Growing up, lots of girls get the message that the phrase "angry woman" is an oxymoron. A little like boys might get the message that "sad man" is. Girls are taught that overtly expressing anger threatens their relationships. Depression, on the other hand, does not.
New data from a national survey conducted between 2008 and 2010 reveals that between the ages of 12-15, the number of girls experiencing depression triples. This happens at a rate of three times that of boys. Girls attempt suicide in greater numbers but boys, who tend to use guns more, succeed more often. As last week's Huffington Post article about the study explained, before puberty, boys and girls typically experience depression at the same frequency. "Social pressures" appear to be greater for girls and, of course, we've all been schooled on the impact of "hormones and emotions." Doctors believe it is vital that we teach teenage girls coping skills and social support systems so that they can better avoid depression. But girls aren't just depressed when they are teens. Remember that 2009 study "Why are Women Increasingly Unhappy?" They grow up to be more depressed in their 20's, 30's, 40's and beyond.
Depression is a complicated business. As is the case with many things, there are genetic factors, hormonal issues and environmental circumstances. But do you know what clinicians think a large component of depression is? Anger.
The first thing is that this type of anger is caused by a perceived or actual loss or rejection, as described by Dr. Fredric N. Busch in Advances in Psychiatric Treatment:
Patients struggle with the experience and expression of angry feelings. Anger in people with depression often stems from narcissistic vulnerability, a sensitivity to perceived or actual loss or rejection. These angry reactions cause intrapsychic conflicts through the onset of guilt and the fear that angry feelings will disrupt relationships. These conflicts lead to anger being directed inwards, further lowering self-esteem, creating a vicious cycle." The second thing about it is that the most common aspect of female anger is powerlessness.
I keep hearing and reading that there is something inherent in girls and women (biology, hormones) that predisposes them to depression and that as a result, their interactions with the world are more likely to lead to depression because they can't cope. They are dating and having sex too early, they are the children of divorce, they watch too much TV. Generally, they are incapable of dealing with the world as it comes to them as young girls and women. They need better self-awareness and coping mechanisms to deal with the pressure. What pressure? The pressure of being.
To become a woman, especially a woman of color, in our culture is cognitively dissonant, and girls respond differently to that experience. Girls, like boys, feel fully human, but culture tells them that they are not. Even the most privileged girls, those that can afford doctors, psychologists, good schools excellent teams, etc. etc. get this message. Sometimes they rebel, sometimes they compartmentalize, sometimes they agitate for change, sometimes they bury their heads in the sand, sometimes they conform, sometimes they get angry. Sometimes their anger is pathologized instead of given free expression because we'd rather call it anything but anger. When girls get older and are, as women, also inclined to be unhappier then men, feminism's threats to the traditional male head of household apparently do them in. If we just shame them early, maybe they'd grow up to be happier women. In any case, we need to fix them, right? If we fix them they will get better.
Being a girl under constant pressure can lead to anger, and, according to Carol Tavris, Ph.D., author of Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, "Anger externalized can turn into violence and aggression; anger internalized can cause depression, health problems and communication difficulties." Perhaps turning the anger inward is an attempt to retain some semblance of power and control.
I'm not sure why more people aren't talking about anger and power and teenage girls in the news we read about skyrocketing rates of depression. Girls have the right to be angry. We need to allow them to be angry, powerful, physical and popular in "nonsexual and nonmaterialistic" ways. Not acknowledging anger and powerlessness or trivializing it only makes things worse. I'd suggest we'd have a lot less girls to "fix" if we started looking at how anger can impact depression in youth, acknowledged that anger and sought its causes.
You know what else happens in the buildup to puberty besides the "hormonal problems" that beset girls? Girls have to come to terms with a broad assault on their sense of self. They face a daily virtual avalanche of micro-aggressions whose messages would anger and sadden any thoughtful, sane adult. Think about what girls experience as young children and they enter puberty:
Girls have to filter their existences through these messages of powerlessness and literal cultural worthlessness. Is this depressing YOU? Girls might be more inclined to depression because coming to terms with your own cultural marginalization and irrelevance is depressing. Boys have their own woes, I know. For those readers and commenters that feel obliged to turn every discussion about girls into one about the plight of boys -- please look elsewhere today. I know, girls are doing SO well in school, will "soon" be the richer sex and men are coming to a crashing end! I will write another post when that happens admitting my error.
What happens when an alert, thoughtful young girl looks around and sees invisibility in her future? What happens when she feels a loss of relevance? A cultural disenfranchisement? What happens when her bodily integrity comes to be an issue on many fronts? Consider how obsessed we are with bullying in this conversation about depression and explode that idea to consider how sexism in culture is just bullying writ large. It's an existential dilemma to be alive and realize you are not important and that your body, the one you believe belongs to YOU, in fact may not. It may belong to your father, your mother, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, a stranger, your state. It makes some people angry. But good girls don't get angry, do they? It's so unattractive. But depression, that's a different thing.
