It starts in your hospital recovery room. Friends and family shower you with frocks, tiny tea sets, and first dolls. Even parents who didn't know the sex of their child and play it safe with the yellow or beige nursery decor find themselves filling it with pink once that baby girl calls it home. There is no question that parents, despite their desire to be neutral in who their children become, make tiny, subliminal moves from the first day that help send messages to their daughter's mind: you are a female.

Historical Images of What Being a “Girl” Means

Not long ago, girls were treated in a way that was drastically different from the way boys were treated. In the grand scheme of time, fainting couches, corsets, and no formal education are fairly recent history. And somewhere in the collective unconscious, the echoes of that philosophy may still exist.

Think about it: many parents of teen girls reading this book are probably old enough to remember when girl's gym class and boy's gym class were two totally different programs. Boys would romp hard and aggressive out on the field. Girls would learn calisthenics in the quiet gym. Even dress codes set girls apart. Sure, boys couldn't wear shorts or ratty clothing, but girls could not wear pants.

This was only part of the issue. Not too long ago, girls were not expected to excel at math, and some parents still held onto the belief that with a good secretarial job after high school a girl would be fine until marriage. At birthday parties, girls were expected to get art sets and dolls, yet boys were all about bows and arrows and sporting goods. And while you may like to think you're nothing like that anymore, being raised in and around this mentality has left an indelible mark on your psyche. Somewhere deep down, you may still think “sugar and spice and everything nice” when you think girls.

The “Modern” Image

And so today, when that little baby is placed in your arms, you like to think you are open to anything for her. Soccer balls are placed next to her crib. You read long and hard about how girls can excel in any subject matter and you introduce them to words and numbers and kicking a ball in the yard from the earliest days. But are you truly all that modern? As Judith Jack Halberstam points out so clearly, people still do tend to categorize girls as softer and sweeter than boys. Who hasn't taped a bow on their little bald baby girl's head and sung those “sugar and spice and everything nice” words to her?

Could this be because society still, somewhere deep down, craves that nursery rhyme's simplistic take on females? And one has to wonder: why is it that tiny little boys seem to tend naturally toward toy trucks and cars and girls toward dolls and paints? It's a question all parents of girls have to ask themselves as they work at guiding their tiny little girl through the pitfalls of growing up.