Sandra Friedman's work provides an accessible, sensible way in which to understand the fears and frustrations of young women, and how to work with them toward a society in which individuals are valued for who and what they are, rather than how they appear. Ms Friedman encourages each of us to address our beliefs and prejudices in ways that bring relief and comfort, as we develop a deeper understanding of what it means to be female in North American culture. Her ability to integrate theory and practice in ways which are readily understandable encourages us to see the challenges of living in an image obsessed culture as opportunities for growth.
Merryl Bear, Executive Director
National Eating Disorders Information Centre
Toronto, Canada
As a counselor, I found Sandra's book to be an invaluable source of practical information for working with girls who experience disordered eating/and eating disorders. Sandra writes from a place of really understanding the world of adolescent girls. Her suggestions for how to build the kind of counseling relationships where girls can feel safe and understood have been indispensable in my work with clients.
Meris Williams, MA
Vancouver, British Columbia
Integrating eating disorder prevention/intervention skills into your practice.
by Sandra Susan Friedman, BA, BSW, MA
Published by Salal Books at Smashwords
ebook ISBN# 978-0-9868087-0-8
© 2000, 2003, 2010 Salal Communications Ltd.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
First ebook edition: December 2010
It is difficult to grow up female today without ever worrying about weight, putting yourself down, dieting or experiencing some form of disordered eating. Eating disorders are a major chronic health risk to girls. Not only are incidents of eating disorders on the rise but the age of onset continues to be lower affecting not only adolescent but also pre-adolescent girls. Incidents of eating disorders are also increasing in boys.
The dramatic increase in eating disorders are a result of the same environmental and social factors that also make girls vulnerable to other risks that stem from a loss of girlpower — depression, smoking, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
Girls with girlpower...
Can express their feelings constructively.
Are able to set boundaries.
Have healthy connections with others.
Have good communication skills and are able to handle conflict.
Develop their self-esteem in areas other than looking good.
Have a strong sense of self.
Can feel good about their bodies whatever size or shape they are.
Are physically active.
Have a healthy relationship with food.
NURTURING GIRLPOWER is based upon the belief that disordered eating, eating disorders, and certain other health and social risks are coping mechanisms that girls develop in order to deal with feelings and situations for which they have no other means of expression—with the challenges of adolescence and the changes in their bodies and the transitional periods in their lives. Prevention is about promoting and sustaining healthy development or “nurturing girlpower.” Intervention means stopping the behaviours girls experiment with before they develop into eating disorders or restoring girlpower that is in danger of being lost.
NURTURING GIRLPOWER: Integrating eating disorder prevention and intervention skills into your practice evolved out of my participation in Eating Disorders Project North during 1999-2000. The project built capacity in rural and remote communities in northern British Columbia so people there could address prevention, intervention, psychological treatment and medical diagnosis and management at the local level. My role was to develop and facilitate three-day workshops on prevention and on intervention. The project and the original manual drew upon the professional skills I developed during my lifetime practice as a teacher; a psychotherapist working with girls and women with eating disorders (and with issues around food and weight); a program developer; a facilitator of professional training and as an author.
In 1992 I developed JUST FOR GIRLS, a group discussion program that made girls aware of their grungies—a term coined to describe feeling fat and other aspects of their negative voice. It encouraged them to tell the real stories that lay underneath their behaviour and taught them healthy self-expression instead of self-repression.
My book WHEN GIRLS FEEL FAT: Helping Girls Through Adolescence (1997, 2000) was originally written for mothers and other mentors who wanted information and skills for their own use, and it continues to be popular with an unexpected audience—the girls themselves. BODY THIEVES: Help Girls Become Physically Active and Reclaim Their Natural Bodies (2002) addresses the increase in obesity in our society and the war on fat, eating disorder prevention, and how to get girls physically active. In 2007 I developed JUST FOR BOYS a group activity/discussion program to help boys develop resilience and learn skills to deal with the stressors and health risks of adolescence. With the exception of WHEN GIRLS FEEL FAT, all of these publications are available as ebooks.