Honestly, it's small wonder that more girls aren't depressed. I have three teenage daughters. So far, none has tried to hurt herself in any of the infinite ways available. This is not an accident of fate necessarily, and we are still in the early days. I am hopeful it is at least partially the result of very hard work undertaken by our family and hundreds of people working diligently and with passion to change the culture that sends these messages (see below).
What I hear when I learn about depression in a young girl is a quiet plea to be considered whole and legitimate, central and valued as an individual. To grow up knowing that your society respects you and recognizes your sense of your own worth and moral agency. After we've done that, then we can come back to biological determinism. Until then it has zero legitimacy.
Girls need to know that they are sufficient as they are. That their bodies belong to them. That they are moral agents in their own lives. That they are not sick or defective or deviant from a long-established but entirely unnatural male norm. They need to know that they are powerful, but that their powerfulness in the world as adults is not yet recognized. We have a chicken and an egg problem.
There are hundreds of great organizations, started by parents, teachers, coaches and girls themselves that are finding ways to give girls the confidence they need to counter corrosive cultural messages. The key is not to wait until your daughters are depressed. Here are some great organizations (there are many more, and these are in no particular order):
Spark Movement
Girls on the Run
Girls Inc. (good resource guide, too)
She Heroes
7 Wonderlicious
Black Girl Project
Adios Barbie
Princess Free Zone
Powered by Girls
Black Girls Rock!
Miss Representation
BrainCake
Pigtail Pals
Girls' Leadership Institute
Healthy is the New Skinny
The Body Project
Feminist.com
Rachel Simmons Leadership For Life
Keep Her In the Game
Also, check out the many organizations with similar goals internationally that you can find here at Amazing Women Rock.
Keep Her in the Game from Womens Sports Foundation on Vimeo.
Follow Soraya Chemaly on Twitter: www.twitter.com/schemaly
Take the example of an overweight child who says to herself, “When I lose twenty pounds, I will be acceptable to my parents, to my friends and to myself.” She is implying, of course, that in the interim, she is not acceptable to anyone. She breaks her own heart. She holds herself in contempt. She is not going to lose weight that way. In fact she will behave counter productively. She will defeat herself and gain even more weight; she will further confirm her underlying feeling that she is worthless, “not good enough.” She is caught in a spiral down into despair.
The self-respecting child can tell herself, “I am a worthwhile human being in spite of my faults and imperfections, right now. My excess poundage is not a reflection on my worth as a person, merely a human imperfection. I deserve to get rid of it and be happy, no, more and no less, than anyone else. I am worthwhile in the meantime. I am good enough as I am.”
"harms that come to them in the form of hyper masculine norms"
So, you think boys shouldn't be masculine? They are only worth anything if they act like girls?
Soraya,
I don't know if you know this but commentators can make any comment they want on an article as long as it isn't abusive. Teen girls aren't the only ones the suffer depression. So we shouldn't talk about teen boys at all just because it bothers you? You don't think boys have problems as well?
oh right. you're probably just another misogynist masquerading as a "men's rights advocate".
Here are some sources:
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/
National Institute of Justice: http://nij.gov/
New York Times analysis of data: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/health/nearly-1-in-5-women-in-us-survey-report-sexual-assault.html For...”
And I am not overblowing fears about sexualized violence and rape. You clearly have absolutely no idea the degree to which all women are taught to "not get raped" and the ways in which they entirely adapt their lives to make sure it doesn't happen. Most don't even think about it but consider it the "price" of being female. Bet you go running whenever you want to, wearing pretty much whatever you feel, park in lots at night without a second thought, get drunk without worrying that someone will "take advantage of you" - now there's a euphemism for you - don't walk with keys poking through your fingers in case you need to defend yourself, take any bus or taxi home when you need to, have never had to go out of your way on a daily basis to avoid some lout on the street with a vaguely threatening demeanor, been asked to smile at someone you don't know and don't care to know and then had obscenities hurled at you for not complying. As you can image, I could go on and on. There is nothing distorted about my representation.
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/
National Institute of Justice: http://nij.gov/
New York Times analysis of data: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/health/nearly-1-in-5-women-in-us-survey-report-sexual-assault.html For...”
Which one is the 'women group'?
Averagedancer Commented 6 hours ago
"I beg to differ. It has long been pointed out how men are not culturally able to express sadness in appropriate ways, but they have freedom to express anger, aggression and ambition without being referred to as PMSing b******. On the other hand, women are expected - and in fact encouraged - to express sadness to the point of being sappy and illogical. It is not culturally welcomed when they express anger, aggression or ambition.
