Girl Power

About a year ago, the girl child auditioned for and was accepted into Project Girl Performance Collective. They're a group of young women who write and perform their own material at all kinds of cool places: The New York International Fringe Festival, Planet Hollywood, the UN, the White House. Yeah, the White House. The one in Washington, DC. Like I said, cool places. Anyway, these girls write about what it's like to be a young woman today, in the US and in any other part of the world. They talk about everything from incest to eating disorders to becoming a child bride. They work in high schools from Harlem to the Jersey shore. The organization gives girls a voice. Some speak for girls in other countries. Some speak for themselves. Some of these girls tell stories that can break your heart. They make you want to wrap your arms around them and never let them go.

My girl child is lucky. She leads a charmed life. I'm not exaggerating. I can't know what her last life was like, but she must've done something right because so far it's been pretty darn easy for her in this one. She's that girl in school you'd love to hate but she's nice to you so you can't. She's pretty, gets good grades, is talented and has an adorable boyfriend who respects her and likes her as much as she likes him. They have a love of the puppiest kind. And oh, she goes to a really amazing high school where she has a bunch of smart, creative friends. She's hasn't been bullied (well, what she considers bullied), had a bad body image, or real problems with her fabulously adoring parents. That's what she calls us. Fabulously adoring parents. No, not really. I think that she sometimes calls us other things, but I won't repeat them here. They are usually reserved for those times when we force her to clean her room or do something equally distasteful. Like I said, she's a lucky kid.

When she was a little girl, in kindergarten, she met her first mean girl. The kind of girl that says she'll sit with you on the bus and then doesn't because she wants to sit with a boy. The kind that makes you cry when you and another friend go over her house to play and they ignore you. When you ask if they're going to be in the school show, the mean girl says yes, but you can't be in it. The girl that makes you feel bad about what you've chosen to wear that day. And this is just kindergarten. When the girl child tells me these things alarm bells go off in my head. I break into a sweat. Here it comes. I run out and buy Odd Girl Out. I go to a local high school to see Rachel Simmons speak. I read Queen Bees and Wannabees. And I tell my 6-year-old that real friends don't make you feel badly about yourself. And you know what? She listened. To her mother. Yeah, I was as surprised as you are.

I had her separated from the mean girl in school so she could make other friends, and the school honored it for two years. Boy, you should have seen the teacher's face when I asked for that one. She had absolutely no idea. The year they put the girl child back with the mean girl, the mean girl tried to turn the other girls against her. So my girl made friends with the boys, and she forgot all about the mean girl. In fifth grade she made a new friend who one day picked a fight. My girl was crushed. She burst into tears at dinner. I told her to try to talk it out, but her friend wouldn't even take a dropped pencil from her hand. My advice? Try to talk to her three times. If it doesn't work out, then move on. Kind of like Yom Kippur. In a random kind of way. I told her that there are always kids that will want to be her friend. And there were. And the mean girls? She just chooses not to recognize them, and they all get along. I told you, she's a lucky kid.

Sometimes, when it comes time for her to write her pieces for PGPC, she has a hard time coming up with ideas. But I don't. "Why don't you write about mean girls?" I suggest. "I can't," she replies. "I don't really know any mean girls." What? Dear Lord, how can you possibly not know any mean girls. I do. I was bullied by mean girls. Wait, I was a mean girl. I was a mean girl and bullied by mean girls. I could write a great piece about that. I even know mean girl women. "OK then," I say, "Why don't you imagine you're someone else, you know, from the other side of things. Like, be the girl who doesn't get the guy." I say that because I know all about that stuff. I could write about that. And about poor body image. And about doing things to fit in. Now I'm getting so excited that I'm starting to sound like Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter. "Oooohhh! Oooohhh! Oooohhh!" This is about the time she says to me, "Mommy, you know we probably wouldn't have been friends if I had known you then. You were a follower and had zero self-esteem. None of my friends are like that." Part of me feels badly when she says stuff like that, but a bigger part of me starts jumping up and down and shouting at the top of my lungs, "Yay!" I must've done something right.

I'm inspired by my girl child. Because of her, I've discovered that I want to write. I've discovered that I can write. Maybe I can be a "Project Mom." Oh, the name is changing after the new year to "Girl Be Heard." Maybe I can be in "Mom Be Heard?" Hmmmm. That won't work. No one wants to listen to their mother.




If you're in Brooklyn Heights on December 23, check out PGPC/Girl Be Heard
@ 2:00
Congregation Mt. Sinai
250 Cadman Plaza West 
Brooklyn Heights

Like them on FB to find out what they're up to.

And donate if you can.

http://www.projectgirlperformancecollective.org/donate