In 2003 I revised the NURTURING GIRLPOWER manual in order to integrate my further experiences and additional learning. Because most of the participants in my professional training workshops are women and it is mainly girls who develop eating disorders, this manual is women-centered. It models the relational and contextual way in which many girls and women learn and reflects how I hope that we will, in turn, work with girls.
The information and skills are linked with practical applications, and it includes little tests you can try out by yourself and then use with girls, and various learning activities. The manual can be used by men who want to expand their knowledge of female culture and try out new ways of working with girls. I have included some information about boys, but if you are interested in working with boys you will benefit more from my JUST FOR BOYS program and manual.
The material in this manual is structured for cumulative, incremental learning. That means there is an underlying logic and there will be a certain amount of repetition of concepts. It begins with a theoretical framework that is based on gender and development to help you understand what happens to girls (and boys) as they grow, and the effects of societal pressures on them.
Section 2 provides you with basic information about eating disorders including eating disorders in boys and men including compulsive exercise and muscle dysmorphia. Section 3 presents a comprehensive framework for addressing eating disorder prevention. Section 4 helps you implement basic elements of prevention in your individual practice, provides you with check lists to assess eating disorder prevention in your schools, helps you create a body-friendly environment in your schools and community, and helps you develop and evaluate community strategies and build teams of local practitioners.
Once you have the background and a firm understanding of prevention, Section 5 provides you with information, skills and strategies to address the particular issues that arise from the physical changes in girls’ bodies and the issues that arise from the behavioural changes in their lives. These include decoding the language of fat by teaching girls about the grungies (their negative voice) and body image and body awareness, teaching communication skills, exploring myths and the prejudice around fat, empowering girls who are fat, getting girls physically active, the effects of dieting, dealing with stress, teaching media literacy and activism, and addressing bullying. Much of the material presented in this section can also be adapted for intervention and for use with boys.
Section 6 helps you apply prevention skills to classroom lessons, teachable moments and presentations to elementary, middle and secondary school girls. It describes how to organize and structure a Girls’ Day and provides basic information about groups.
NURTURING GIRLPOWER then moves to incorporate intervention. Section 7 helps you demystify eating disorders by breaking down the dynamics and behaviours into small components, so that you can relate to the girl instead of her disorder. It helps you understand how eating disorders develop within a social context as well as within the more intimate context of the realities of girls’ lives and experiences. It presents the Golden Rule of Counselling as well as basic counselling skills.
NURTURING GIRLPOWER is designed for use by women (and interested men) coming from diverse orientations and differing levels of experience. You don’t need four PhDs to practice eating disorder prevention and intervention. You will find that you are dealing with material that you can already relate to, and working with girls with whom you already have some connection.
What you need is a lot of personal curiosity, the ability to listen to the voices of girls, the ability to share yourself and a willingness to try out different approaches to things. As one participant in the Eating Disorders Project North workshops taught us, practice doesn’t make perfect—it makes improvement. A sense of humour also helps!
The Story of GRIT—the Prototypical Boy
The Story of RICA—the Prototypical Girl
[Stressors in Adolescence] - chart
Putting Gender Development Knowledge into Practice
[Progression of Disordered Eating/Eating Disorders]
Binge Eating Disorder (Compulsive Overeating)
Compulsive Exercising (Obligatory Exercise)
Prevention Sets in Place Protective Factors through K.I.S.S.
[Major Components of Prevention]
IMPLEMENTING PREVENTION STRATEGIES
Addressing Prevention Individually
Implementing Prevention in Our Schools
The Collaborative Model of Prevention
Implementing Prevention in the Community
Developing a Community-based Model of Prevention
APPLYING PREVENTION SKILLS & STRATEGIES
[The GOLDEN RULES OF PREVENTION]
Sample Presentations on the Grungies
[The GOLDEN RULE OF COUNSELLING]
[Early Warning Signs of Disordered Eating]
THE LAST WORD...ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
RESOURCES by subject
Chapter: BUILDING THE FRAMEWORK
It is impossible to grow up female today without ever worrying about weight or feeling fat. Dieting and ‘healthy eating’ often in the form of food restriction have become the national pastime as little girls watch their mothers and copy what they do. Six and seven year old girls express concern with how they look. Nine year old girls talk about wanting to be thinner even before their bodies have begun to undergo the changes of puberty. Fat prejudice is at an all time high. Eating disorders are acknowledged as a major health risk to girls and they are beginning to affect boys.