Both sexes are subject to societal expectations and constraints. But as the article above noted - and I've taken issue with this one as well - nobody tells women they "...throw like a man...," or "...cry like a man," in an attempt to shame them. The implication inherent in statements like, "....run like a girl," is that everyday occurances are somehow diminished if compared to how a girl or a woman would do them.
And women will always be blamed for men unleashing their anger, whether it's being raped or beaten. Don't expect that one to change; it justifies, in their minds, taking out their anger on someone who can't adequately defend themselves. If they did it to other men, well, they get their rears kicked.
Someone who could fight back would make pounding them ever so much less enjoyable. But if they didn't blame the women they brutalized, that would make them, you know, "girlie.""
But shouldn't part of the blame (for lack of a better word) or credit for how a girl emerges be placed on her parents, and in particular her mom? Throughout the generations of pre-feminist thinking and even in more recent times, amazing women have emerged, despite these societal or cultural obstacles in their way.
And with so many of them, you see a common thread -- a mother (or grandmother or some maternal figure) who did everything right in raising a strong, smart and high-achieving daughter. Certainly, in many cases it's a dad who stepped into that role or who was just as supportive as the mom, but it's often the influence of the mother that makes the difference.
Why, in a piece about encouraging girls to express their anger and power, and to develop a strength of character, is there not more a discussion of what moms should and shouldn't do in their roles as their daughters' first role models?
There is a good list of organizatins that can help at the end of the article, and some posters have provided others. Parents need to step up to the plate as best they can, but that does not change the environment in which they are raising their daughters.
Incidentally, it is my contention that we need to teach our boys and help our men understand the difficulties with unreasonable gender expectations for both girls and boys; however, this thread is addressing anger and powerlessness in girls. Much of it comes from the environment outside the home.
Mothers can help their girls - and they/we are certainly trying; but they can't do it by themselves. Many of them became "amazing women . . . despite . . societal or cultural obstacles" too, but it required much grit and determination, and a great deal of sacrifice and lack of support in many instances. Many turned their anger into motivation to become "amazing." That does not change what this blog is showing.
Anyway, she conducted an experiment. Separated the class by gender & placed them in different rooms. Then she asked each roomful of students to write down what they feared most from the other gender.
The women wrote that they feared being raped, being physically assaulted, being murdered by a man.
The men wrote that they feared being laughed at by a woman.
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3472.Margaret_Atwood
I think it's from an essay collected in the book "Writing with Intent."
Point being that the threat of sexual (and other) violence from a man is something that permeates every woman's life, but (almost) never a man's.
Statement like this destroy your credibility in the face of the proven concept of male disposability. Boys are raised think of themselves as human-doings while girls are raised to feel inherently valuable as human-beings.
We can have a discussion about female depression without you arguing that the state of men and boys is just fine. You clearly have not examined data on young boys, so do us a favor and don't make false claims about them, ok? Thanks.
Girls are relentlessly fed the message, from earliest days, that their value is in how they look and how men respond to it. What they "do" is not that important, especially to the men they're supposed to be pleasing, and is restricted to a limited spectrum.
In fact, this goes back to the TRUE definition of feminism: women's right to be seen as full and total human beings apart from and transcendent to their sexual utility to men. Just as men are not judged primarily - and certainly not exclusively - on their sexual attractiveness, women have the right to be judged on their complete and total humanity. Getting these messages out to girls, amid the din of a male dominant hypersexualized culture is, now more than ever, a losing battle.
And then you say something like this which I actually find interesting and would like to discuss. I agree that women are hyper-specialized but I do not believe that precludes them from being considered human-beings, the "being" referencing their innate value whether they do anything or not. You see that as a disadvantage and I see it as an advantage.
It's a real pity we can't discuss issues like this because you're too busy insulting me and claiming I am some sort of male chauvinist.
Doing is a hell of a lot harder than just being. Actually having to do things to prove your worth when the other party get's a free pass for just showing up is unfair. A double standard like this puts boys under a lot more pressure.
To put this into context for you imagine if when you were a teenager boys you liked demanded you buy them things as well as look good. That's the position boys are put in from a young age all while competing with older boys for the same girls. The pressure on boys is tremendous in the face of obvious female privilege that feminist fail to acknowledge.
Men have to earn their humanity, females get it for free.
As a teenager, I was given this advice by a professional male friend of the family (whom I held in high regard):
"Don't be embarrassed to ask questions when in class/on the job. People assume you don't know anything, because you are girl."
In other words, there was no way I could go lower. That quote was made to me over twenty years ago. At that time, I found it saddening. Now, revolting.
My emotions come from my thoughts
I can control my emotions”
“Your Erroneous Zones”- Dr. Wayne Dyer
“While some of the tendency to depression almost certainly is due to genetic destiny, some of that tendency seems due to reversible, pessimistic habits of thought…….” Page 240
“Emotional Intelligence” - Dr. Daniel Goleman
“Depression” – Charlie Rose show (depression disease)
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12380
for really, really, big depressions