frida Kahlos hold each other’s hands. The one on the left wears a victorian dress. The one on the right wears a traditional Mexican dress. An artery connects the two Fridas. The one on the left attempts to cut their shared artery but she fails. The sky is intense; there’s a thunderstorm. Their hearts are exposed and both Fridas look attentively to the viewer in pain.

I was in utter shock the first time I saw this 1939 painting by Frida Kahlo titled “The Two Fridas.” My ninth grade art teacher showed it to my class to give us ideas for an assignment; I was completely mesmerized. I kept asking myself what exactly are these two sides of Frida?

I now have some answers through reading up on Frida Kahlo’s life. The painting presents a split in her ethnic identity. The left Frida has fairer skin and wears a Victorian dress to represent her father’s European roots. The right Frida wears a traditional Mexican dress illustrating her mother’s indigenous roots. The work was painted shortly after her divorce from Diego Rivera, who always admired her indigenous Mexican roots. The Frida on the right represents the Frida Rivera loved and the one on the left was the one he rejected. Kahlo throughout her life struggled with her dual ethnic identity. And this painting shows a duality not only in her ethnicity but the personality that arises within them. The Mexican Frida depends on Diego as shown by her holding on to a small portrait of him. The European Frida is more independent.

I never understood why this painting stood out to me, but now I see how it relates to me. I also feel like I have two diverging nationalities. I have my Venezuelan side, which I associate with my family, my first language, and where I feel dependent. Then there’s my American side– which I associate with school and maturity. I always try to show my Venezuelan side to fit in with my extended family; I strengthen my Venezuelan accent, talk more loudly, and sing passionately to Reggaeton. At school, I show my American side for a similar reason.

Like Frida, I also experience a dichotomy in my personality. I’ve always felt like there’s an internal battle within me between my “confident” and “shy” selves. My confident side is the one I exhibit when I’m in the classroom and when I lead. The quiet Sofia you can find in large social gatherings is also the one who passionately leads a class group project.

The painting, however, demonstrates the two sides supporting each other. Both figures hold each other’s hands. Their support for each other makes them stronger in this painful moment. The two Fridas both are Frida Kahlo. There’s no fight between them. They are connected by their shared circulation. The painting continues to show me that I do not need to choose “ a side.” My two differing sides, in fact, beautifully support each other. Frida Kahlo has continued to inspire me; she has been my role model since I first saw this painting. My heroine who has taught me so much about myself and the world around me.