why aren't i like the other girls?
Girl code, gender conformity, and the ceiling of confidence for girls and women
On one dewy Mandeville morning, I leaned against the metal railings of the sixth form block, letting the coolness touch my skin. I was waiting for my fellow senior prefects to arrive for our weekly meeting.
When I was selected as head girl of my traditional Jamaican high school, I was knighted with the responsibility of epitomizing the ideal female student: ambitious, respectful, firm, and most importantly, ladylike.
We were a group of around six, co-lead by the head boy, who I watched saunter down the corridor with the remainder of our cavalry close behind.
As he got closer, I pushed myself off the wall, and one of our deputies opened the door to the meeting room from the inside. (In this story, we’ll call her Jess.)
I appreciated her urgency - we had just under an hour to handle the weekly housekeeping that posing as model students required.
But as I made to enter, she raised her arm ever so slightly, making me stop in my tracks on the polished concrete floor.
“Um, shouldn’t you let the head boy go in first?” she chuckled, giving me a side eye.
“You know - since he’s the man?”
She scoffed at me then, grinning. I rolled my eyes. Jess had a knack for saying outlandish things, and I usually ignored them, chalking it up to a child-like quirkiness that she’d always had.
Then I realized that she had stepped further into the doorframe, putting both hands across the entrance. She was purposely blocking my way.
I looked at him, then back at Jess. “Oh,” I thought. “She’s being serious.”
I think about that exchange a lot - how slimy I felt afterwards, when I brushed past her, and carried on with starting the meeting as if nothing happened.
Her stance, literally and figuratively, was deeper than the pedestal she placed him on. The unsteady feeling, as if I was walking on choppy waves, came from the fact that she intended on standing in my way to let him get there. She saw him as above me - as above both of us.
Wasn’t there supposed to be some kind of girl code between us?And if so, which one of us was breaking it? Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider, right?
To me, the idea of boys and men being put on pedestals by women was an idea so old, it would be absurd to even imply - especially in a place of learning. But when nobody else found it weird or worth addressing, I began to fester anger and resentment.
jill-in-a-box
That entire year that I was head girl felt like a sweaty, clunky performance where I never quite got the lines, and I didn’t do a good job of hiding it. I didn’t like the dynamic they encouraged us to create: one that rewarded conformity and participation in representation politics Olympics.
I didn’t believe in many of the written rules we were encouraged to enforce.
I didn’t believe that big, kinky hair should be tamed (slicked, straightened, canerowed or covered) to be “well groomed.” I didn’t believe that boys had to be trimmed near bald to be “presentable.” I didn’t believe that a girl’s uniform skirts being shorter than three inches below the knee implied indecency.
Now I also had to factor in unwritten rules like the one Jess insisted on - to the list of reasons why I constantly felt out of place.
It felt anti-woman to think that in some ways, by some people, I was expected to suspend any of my excellence to make space for boys and men. Why?
Why would my peers pretend to not notice when the head boy would speak over me?
Why would they shy away from making eye contact when he’d disregard my thoughts?
And why did I feel so weird - ignored, even - whenever I’d call it out?
girl code: error 404?
After a lifetime of being lauded for being ambitious, outspoken and confident individual - since when was I put into a box of gender, where my excellence should be dulled, diluted, curtailed, or made secondary by nature?
More than anything, I was confused. I felt betrayed. As head prefects, we were each handpicked for our skills in leadership and team building. To me, being active in student life was an opportunity to create more opportunities for student agency and expression.
Because of that, I had to value my own expression too.
What does it mean to be ladylike? What does it even mean to be like a lady? Who wrote the definition?
If the essence of a lady requires being secondary by nature, where do I fall if I will never be that?
I think I used to feel inadequate about what I came in with in my box, and felt like turning up the volume would gain me respect. And then it did, but I got there, and realized I still did not fit into that box, no matter how hard I tried.
I didn’t want need to get better at anything to be more of a lady - I wanted to be more of me.
Eventually, I decided that I would continue to put my self expression above all else.
I would reject their box, even if it meant feeling like an aimless marble from time to time. I’d find my corner.