"Strong is the New Pretty"
When I was in 7th or 8th grade, I really liked to make these expandable origami pinwheels with craft paper. They were easy to make, and were good decorations for a blank white wall, such that I kept them up in my room until a couple of months ago. As I matured, so did my tastes, so pastel colors with butterfly print didn’t quite cut it anymore. I finally decided to box them today, since they were still taking up valuable space in a drawer, and as I did, the pinwheel in the header image stuck out to me.
I had seven pinwheels on my wall in total. The other six were mostly pink, purple, orange, or light blue, with zigzags and stripes. This seventh one was paper patterned with words and slogans instead, and I recall that I made it because I didn’t know what to do with these particular sheets of paper. They felt out of place in the other pinwheels, with letters instead of polkadots or what have you.
A quick glance at the pinwheel, and a lot of the words already stuck out to me, so I deconstructed it to take a look at what other parts of the papers read.
There were actually three pieces of paper in the pinwheel with this exact print - one was purple, and the other had multicolored letters against a parchment-colored background. (Notably, when I say “multicolored letters” in reference to the latter, I mean an amalgamation of pastel pinks, purples, blues, oranges, and greens. No darker letters.) Amongst words like “FRIENDS FOREVER” and “FUN”, there is a clear message that we should laugh, be kind, and create happiness. There are a couple of instances of “SO PRETTY & TRENDY”, as well as a smattering of butterflies, feathers, and florals.
I would like to be clear that there is no problem with laughing, being kind, and creating happiness. In fact, it would be great if every person would do this. However, that’s the problem: not every person is, and these messages are only being sent to some people - girls. Girls, who are bombarded with messages of “kindness” and “prettiness” from a young age. Girls, who are taught to let boys and men walk all over us, who are told to be meek and agreeable under the guise of “peace”, who are made to put others desires ahead of their own needs under the illusion of “kindness”.
Maybe some of the women reading this had parents who bought them t-shirts with words of peace and kindness written all over them. We never really thought much of the sequined peace signs on our shirts, or why the Nike logos on girl’s clothing was purple, or pink, or rainbow-colored, as opposed to the boy’s clothes on which it was usually a solid black or white. In fact, those of us who had brothers may remember that their shirts were, strangely enough, absent of slogans of “happiness and joy and #beyourself”.
Now, I found these three interesting, mostly because the same message of “pretty” and “beautiful” is everywhere. (Also note how there are a couple of instances of “smile”. I find this reminiscent of “grin and bear it”, “Give me a smile, sweetheart”, etc.)
The phrase “strong is the new pretty” sticks out. Are girls not allowed to only be strong? Boys sure are allowed to be. But alas, girls must be pretty while being strong. We are not allowed to have something solely for ourselves, we must also be appealing to the male sex.
Someone’s probably thinking, “Well, why does this matter so much?”. I’m here to tell you that these messages spoon-fed to girls matter for how they’ll approach situations later in life. As I stated above, women are socialized from a young age to prioritize other people over themselves, and this is often done under the guise of being kind or keeping the peace.
Every child should be taught to be kind, of course. But if you’re noticing that this is only being taught to a certain group of children, it says quite a lot about who those in power want to be kind. The next steps are to figure out what the children being taught this have in common (in this case, it’s that they are female), and then figure out why the powerful may benefit from only girls being taught to be kind. What’s so special about girls it’s thought that they need to hear this message more than boys?
Propaganda can take the form of anything, after all. Clothes, shoes, even a piece of patterned paper.
(By the way, if anyone wants to know how to make a pinwheel of their own, the instructions are online here.)