In order to prevent eating disorders and to intervene with girls who have begun to experiment with the behaviours, we need to know what happens to them in the process of growing up that silences their voices and places so much of their self-esteem and self worth on how they look. We need to know what happens to boys that makes them want to bulk up or to reduce their body size in order to feel strong in their lives. We need to understand society and the role that it plays in shaping who we are. The framework that provides the foundation for our understanding and upon which this book is built is that of gender, brain sex and development.
Sex refers to the biological differences between males and females including anatomy such as body size and conformation, and physiology such as hormonal activity and organ functioning. Gender refers to the array of socially constructed roles and relationships, personality traits, attitudes, behaviours, values, and relative power that society ascribes to the two different sexes. Gender teaches us how to act and behave separately as girls and boys and later as women and men. In fact, as girls and boys grow up they inhabit two different gender cultures using different languages and with different ways of interpreting and responding to the world.
As you begin to read this section on gender and development please keep in mind that I am describing averages. If you or someone that you know doesn’t fit the descriptions it may be because while we share many characteristics that are common to our specific gender as individuals we also occupy varying places on the continuum of human behaviour.
Differences Begin in the Womb
For the first six or seven weeks after conception all fetuses develop along female lines and appear the same. Then chemical messengers in the form of sex hormones (steroids called androgens and estrogens) ensure the designated genetic programs are carried out. A fetus that is destined to be female develops cells that produce and bath it in estrogen. By the thirteenth week of gestation gonads appear in the form of ovaries. These produce tiny amounts of testosterone that influence the development of the female brain. In fetuses that are genetically male the male androgen testosterone stimulates the development of male genitalia. Testosterone interacts with the nerve cells (neurons) that make up the brain and stimulates dramatic changes that alter the brain from one that is female into one that is distinctly male. It is estimated that twenty per cent of girls have boy brains and vice versa. Regardless of the sex of the fetus, the more testosterone that bathes the brain at this time, the more that adult will exhibit male behaviour. The lesser the amount of testosterone the brain receives, the more feminine the behaviour will be.
Basic differences in brain structure account for many of the differences in behaviour in boys and girls. These differences become evident shortly after birth and are most pronounced until the age of 8, by which time the gender gap begins to close. Girls show a tendency to be interested in people and communication, while boys tend to be interested in dynamic activity and in inert objects. Studies of babies 2-4 days old show that girls pay attention longer when adults are speaking and spend almost twice as long maintaining eye contact. While girls lose interest when the connection is broken, boys are equally happy to jabber away at toys and look at abstract geometric designs. The female brain responds more intensely to emotion. Feelings, especially sadness, activate neurons in an area eight times larger in the female brain than in the male. Even before they can understand language, girls seem to be better at identifying the emotional content of speech. As girls grow older they can detect the emotions of others more accurately than boys can. Because the male brain is specially designed for logical problem-solving, it can often take boys up to seven hours longer to process emotional data.
Boys tend to be interested in dynamic activity and in objects. Male babies will continue to jabber away at toys long after the adult has ended the contact. Boys are more active and wakeful than girls, more sensitive to bright light and focus more on depth perception and perspective than on the wider picture. Because the male brain is more compartmentalized than the female brain boys can focus more intensely on doing one thing well. They are task-oriented because their brain turns on and off between tasks. Their attention span and motor activity are shorter than those of girls but are made up of more intensely active periods. They have better hand-eye coordination and better spatial relations.
It is important to remember neither brain structure is superior to the other. Nor are girls and boys restricted in what they can do. Because different parts of the brain grow at different times and at different rates, girls and boys acquire certain skills at different times. As well, the ways they learn to perform these skills are different and are influenced by their environment and the society in which we live.
