She's Got to Be a Macho Girl

While writing my essay about the article "She's Got to Be a Macho Girl" by Kuczynski, I found myself wanting to say some things about the article that I could not stick into my paper so I figured I would just blog about it. First of all to summarize, the article is about how girls are becoming more aggressive at initiating relations with the opposite sex. It is thought that they have achieved this power from watching powerful women in the media and from feminist ideas that are taught to them at a young age.

This article does not convince me that this is occurring on a large scale because it was based on anecdotal information from what I believe to be a biased group. I believe it to be biased because it consisted of psychologists and counselors who generally only see children with some sort of problem. These children that they are seeing could be coming to them because they are dealing with issues related to sex whereas those who are not having sex might not be as aggressive towards boys. Since they are not having sex they might not need to go see them. This might be a stretch but nonetheless, I feel the research could be done in a better manner. This being said, I do not know that the article is even trying to indicate that this is occurring on a large scale but since I do not really feel that it is, I just wanted to point it out.

Furthermore, the article gives a positive and negative analysis of this situation. It is positive because girls are becoming more equal to boys in the dating world, but they are also becoming less sensitive and putting themselves in jeopardy. Is it really worth it for girls to take advantage of their sexuality in order to be "equal" to guys? Honestly, I felt really bad for the girls being discussed in the article and to me they did not seem empowered at all. The article says that they approach men in a sexualized manner because they think "this is all I have to offer" and that they are learning how to act from the predatory actions of women in the media. Also according to the article, girls do not associate love with sex anymore so that they will not get hurt. These different pieces from the article paint a very sad picture of young girls to me.

The article points out positives as well saying that girls are empowered, they will question everything, and they have more control in relationships. Are these positives worth the negatives? That is a matter of opinion. I think in order to lessen the negatives without losing the positives girls need to be taught empowerment and aggressiveness not by sexualized figures but by strong women who do not need to use sex to get what they want. Girls need positive figures in their life and in the media. The media really needs to change in order to give young girls the right idea about being strong women and if the media is not going to change, parents need to make sure that their children know that the media is corrupt. This, of course, is a hard task but parents need to make an effort or else young girls will continue to feel that they need to sexualize themselves in order to be on an equal playing field with their counterparts.

In addition to the negatives listed above, girls are also putting themselves in greater danger of getting pregnant or contracting STIs. Girls become so focused on being sexy and trying to please guys that they forget that there are serious consequences for their actions. This point brings up the question of are young kids receiving appropriate sex education? In the one case in the article, a girl that was acting like a "vixen" ended up getting pregnant and contracting an STI. She had not been taught about her body and the value of sex. Comprehensive sex education is vital in making sure girls know these things so that cases like these can be prevented.