Smothering Humbert: Because Being a Mother of a Junior Higher is Still Hell

I shopped with my oldest daughter yesterday.  I did not have to call any cabs, but I did not end up with many clothes for her either.

We struck out in several stores.  She chose to visit these stores.  They were P.S. Aero or whatever that Aeropostale for even littler and younger people is called, Justice for Girls ( I SO wish this meant the clothes were fair trade or promoted justice or something - then I might actually be willing to pay those prices), GAPkids, Old Navy. We bought one pair of capris and one shirt in 77 AE or whatever that American Eagle for even littler and younger people is called.  And one dress at Target.

Part of the problem: she doesn't know what she really wants.  She told me "I like what other people are wearing, but I can't find it." Where do children take stabbing-knife-into-mom's-heart lessons?  My dear girl, can we talk about finding your own style? No, we can't.  Because she would equate that with dressing like mom.  *gasp*

The other part of the problem: the clothes are too skimpy. We are shopping for school, which, thank God, has dress codes.  No shorty shorts or spaghetti straps.  Of which there are an abundance, or even almost the ONLY thing being sold in my daughter's size for summer.

I have been thinking about having a full-blown conversation about modesty, but have shied away from it because I have not been sure to strike the right tone.  I am going to address only a bit of our societal hypocrisy about modesty that was highlighted by shopping with my junior higher.  I bring you a discussion of an article called "Reviving Lolita: or, Because Junior High is Still Hell" by Alyssa Harad.

There is a lot of pressure on junior high girls.  Not just the kind they get from mom and dad about honor roll and first chair and captain and all that.  Harad discusses the vague understanding these on-the-brink-of-womenhood girls possess about labels around sexuality.  They know they are unlocking a sexual power in the next few years that will be the strongest it will be in their entire lifetime, yet they fear being a "slut." Teenage girls don't want to have zero sex appeal and be ridiculed by other girls and rejected by boys, yet they don't want too much sexuality either, especially if it draws the scary desire of men.

Harad brings attention to Lolita, title character of Nabokov's famous work.  Lolita is not even the real name of this child-woman who becomes the desired object of Humbert's affection.  It is Humbert's name for her.  The entire novel is about a young female character who never gets to voice her opinion or give a clue about her real self.  Her identity is completely given to us by a perverted middle aged creep.  Lolita, in our culture, has become a brand-name, so to speak, for an oversexed and attractive young woman who snares men.  Nabokov's Lolita is not beautiful; her charm lies in the fact that she is about to bloom.  She is a not-yet-picked blossom that will quickly fade once she is.  Humbert describes how he is "tormented" by her.  The reader is supposed to question Lolita's innocence.

You might be thinking - what does some fictional pedophile have to do with anything?  Harad takes us across the bridge by describing a new class she was offering at the college she teaches at called "The Rhetoric of Sexy Girls."  The point of this class was to discuss Lolita and other writings to explore how a girl gets labelled sexy, who decides, and what are the consequences?   She also was tongue-in-cheek  curious to find out if it would get any men to take a women's studies course.

It turned out that 22 men and 3 women had signed up for her 25 spot class.  She received winks and jokes from male colleagues.  "The message became clear: sexy girls were a private joke between heterosexual men.  The absoluteness of this conclusion had overriden everything else about the course, including its status as a college class, its content.... On the second day of class I explained to the roomful of over 50 students who showed up to try to get in that they would spend most of the class looking through the eyes of young girls, and that we would be talking about sex, yes, but that would include talking about things like rape, sexual abuse, shame and guilt as well as pleasure ... By the next class meeting, there were 11 men and 12 women in the class."

Harad also points out how many ads have young girls posing as sexy women, or women erotically posed as innocent girls.  As my good friend said when I asked her the wisdom of posting a hot-button topic like modesty "who designs and markets stuff to girls?"  Humbert Humbert, I guess.

Harad's article concludes (it kind of fizzles towards the end) by saying that women (and junior high girls) will fare far better if we learn to trust one another instead of learning to be mean and estranged from one another. I thought this was kind of a weak note to end on and dismissed the article as not as good as I thought it was going to be.  Until I thought about it more today.

Honesty is just what we need. I'm going to be honest about a few things.

#1  In a recent video gone viral a man chides that if we didn't buy it, it wouldn't sell.  There is always truth in this, provided there are other things to buy. For instance, it is almost impossible to buy, say, fair trade underwear for kids.  Good luck with that.  You could try to make it yourself.  Good luck with that too. There is not a whole lot of selection for skinny little size 14 in the legs but 10 in the waist girls. If you doubt me, critics of parents, you take that daughter shopping.  The rule is that she has to actually wear the stuff to school that you buy on that excursion.  More than once.  It has to pass a day at school with no tears or ridicule.  Have you ever spent 80 bucks on a winter coat for your daughter only to watch her come home crying that she can never wear that coat again (though she begged you for it the day before) because she was made fun of?

#2 We as a culture DO worship a frozen time in a girl/woman's life as the ultimate in beauty and desirability. Christians included. We diet and exercise and buy make-up and dye our hair.  Then, we hiss and attack the woman who walks in looking just the way we all said we wanted to look. We tell her she's dressed immodestly.  Even if she's wearing the same dress we're trying to pull off - she just happens to look hot in it. (And the men bemoan how they are being made to stumble.  Even though they were the same ones praising that book about how wives should make themselves attractive to husbands). How do junior high girls figure out how to be women?  They watch grown-ups.  They pick up on all those subtleties we are not conscious of. They can see the invisible ink of our double standards.

#3 Mothers need more guilt like they need a hole in their heads, but I feel I must say: If Lolita's mama hadn't been trying to catch Humbert's attention herself, she would have been able to see his threat to her daughter. As a mother, this is a reminder to be an impenetrable security system for my children. 

No one had better call my daughters Lolita.  They have their own names.  Their own stories and identities.   Humbert should not get to tell the story and therefore minimize women and use our daughters.  Humbert would perish in a united mob of angry she-bears, especially those protecting their cubs. Once again, the idea of women in a supportive community being powerful rises to the top.