THE STORY OF GRIT—THE PROTOTYPICAL BOY
I have named the prototypic boy GRIT because he is Goal-oriented (or task-oriented), Rational, Independent and Tough. In order to understand how he became that way, we need to understand male psychological development, male gender culture and the influence of society on his behaviour.
Many psychological theories of development tend to see male development as occurring in progressive stages. They believe boys must separate from their mothers in order to develop a male identity that is based upon becoming independent and standing on their own two feet. (There is much debate today about the necessity of making this separation at a very early age because of the psychological cost to boys.) Psychological theories also hold that boys develop their sense-of-self based upon their individual accomplishments and how well they perform in the world.
Recent literature about boys describe them as growing up with tremendous energy and exuberance, a willingness to venture into the unknown, to take action, and a need to test their limits. Boys tend to play in groups where they can exercise their need for physical activity and for controlling their territory. Team sports teach them about winning and losing and being on top. Boys are able to deal with and depersonalize conflict better than girls. When boys enter into new situations they measure themselves in terms of their sense of adequacy and where they fit in. Loyalty and fairness play a big part in boys’ friendships. They support each other by diffusing emotional intensity and cheering each other up. Boys feel most comfortable with interpersonal communication when it takes place in the context of an activity or when boys are side-by-side, rather than face-to-face. Boys tend to solve problems on their own rather than make themselves vulnerable by talking to someone else.
The Impact of Society on Male Development
As infants, boys are more emotionally expressive, more sensitive and cry more easily than girls. By the time that boys are around five years old, they are pressured to close down the relational half of their emotional range. Being male is defined as oppositional to traditional female qualities—as not being female. While it is all right to be a ‘Daddy’s girl’, ‘Mama’s boys’ are sissies. Society prepares boys to become men by ‘toughening them up’ and disciplining them through the use of shame. Boys are expected to measure up to other boys, to show that they are ‘real’ boys—and real boys don’t cry.
The Trauma of Adolescence
Boys experience immense pressure to conform to a rigid ideal of masculinity that is action-oriented and focuses on physical prowess and achievement in external, measurable activities. Because boys are encouraged to repress all of their feelings except for anger and rage, they learn to detach from their own experiences and to ignore or ‘suck up’ fear and pain. Boys who are ‘cool’ keep their feelings of hurt and anxiety and inadequacy bottled up inside. They act tough, hide their empathy, and laugh their feels off.
Adolescent boys enforce the code of masculinity on one another through a culture of cruelty. Boys who don’t measure up are bullied by their peers and are called fag, wuss and ‘girl.’ The code of masculinity prevents boys who are going through puberty from sharing their fears and concerns over their changing bodies and the numerous hormonal surges they experience. Lacking adequate information many boys feel these changes are not normal and they will never measure up as men. Because intimacy is discouraged in early development, it only enters into the male developmental scheme during adolescence. Boys learn to associate intimacy with sexuality. And because of the emphasis on male performance, boys who long for intimacy often become sexual adventurers instead.
During adolescence many boys split into two selves. The inner self contains the feelings that society teaches boys are unacceptable—feelings such as loneliness, insecurity, fear and affection and attachment. The outer self reflects the image of male toughness and emotional detachment our society defines as strength. Boys hide their vulnerability behind a mask of bravado. As they lose touch with their feelings, the inner self becomes buried and the mask is the only sense of self that they know or understand.
How Boys Deal with Societal Pressures
Most boys are socialized to externalize distress. They react to situations by imagining themselves unfairly treated by others. They transform their feelings into anger and blame which they direct outward. (“He made me do it.” “It’s your fault that I am angry.”) Boys may deal with distress through the use of alcohol and drugs and risk-taking behaviour.
Many boys internalize their real distress. They try to solve problems on their own because asking for help is a loss of face. The depression many of them experience is often undetected because they are socialized to hide their pain and are shamed into not complaining. While a greater number of girls attempt suicide, more boys succeed.
