Mary Pipher's Saplings In The Storm

837 Words2 Pages

Running around barefoot, playing outside, and getting dirty were a few of my favorite things to do when I was younger; however, things have changed drastically since then. Now, at eighteen, all of the activities I used to enjoy make me want to cringe. Often, girls are encouraged to look and act a certain way based on what society’s expectations are at the time. Throughout adolescence girls tend to drift away from their old ways. Romances, body changes, and tensions with parents are all factors in this time of change. In Mary Pipher’s Saplings in the Storm, she claims that adolescents must adapt to stereotypical gender characteristics in American culture.
This claim holds to be true in my case when I started high school. I walked in on …show more content…

I did not have the perfect body. I suddenly became aware of my appearance and made sure I wore makeup every day, especially on days I had Art I with Eric. Before every class I would brush my hair and put on lip gloss in order to try and fit in. To grab Eric’s attention I thought I had to wear clothes that made me appear slimmer and live up to society’s expectations of beauty. Pipher defines this as “lookism, which is the evaluation of a person solely on the basis of appearance” (346). Every time I talked to Eric I assumed he was judging me by the way I looked and not by my personality or values. I constantly felt like I was not good enough and that my body type was not the kind that guys found attractive. Pipher states that girls “sense the pressure to be someone they are not” (346). Every day I walked around acting in a play where I could not be myself. The more I put forth an act the more I felt that I did not fit in. Adolescent girls find themselves “vulnerable to the hurricane” (346) of judgement and predetermined expectations of women. After a while, Eric finally gave me the attention I longed for and we started to date. I had never been in a relationship before and I never knew how much tension it would cause between me and my

Open Document