Advice for girls: Be gracious and kind, listen more than you speak, treat everyone you meet with respect the way you would want to be treated. Don’t settle for being treated as anything less than a lady. Be slow to anger and quick to forgive.
A couple weeks ago there was a post on Facebook encouraging girls to be loud, rude, and crude. Never apologize or ask for permission. Essentially, we were telling our daughters that if it is good enough for sailors it is good enough for them. However, wouldn’t it be better to teach our daughters and sons to be respectable, respectful of themselves and others.
Why would we want to teach our daughters that being rude, and crude is an acceptable action just because some men are rude and crude? Wouldn’t it be better to teach both boys and girls that they are better off and more acceptable ways to behave?
Take the advice for girls at the beginning and change that. Advice for everyone: Be gracious and kind, listen more than you speak, treat everyone you meet with respect, the way you would want to be treated. Don’t settle for being treated as anything less than a valuable and wonderful person. Be slow to anger and quick to forgive. Imagine if everyone taught their children this, if we all expected and demanded our children behave only the best and that they demand and expect only the best treatment of themselves by others maybe the world would be a slightly different place.
Instead, we turned the tables at some point for the worst. Instead of thinking that men who cuss and drink and carouse were to be avoided we started encouraging our daughters to be the same. Instead of saying that someone with loose morals should be avoided we started encouraging our children to have loose morals. We told our daughters that if a man chose to have multiple sexual partners it was okay, even more, so we told our daughters that they should strive for the same. If it is good enough for the worst of society it was good enough for our daughters and sons.
Can I tell my daughters that being faithful and true to one man means they are also being faithful and true to themselves? Can I tell them that sex with multiple partners will not only be dangerous but also be degrading, that they will wake up one day and realize that they are not as valuable as they used to be, that they are nothing more than a whisper of the lady that they should be? I can tell them all this, all while society shouts back that I am shaming them.
We can struggle to teach our daughters and sons what it means to be respectful and respectable adults, all the while we will get shouted down by a society that insists in instant gratification and teaching respectability is a new form of shaming.
As I looked at the post on Facebook last week I was saddened to see how many people were cheering it on. Insisting that they would never teach their daughters to behave nicely because someone, somewhere along the line, was rude and crude to them, suddenly making rude and crude behavior the way to go. It was heartbreaking to see everyone say that their children, especially their daughters would be encouraged to push and shove their way through life. They would be encouraged to have bad manners and told that being ladylike was derogatory. It is no different than the shaming movement that is teaching our children that saying anything disagreeable can be construed as shaming.
Instead of teaching values though we are teaching, Don’t interrupt me; Advice for girls: be loud and gross and take up space. Stop saying “sorry” and start saying “don’t interrupt me”. Stop saying “Because I have a boyfriend” and start saying “because I said so”. Say “no” and say “none of your business”. Take selfies and don’t laugh at jokes that aren’t funny. Be snide and sarcastic and wear your hair the way you like it. Help out other girls and be vocal about what makes you mad. Be masculine and feminine and both and neither and be unapologetic. Don’t set aside your comfort for boy’s egos- Spencer McFarland
There is nothing of value though in that teaching. We aren’t making our daughters better by teaching them to take up space and telling them to be rude to others. We aren’t making them stronger, and we aren’t building them up. If anything, we are tearing them down by these teachings.
We can do so much better by both our daughters and our sons if we turn from these teachings and we embrace telling them that there is strength in being kind, strength in being polite, and even strength in being ladylike. We can be better than what Spencer McFarland would have us be.
