• June 14, 2021

Three little words: the impact of language on our children

Three little words

How important are three little words in a person’s life? It seems so often that life-changing events depend on three little words. I have cancer. I love you. You are fired.

Please marry me? I find it strange that we can easily say so much in so few words, with an impact that in many cases is immediate and clear. But what about the three words we use that we are not aware of? We use them every day, all the time, in books, movies, music, news, television, when we want to do something or just tell a joke. What we don’t realize is that just as the previous examples have an impact, so do these words. There are two sentences, each of which contains three words that are hurting our children in ways that are the spiritual equivalent of carrying a baseball bat to them. So what are they? Very simply, we tell our boys to ‘be a man’, and at the expense of our daughters, we use the phrase ‘like a girl’ and we don’t say it as a compliment.

This whole topic caught my attention when Always designed the #LikeaGirl campaign; they hired director Lauren Greenfield to direct an empowerment ad that addressed this negative narrative. The challenge would be to change the meaning of the phrase to equate it with strength, confidence and empowerment. What followed is a short video in which Lauren asks some teens, boys, men, and women to “act” by running like a girl, fighting like a girl, and throwing like a girl. What followed is a hilarious series of what can only be described as exaggerated ‘faffing’. But once the laughter dies down, the director asks ten-year-old Dakota to run like a girl and the reality of what we laugh about comes home. We have been totally misled by the cultural need to align anything feminine with the meaning of weak. Dakota and the other prepubescent girls run with all their might, pitching like they’re pitching for an Olympic cricket or baseball team and fighting like they grew up watching Jackie Chan and the Avengers Assemble. They are not concerned with how their hair looks or being ‘dainty’. They want to win the race, the fight, the game, and that’s when we feel ashamed. Because when did being ‘like a girl’ become something to be ashamed of? An insult? Why, as one of the young participants asks, can’t it mean “winning the race”?

Research by Always and Lauren Greenfield suggests that it is the ages between nine and twelve that our daughters are most vulnerable to realizing the “truth” of the insult. This is supported by recent reports from the UK government that girls begin to lose interest in sport around the age of eight, and no longer want to participate in physical education lessons.

At the most crucial stage of our development in terms of establishing identity, of the loss of innocence that inevitably comes when our children begin puberty, they are being fed a barrage of negative messages about their self-esteem and gender roles.

This is not unique to young girls. As I mentioned before, the phrase ‘Be a man’ is equally damaging. In 2011, director Jennifer Siebel Newsoms made the film Miss Representation addressing the harmful representation of women. Following this film and its positive response at the Sundance Film Festival, Newsoms founded missrepresentationproject.org to highlight and challenge the representation of women in the media. In 2013 it evolved into the Representation Project, working to address the problems faced by both men and women, with the clear conviction that limiting stereotypes hurts us all.

By visiting his site, you will be able to see his movie The Mask In Which He Lives. This short film features interviews with coaches, teachers, psychologists, and youth. One of the people who participated states that the three most destructive words a boy will hear in his life are “Be a man.”

What is very clear is that it seems almost the other side of a coin, with a girl on the other side. We live in a culture that does not value femininity, where respect is linked to violence and power is linked to domination. This is what we are teaching young children. Let them not cry, because that would be weak. That they have to be big and strong, not weak and weak. That force is exercising physical power without showing sensitivity and kindness.

Somewhat concerning during a session with some young people when asked what they felt they were constantly hiding, the overwhelming response was anger. In the US, less than 50% of boys and men seek help for mental health problems, and 3 or more children commit suicide every day. In the UK, men are 3.5 times more likely to commit suicide than women. It has been suggested that this is the result of gender role change and recession, the pressures they feel to ‘be a man’ and be responsible for the well-being of their family. It could also be suggested that our cultural obsession with men for not crying, not showing emotion, not speaking or expressing themselves could be leading to an unhealthy place for them leaving them isolated and unsupported. What do we say as a phrase change? Oh it’s just a man, they don’t like to talk. Maybe because they have never been made to feel that it is okay for them to talk?

As things are currently as a society through the media, our cultural exchanges and our everyday language, we are delivering a narrative to our children about what it is to be a man or a woman and it is not a healthy narrative.

So what do we do? Is it really bleak? Can you change the discourse of an entire culture? I think we can and there are many ways to do it.

A number of initiatives are underway in the UK to empower young women. These include Amazing Young Women, a group created to help and support youth ages 12-19; They are based in North Wales and run workshops, community and residential programs.

She is You is another group working hard to create an initiative to help young women feel comfortable in their own skin, based in London.

There are a variety of youth leadership programs that include young men, such as the Carnegie Trust and Youth Enterprise; however, something specific to young men and their emotional well-being is harder to find. Young Minds and Action for Children are working hard to support youth mental health, but have yet to address the issue directly.

There is a lot of debate in the media about gender neutrality in toys and clothes with the #LetClothesBeClothes and #LetToysBeToys campaigns, which is great news for all of us. It is certainly part of a larger problem. However, I would suggest that until we address the damaging way we use language with each other, with our children, and with what is heard from the media, we will be fighting an uphill struggle. That is why the work of the Representation Project and Always is so important. By creating awareness, public pressure and debate, it keeps reality fresh in our minds. And that is what we, as parents and guardians, must maintain: attention to the language we use and an awareness of how valuable our words are. Perhaps over time they will learn that being a man means many things, not just one and that maybe, just maybe being like a girl is something extraordinary.

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