Girls

"A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous."

"You were speaking about its being a girl," said Miss Betsey. "I have no doubt it will be a girl. I have a presentiment that it must be a girl. Now child, from the moment of the birth of this girl—" "Perhaps boy," my mother took the liberty of putting in. "I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl," returned Miss Betsey."

"And there was that wholesale libel on a Yale prom. If all the girls attending it were laid end to end, Mrs. Parker said, she wouldnt be at all surprised."

"The eroticization of innocence and the fascination with the erotic child are deeply gendered. From depictions of sexualized images of prepubescent girls in the Victorian era to the Lolita-like commodification of little girls as sexual consumers and performers in contemporary society, it is the girl-child, not the boy-child, whose innocence is eroticized. And it is the eroticization of little girls that provokes our (adult) concern for their protection. Indeed, societal anxieties around girls as we enter the first decade of the twenty-first century continue to circle around what Walkerdine has termed the "protosexual" girl. It is the sexual girl that represents the "Other" to normal childhood, where "normal girls as well behaved, hard working and asexual"."

"Recently Anita and I judged a beauty contest where the girls answered questions about marriage and motherhood. Several said, "I think Ill be a good mother. I plan to stay with my children full-time until nursery school, and then I can go out and work. Seems as though the girls think its okay to raise their kids until nursery school, then let others do it from then on. Sure, plenty of husbands want that, too. Some parents ship their kids off to school or camp all summer just to get rid of them. Most of the girls we interviewed in this contest said they saw nothing unusual about having sexual intercourse before marriage. These are so-called nice girls, eighteen and nineteen, who without batting an eyelash tell you, "I dont think theres anything wrong with living together before marriage." You ask why, and discover many come from broken homes. They dont want to make the mistakes their parents made. Theyd rather avoid marriage completely."

"Families selling their children, and mostly girls, so that families could buy food. In one of reported cases, a six-year-old girl and 18-month-old toddler were sold for $3,350 and $2,800 respectively. In another reporting, a 9-year-old girl was sold for about $2,200 in the form of sheep, land and cash. There are many more such stories.... Some of these girls will become child brides... Child marriage are also a major violation of their human rights and can sometimes amount to a form of modern day slavery. While poverty may drive child marriage, child marriage traps girls in a cycle of poverty. Child marriage further puts girls at risk of physical and sexual abuse... Some of the girls will be turned into child laborers... The people of Afghanistan cannot be left to starve. Afghan girls cannot be sacrificed."

"A good many girls these days assume the male role and call boys for dates. I have a nagging feeling that boys are going to get less and less interested in girls as a result. The intrigue is going. If a girl wants to put herself on an equal plane with the boy, shes going to find herself less and less in demand. It used to be that if guys wanted to date a sharp girl they had to polish the car and fix themselves up — and compete. If they dont have to do that, theyre going to lose interest. Maybe girls phone boys from necessity. Maybe the boys dont have that get-up-and-go — that desire. I see an extreme lack of desire in young men today."

"Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling, All caressing, none beguiling, Bud of beauty, fairly blowing, Every charm to Nature owing, This and that new thing admiring, Much of this and that enquiring, Knowledge by degrees attaining, Day by day some virtue gaining, Ten years hence, when I leave chiming, Beardless poets, fondly rhyming, (Fescued now, perhaps, in spelling,) On thy riper beauties dwelling, Shall accuse each killing feature Of the cruel, charming creature Whom I knew complying, willing, Tender, and averse from killing."

"I think that if you had two desert islands, and you put girl babies on one island and boy babies on another island, and they were somehow able to survive with no help from adult society, eventually the girls would cooperate in collecting pieces of driftwood and using them to build shelters, whereas the boys would pretend that driftwood pieces were guns."

"Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise."

"I have male friends whose daughters are approaching puberty at speeds upwards of 700 miles per hour, and when you say the word "dating," my friends get a look in their eyes that makes Charles Manson look like Captain Kangaroo."

"Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, A-top on the topmost twig,—which the pluckers forgot, somehow,— Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now."