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KIRSTY STRICKLAND: Society must nurture energy and talent of girls – not stamp it out of them

Teenage girls in the noughties were taught the ideal body type was ‘heroin chic’. The worst part? It seemed perfectly normal at the time.

Kirsty Strickland has opened up on one of her biggest parent worries.
Kirsty Strickland has opened up on one of her biggest parent worries.

New research published last week confirmed one of my biggest parenting worries.

A study by Girlguiding found girls have much lower levels of confidence than their male peers.

The research also showed that that confidence gap widens significantly as girls reach their teenage years.

Up until the age of ten, there is virtually no difference in confidence levels between boys and girls.

But by age 12, girls are 17 percent less likely to report high levels of confidence than boys.

By age 15, that increases to 24 percent. Girlhood is not for the faint hearted.

Teenage life in the noughties

It will come as no surprise to any woman reading this research that a decline in confidence coincides with the onset of puberty for many girls.

Puberty is a disorientating time for both boys and girls. Your body suddenly becomes alien and unfamiliar and hormones are on the rampage.

But for girls, this unsettling period is coupled with the onset of additional external challenges too, such as unwanted sexual attention from older men, street harassment and crude commentary about their developing bodies.

When you add in the menace of social media, online bullying and unrealistic body standards, it’s understandable that girls’ confidence plummets as they get older.

I hit my teenage years during the early noughties, when magazines marketed at woman featured zoomed-in photos of celebrity cellulite and stomach fat on their front covers.

Courier columnist Kirsty Strickland.

It was a period of time when there was a countdown to a young starlet’s 16th birthday.

There was an air of celebration around the fact she would soon be ‘all grown-up’ and fair game for the objectification some slimy, knuckle-headed characters were aching to direct at her without running the risk of being put on a register.

Teenage girls in the noughties were taught that the ideal body type was ‘heroin chic’ and that you could drop a jean size if you ate two bowls of cereal and a ‘sensible’ dinner each day.

The worst part? It seemed perfectly normal at the time.

When I found out I was pregnant with a girl, I knew I had to do my best to equip her with the tools she would need to navigate this nonsense.

That meant I had to unlearn a lot of the things that had become engrained through my own adolescence.

Praising daughter for kind heart, not just beauty

So you’ll never catch me criticising my own body or speaking negatively about my appearance in front of my daughter.

She has never heard me talk about diets, or weight loss, or bits of myself I wished were smaller, better or prettier.

I encourage her to try her hand at things that seem daunting.

I praise her for her talent, intellect and kind heart, not just her beauty.

She knows that I think she is extraordinary – as all parents do their own children – and that I’m her biggest fan.

The idea that my bold, brave, eminently cool wee girl might one day feel like she’s not good enough or smart enough is a horrible prospect to consider.

Kirsty Strickland and her daughter.

But, at age nine, I know she’s on the cusp of that timeline where self-doubt, low self-esteem and decreased confidence might soon kick in.

So, knowing that her confidence is probably as high as it is ever going to be, I’m going do all I can to stop any of that precious self-belief from draining away.

Confident girls are often labelled as bossy, or know-it-alls, or too big for their boots.

As a result, girls quickly learn to be quieter and more agreeable in order to please others.

What a terrible waste that is. Society should do all it can to nurture the energy and talent of girls instead of stamping it out of them.

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