Boys today are under increasing pressure to value themselves in terms of how they look. The hard body and well-developed muscles of the ‘ideal’ man reinforces society’s image of masculinity. Boys who are teased about being fat often begin to diet. Boys who feel thin, awkward and inadequate and who have been teased about their bodies try to bulk up in order to gain an illusion of control in their lives. They associate the well-built muscular body with fame, respect, power and sex appeal. They exercise, become obsessed with their looks, and attempt to control their weight in much the same way girls do. Boys who want to improve their performance in sports and/or change how they look may use anabolic steroids in an attempt to make their bodies bigger.
THE STORY OF RICA—THE PROTOTYPICAL GIRL
RICA is the prototypical female because she is Relational, Interdependent, Contextual and Accommodating. Research on female development indicates girls do not separate from their mothers but instead develop their identities in the context of that relationship and through their relationships with subsequent important people in their lives. Girls are interdependent. Put into practice, girls travel in pairs. [e.g., how many girls does it take to go to the bathroom at a public event?]
The relational and contextual perspective girls develop forms the basis of their female gender culture. It influences how they learn, the stories they tell and the ways they tell them, what they think is important and how they get things done. Girls tend to play in small groups that are based upon communication and connection. Their games teach them empathy and sensitivity and have fewer rules than boys’ games. Girls often change the rules to accommodate situations that arise. Girls have a best friend. They tell each other secrets. They use language to negotiate relationships and to create intimacy. They do this through sharing the details of their lives. Girls solve problems by talking to a friend. If it’s a big problem, they’ll talk to two friends. Their perception of adequacy is based on the degree of connection they have with others rather than on performance as it is in boys.
The Impact of Society on Female Development
Before girls reach adolescence, they tend to thrive in their female gender culture. They are physically active and relatively unselfconscious about their bodies. They speak their minds and voice their opinions. Because they mature faster than boys, they can read and write at an earlier age and have a longer attention span. They are taller than boys are and because they weigh more they are physically stronger. They are just as active as boys. Their behaviour is relatively unrestricted from societal pressure.
Changes in Girls’ Bodies
As their bodies begin to change during puberty, many girls disengage from their inner and/or kinesthetic experience and begin to focus largely on their external appearance—on how they look to others. Because of our society’s emphasis on thinness as measure of worth and value, many girls believe their accumulation of body fat—which is biologically normal and necessary to female development—is abnormal. Girls measure themselves against each other and reinforce the message they must constantly try to change their bodies to fit in. At a time when they need the most nourishment, many girls begin to restrict their food intake and become afraid of getting fat.
As girls get their menstrual periods, fluctuating hormones and PMS can make them feel out of control. Their lack of adequate information concerning female development makes them feel there is something wrong with them. Because girls begin puberty at different times, they can feel out of step with their peers. Some must deal with teasing they receive because they mature early. Others must deal with the angst of being a late bloomer—the only one who doesn’t yet have breasts. During puberty many girls stop using their bodies because they feel self-conscious about them. They judge their bodies and try to change them
Girls who experience sexism, racism, homophobia and weight prejudice turn their feelings against themselves and feel shame. Instead of being angry with the source, they feel something is wrong with their bodies and with themselves.
Sexual harassment and objectification also intensify the process by which girls disconnect from their bodies. When boys and men make comments about girls’ bodies, girls come to feel their bodies are not their own. Sexual harassment begins in the elementary schools as a form of bullying. Because of the influence of video games and rap music, boys and girls learn to call girls sluts, whores, (or hos), cunts and bitches. Boys pinch girls’ breasts, lift their skirts and thrust their hands between girls’ legs. When sexual harassment is not stopped, it can escalate in high school. Many girls can’t walk down the hall without being grabbed and groped. They often don’t feel safe when they participate in class because being ‘seen’ makes them vulnerable to undesirable attention from boys.
Changes in Girls’ Lives
Girls develop their identity in the context of their relationships—first with their mothers and then with other significant people in their lives. Because their self-esteem is tied to the success of their social skills, they flourish when their relationships are open, honest and mutually supportive.
