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  • Editorial: Girl Power and the Power of Girls
  • Deborah L. Smith- Shank

It is always difficult for the family to regard the daughter otherwise than as a family possession. From her babyhood she has been the charm and grace of the household, and it is hard to think of her as an integral part of the social order, hard to believe that she has duties outside of the family, to the state and to society in the larger sense.

— Jane Addams (1902/1994, p. 331)

Once upon a time, in the days before it was possible to know the gender of a child before s/he was born, I found myself absolutely relieved to find that I had delivered two healthy girl children 3 years apart. It’s not that I don’t like boys, but I relaxed in the knowledge that these girls’ bodies and minds reflected mine and I felt that I could understand them so much better than I could ever understand boys. I was absolutely and positively delighted that I didn’t need to make the choice to circumcise or not, and to this day, I honestly don’t know how mothers of boys make this decision. Mixed with the nearly overwhelming joy of motherhood was my firm and confident decision to raise my girls as feminists. They regularly wore overalls and only rarely dressed in frills. In one picture, my beautiful little bald Bridget wears a pink shirt that screamed in capitals, “I AM WOMAN!” and I remember our Morgan wearing a T-shirt demanding that we all “QUESTION AUTHORITY!”

Pondering girl power forces me to rummage through memories and artifacts that most often gather dust in the recesses of my memories and in the backs of closets. My cute, and relatively superficial, nods to feminist T-shirt purchases [End Page v] make me smile as I slide down memory lane, but there must have been more to modeling feminist practices than T-shirts and slogans. I know that there were times when I held my breath and fought fears and tears as my little girls, and then young women, struggled with disappointments, challenges, and upsets caused by contemporary patriarchal culture. I know there were times I challenged educational and legal systems as ferociously as a mother tiger. Like Jane Addams observed, I found it very difficult to believe that my daughters were growing up and moving outside the safety of my very tenuous protection.

Gender is the remaining caste system that still cuts deep enough, and spreads wide enough, to be confused with the laws of nature.

— Gloria Steinem (1994, p. 25)

The story of my own feminism started long ago and far away, as a girl with long golden tangled hair, tons of curiosity, and an easy giggle. As the oldest child of four, and a girl, I babysat a lot more often than I wanted to. I’d much rather have been outside riding my bike (named Betsy), playing softball in the middle of the street in front of Larry’s house, or climbing trees. Even then, I suspected that boys had a lot more fun than I did, and I know they had more freedom. As I helped my mother work in the house, I totally related to Cinderella’s drudgery (though not her small feet).

I made the best of what I felt was a totally unjust situation by escaping whenever I could to my favorite trees; climbing and precariously hauling my books, pencils, notepads, and sometimes even a baby kitten or two into a well-hidden space behind limbs and leaves—a space where neither my parents nor my sibs could find me.

I wasn’t a sexy Lolita or naïve Alice in any kind of wonderland. Even as I suspected a resemblance between Cinderella and myself (and that I was really a princess stolen by Pete and Lee Smith at birth), I couldn’t hide the fact that I was a tomboy trapped in a culture where my skinned knees, ripped and dirty clothes, bruises, and curiosity often got me in serious trouble.

It wasn’t just my tendency to be overly boisterous (boy-sterous?) that created...

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