Excerpt from The Wonder of Girls by Michael Gurian, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Gail and I, as therapists, have enjoyed the fruits of that research -- learning more about how images of thin women can affect girls' self-image, how boys are sometimes called on in class more than girls, how girls are judged on their looks and boys on their achievement. However, for us, the cases of Kristen and Margeaux helped us to notice something we had suspected, as professionals and as parents of girls, for some time: While the feminist idea that girls experience stereotypes and lose self-esteem is irrefutable, in most cases, gender stereotypes are not the primary cause of a girl's developmental issues. To focus on them, while worthwhile, is often destructive, because it distracts parents, schools, and the culture from the deeper issues facing our girls.

In working with Kristen, Gail was aware immediately of having to help her family push through their ideas about "low self-esteem" and "gender stereotypes" in order to get to the real cause of a girl's problems. While Kristen was ostracized at school by girls because she was beautiful and hit on by boys for the same reasons, and while these did affect her growth, her developing self was at risk from a different root cause: She was terrified by the consequences of her parents' divorce, and the broken family bonds. The gender stereotypes issue was, in large part, a smokescreen. The whole family had bought into the smokescreen with the best of intentions; however, Kristen's healing, and the family's, began when the smokescreen was pulled away.

As I worked intensely with Margeaux's family, I discovered that her eating issues mimicked complexities (to be dealt with further in Chapters 3 and 6) in her hormonal cycle -- her hormones and neurology were out of balance. When I referred her to an appropriate physician, treatment for biological, hormone-cycle issues were the most instrumental in dealing with her anorexia. Stereotypes regarding thin women -- while a factor -- were not the causal factor that the family initially perceived.

Like all therapists working with girls, Gail and I have counseled girls in trouble: girls with low self-esteem, girls who are depressed, girls who have been abused, girls whose core selves are being trampled, girls who are anorexic, and girls on anabolic steroids. Many girls have become anorexic while looking at magazine pictures of very thin women. Many girls have experienced drops of self-esteem in sport or classroom situations where they were not treated with as much respect as boys were. Girls do feel immense pressures to fit in, to be popular, to become a Barbie, a sex object, a voiceless object of a young man's quick, then flagging desires.

However, we have come to understand a deeper reason than "stereotypes" for the disintegration of these girls' lives. While Gail and I respect the research on the impact of cultural imagery on girls, in The Wonder of Girls, you'll find me downplaying its importance on female adolescence. Gail and I protect our daughters as much as possible from destructive gender stereotyping, and help empower them to be who they are in the face of cultural typing; we also teach methods of doing this to clients, and many will appear in this book. But after years of noticing the Kristens, the Margeauxs, and the smokescreens, we have come to understand that Theory 4 is just that, one theory. So often other things weigh heavier on our girls and yours: issues of attachment, of family bonds, of grief, of lack of self-knowledge during traumatic adolescence, of physiological change, of brain development, of hormone cycles. These are far larger causes of self-esteem drops than we have realized in our late twentieth-century focus on gender stereotypes.

Furthermore, Gail and I have also come to understand -- and the biological research in the next two chapters will reveal this in depth -- that a large cultural issue hides behind the gender stereotypes theory, an issue all parents of daughters must, in some inspiring way, come to terms with in our fast-paced society, so often unfriendly to family stability: Our early adolescent girls do not get enough attachment, bonding, and information from the family and extended family into which they've been born.

Copyright © 2002 by Michael Gurian