CASUAL
Nordlinger, Pia
Casual ESTEEM BATH Fall means field hockey to me. Most years, the cool, bright weather reminds me of the glory days, but this season I’m coaching a high-school team. My girls are wonderfully...
...But one high-spirited freshman asked, “Did you tell them that your field-hockey team has it covered...
...They’re coming along fine—without an essay contest...
...During the question-and-answer period, I asked Seventeen’s publisher whether girls who have religion in their lives enjoy higher selfesteem...
...Later, I told my team that I had been to a meeting about girls and self-esteem...
...One of the companies making all this happen is Secret antiperspirant, whose product is “strong enough for a man, but made for a woman...
...Kearny-Cooke said she thought religion was a positive predictor of self-esteem, but she wasn’t certain because this is “very new research...
...I can’t imagine I ever played with the sense of delight that they do...
...Of course, surveys of volunteer respondents (known as “SLOPs” in radio broadcasting, for “self-selected- listener opinion polls”) have no validity for social science...
...Anchoring the celebrity contingent was one bona fide achiever, gold-medal track star Jackie Joyner- Kersee...
...To find out just how bad girls feel about themselves, Secret commissioned Seventeen magazine to run a self-esteem survey on the Internet...
...She at least was able to talk about something real: her own experiences training with coaches who could inspire or deflate her with a word...
...Legato, who says low self-esteem is “virtually an epidemic among girls today,” talked about her research into the question, “Is there a way that we can use the plasticity of the brain to build self-esteem...
...These nineteen young women were on my mind as I made my way the other day to the kickoff event for “Helping Girls Become Strong Women,” a public-service project dreamed up by some market- savvy companies, with the requisite celebrities and “women’shealth advocates” in tow...
...From what I’ve observed, she spoke for the group...
...It seems that girls, like it or not, spend their adolescent years floating on a dark sea of depression...
...New Age spirituality hadn’t occurred to me as a self-respect booster, but then neither would I have picked Charisma Carpenter, dollfaced co-star of the teen TV fave Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as a role model for teens...
...The survey ignored religion, so I redirected the question to the doctors...
...The phony statistics went unquestioned by the medical professionals on the panel, Dr...
...My girls are wonderfully talented and, at least on the field, uncomplicated...
...Marianne Legato, founder and director of the Partnership for Women’s Health at Columbia University...
...Taller than anyone else in the room, the Olympic champion cut a majestic figure, yet she seemed someone to whom girls like my players could actually relate...
...PIA NORDLINGER...
...The theme of the press conference was the tragic “fact” that young girls simply think they are no good...
...Feminists have long blamed advertisements and fashion magazines for young girls’ desire to be even prettier than they are...
...These showed young girls looking longingly into the camera and saying, “If you let me play sports, I will like myself more,” and, “If you let me play, I’ll suffer less depression...
...The notion that in the Catholic religion women can’t become priests sends a dreadful message...
...Ann Kearney-Cooke, director of the Cincinnati Psychotherapy Institute, and Dr...
...About half the respondents said they felt depressed (though most of them only “once a week”), and half of these cited their appearance as the reason...
...The other chief backer is Nike, which for years has hammered the girls-and-sports-theme, particularly in its “if you let me play” TV commercials...
...Helping Girls Become Strong Women” offers them a lifeboat, in the form of an opportunity to participate in the “Secret of Self- Esteem” essay contest or attend a self-esteem symposium...
...A full 54 percent felt their weight was wrong...
...Her hair was perfectly coiffed and highlighted, though her sentences could have used some tidying...
...Carpenter, an adviser to the project, was turned out in Tammy Faye make-up and a skirt about two sizes too small...
...That Seventeen readers have low self-esteem and poor body image is no surprise to a rival wing of the buck-up-our-girls movement: Agitators from the National Organization for Women were on hand with a fact sheet warning that Seventeen is part of the problem, not the solution...
...Legato, however, was dubious: “The images that organized religion pose for women are a very important consideration,” she warned...
...Some of them confessed to serious self-doubt, about their school work or looks...
...I think [organized religion] is a reflection of societal structure—so the impact of spirituality, maybe, is what you’re asking about...
Vol. 4 • November 1998 • No. 8