When girls reach adolescence, adult society (people such as us) tells girls it is better to be kind and nice and ‘not hurt anyone’s feelings’ than to be honest and say what they really think and feel. This places girls in a terrible dilemma. If they are honest they will be shunned by other girls and will jeopardize their relationships. If they are ‘kind and nice’ (a term first coined by Carol Gilligan) and therefore hold back their feelings and opinions they will lose touch with who they are, how they feel and what is important to them. They will also lose their real connections with others.
Girls begin to hold back their feelings and opinions in order to fit into their peer group and conform to the expectations of society. They learn the way to stay close is to hide parts of themselves. The fear of hurting someone else or of not being liked leaves them with no way to deal directly with anger and conflict. Not only are their friendships profoundly altered, they also take on a dark side. Girls tease and bully each other. They develop secrets. They form cliques. They learn alliances are elusive and that it is not safe to be direct.
Because of societal pressure to please others, girls have a difficult time with boundaries. They are afraid if they say ‘no’ they will be rejected and if they say ‘yes’ they will be seen as selfish. Girls who become interested in boys may have sex when they don’t really want to, have unsafe sex because they don’t want to hurt the boy’s feelings by asking him to use a condom, and get into cars with guys who are drunk.
Girls Adapting to the Male World
When girls reach adolescence they move from the safety and intimacy of their female world into the larger world that is male. Their relational qualities—those characteristics and skills which form the basis of their female identity and which make them feel safe—become discounted by an adult world that stresses self sufficiency, competition, individualism and autonomy. Many girls continue a process of reinventing themselves in order to fit in. As they internalize the values of the male culture, they reject their own and thus lose or diminish a vital part of themselves.
How Girls Deal with Societal Pressures
During adolescence the societal pressures girls experience cause them to split into two selves: the false outward pleasing persona and the real person inside. The more practiced their pleasing persona becomes, the more girls lose their inner voice—their awareness of their own needs and their ability to trust their own perceptions. This causes them to look outward for definition instead of being the center of their own experiences. Girls no longer interact with the world in terms of ‘I.’ Instead, they relate to it in terms of ‘you.’ Instead of asking themselves “what do I want” they ask “what do you think of me?”
When girls cannot express their feelings and opinions directly, they do so indirectly by turning them against themselves. Girls internalize distress—they draw their pain into themselves. They blame themselves and feel angry with themselves. They learn to speak about themselves in a negative voice. Girls deflect feelings that they cannot express onto their bodies and express them through body dissatisfaction. They tell themselves that they feel ugly and stupid.
Because fat is labelled bad in our society, girls encode their feelings in the language of fat. Girls ‘feel fat’ when they are angry, sad, lonely and insecure and when they have no language for their emotions or feel unsafe in expressing themselves. This speaking in code causes girls to shift their focus from their inner experiences of what is real and what connects them to others to their external self which is built upon appearance. In doing so, they dissociate from their bodies and from their selves.
Many girls try to alleviate emotional pain or stress in their lives by trying to change their physical bodies. They deal with the discomfort of their real feelings by trying to stop what they see as the source—feeling fat. Dieting or restricting their food intake provides them with an illusion of control and a temporary sense of achievement. ‘Feeling fat’ and dieting are the first clear indicators of risk factors that might lead to disordered eating and subsequently to eating disorders.
Societal Pressures
\/.............\/
Media Influences
\/.............\/
Sexism/Racism/Weight Prejudice
\/.............\/
PHYSICAL CHANGES..........EMOTIONAL CHANGES
(Body Issues)....................(Life Issues)
Puberty.....................................Changes in relationships
Increase in body fat.........................Pressure to be kind and nice
Fear of eating / weight gain...............Internalization of male values
Self-worth based on appearance...Rejection of female values
Pressure to change body shape.........Loss of voice/self-expression
Harassment-objectification....Teasing and bullying
Sexual abuse/violence...................Family & life experiences
\/.....\/.........................................\/.....\/
Disconnection from Body...............Disconnection from Self
\/.............\/
Internalization of Distress
\/.............\/
Girls 'Feel Fat' (and Diet or Restrict their Food)
PUTTING GENDER DEVELOPMENT KNOWLEDGE INTO PRACTICE
The examples below show how we can apply the framework of gender and development to real life situations.
Imagine you are having coffee with a small group of women. You are talking about your kids, spouses or mates. One of the men in your office comes in and joins you. Most likely there is an awkward pause as either you change the subject to accommodate him, or he changes the direction in which the conversation is going.
In women-only groups we practice the informal, personal communication style of our female gender culture. We have been socialized to fit into the dominant culture, and so when a man joins our group we automatically adapt ourselves to his more impersonal cultural pattern of communication instead of continuing with or asking him to adapt to ours.
Imagine you are having a discussion with a small group of your friends. You are talking about a book or article you have read or a movie you have seen. Everyone is passionate about the subject. The room is alive with your energy. Now imagine you have to make a presentation to a large group of people about this very same subject. You begin to translate your ideas into male language and style of communication. In the process you lose your context. This causes you to doubt yourself and your ability. You ask yourself “what do I know?” You are afraid of getting this wrong and begin to doubt yourself even more.
As girls we grow up and play and are therefore comfortable in small groups. When we make presentations or speak to large groups we ‘translate’ from one gender culture to another. Asking us to speak in larger, more formal groups is similar to asking someone whose first language is English to do a presentation in French. No wonder it is difficult. In my professional training workshops I have the participants sit at long tables. Forming connections with their table mates rather than with a large group creates safety for them and makes it easier for them to share their opinions and ideas.
Kevin is a grade one student. He has difficulty sitting still in class. His writing is messy and he is behind the other students in learning to read. He is becoming really frustrated and beginning to act out.
Often school is out of sync with boys who develop their fine small motor skills and ability to read and write later than girls. Boys with birthdays before January begin school almost 6 months younger than their classmates. They are often not ready to undertake the job of tackling the early stages of beginning to read because their auditory and visual perception skills have not developed sufficiently. Because boys develop their large motor skills earlier they are also more active than girls. Providing Kevin with more physical activity and giving him time to catch up to girls developmentally would help him learn and enable him to feel better about himself.
Peggy is an eighth grade student who is having difficulty with math. When she asks her friends for help, the teacher chastises her for talking. The farther behind she falls, the more inadequate she feels.
Girls are contextual. They learn best when they can personalize the material and relate it to their lives. Some girls have difficulty with male teachers who tend to be more linear than their female counterparts and become impatient when girls don’t understand. This in turn inhibits girls from asking questions and seeking help. Providing Peggy with a context for mathematical concepts that is grounded in her experiences and allowing her to work with her friends might make math easier for her and enable her to gain confidence in her ability.
[see Bibliography for Sources: Blum, Friedman, Gilligan & Brown, Gurian, Moir and Jessel, Pollack, Surrey, Shisslak et al, Tannen] .....return to Table of Contents
Many of us grow up with an uneasy relationship with food and with eating. From an early age we are taught to stop trusting our own bodies and to put our trust in others who ‘know best.’ Magazine articles, television, books and even some health professionals tell us there are ‘good’ foods we should eat but may not want and ‘bad’ foods we may crave but should not have. We very rarely allow ourselves to have balance but instead focus on foods that we hope will make us lose weight. These include ‘healthy’ foods which have been co-opted by the diet industry so they have less to do with nutrition and more to do with calorie restrictions although the emphasis on weight loss is hidden. Dieting or restricting our food intake for weight loss has become such a ‘normal’ part of our culture that we continuously alternate not eating enough with eating too much. Our relationship with food is further complicated by the fact that as women, we are encouraged to prepare food for others but are taught we should not give in to our own appetites and eat. In fact, the way in which we deal with food and eating reflects the tremendous conflict that many of us experience around wanting to get our own needs met and our fears that we will be labelled as ‘selfish’ (a word that is as emotionally loaded as ‘fat’) if we do.