Growing Up Female

This is a creative non-fiction piece about what it's like to be a girl.

Growing Up Female

Girls are beautiful creatures, each of us unique and beautiful in our own way, but getting that way isn’t easy. First we have to go through the process of growing from a tiny, wrinkled baby to a full grown adult. We have only about fifteen or twenty years to go about doing this, and then we have to spend the next sixty or seventy years dealing with the aftermath.

            When we are first starting out in life growing is new and fun. It’s full of things like measuring your height against the marks on the pantry door and comparing the position of the top of your head to those of your friends. It’s like a competition. But that carefree attitude doesn’t last forever. As a child our body is just a body, we don’t really consider it very much except to compare it in competition to those of our friends, but then, just as we’re hitting the worst and most awkward phase of this process we begin to become aware of ourselves in a whole new way.

            Before we know it our bodies become a source of discomfort and shame. We girls even start growing extra body parts in the form of a chest and hips. At first it’s exciting, we’ve just spent the last twelve years wanting to be a ‘big girl’ and now we have physical proof that it’s finally happened. But for most of us the magic wears off quickly and we start to realize that people actually notice how we look. Then the incessant worrying begins. Do I look fat? Does this shirt look good on me? Am I too tall? Am I too short? Am I pretty? We ask ourselves these questions and then we ask others, our friends and family, but of course we can’t ever trust what they say because what if they’re just being nice?

            Eventually this process we have been going through since the beginning of our lives comes to an end, but then we have to go through something that is by far more difficult, if not outright impossible. We have to come to accept that this body we have now is the same one we will be forced to live in for the rest of our lives. For many of us this is much much harder than the actual growing process because for most of us there is something, or everything, about our now unfortunately permanent body that we don’t like.

            Eyes, nose, hips, chest something is unsatisfactory, but don’t worry this body is not as permanent as it used to be. Okay so you’re pretty much stuck at whatever height you have attained until you get old and start to shrink, but you can tweak it around, if only a little bit, with the wonderful invention known as shoes. Flats or heels? Available in a variety of heights, sizes, and styles. And thus the shoe collecting begins, although I will willingly admit that the appeal of shoes goes beyond their height adjusting benefits.

            So maybe height isn’t your problem. Being female there are two main body parts that are emphasized for our gender, and can therefore cause us the most trouble. They would be the same two that we suddenly started growing in what is known as the preteen years: our chest and hips. Let us address the hips first. Like our height our hips can be unsatisfactory in two ways, too much or too little. Now, generally speaking, in our society bigger, and curvier, is considered better when it comes to hips, which may leave those with smaller, less dramatic hips feeling as if they are lacking something, but don’t worry there is a solution. Here enters the wonderful world of clothing. It’s all about how you dress it up, with the right skirt or pair of pants even your plain, unnoticeable hips can be made to look worthy of Marilyn Monroe.

            Perhaps you have the opposite problem and have a little too much hip. You may be wondering how that’s possible, after all we already established that bigger is better. Well with hips, as with everything, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. While clothes are certainly a gift to those who want to find a way to dress up/disguise their body to make it look its best, there is another, darker, side of it. Have you ever gone clothes shopping and seen a million things that are just so cute and you want them so bad, but then you actually try them on and find that they either don’t fit or look hideous on you? Well when you have big hips this is an especially big problem. It’s not an easy thing, finding the right clothes to dress up those hips, but don’t give up hope if you look long and hard enough eventually you too will find that pair of jeans that fit just right and will be your favorite for the next four years until they finally wear a hole in the back in a dressing room at Old Navy while your shopping for their replacement.

            Clothes are societies gift to all female kind. You will spend the rest of your life, and money, finding just the right clothes for your body. It’s not just the hips, you have to consider how long your legs are, the size of your waist, what color looks best with your hair and skin tone? And don’t forget to consider what shirt best accentuates that other female asset.

            The female chest, often affectionately referred to as ‘the girls’ by the bold comical girls in chick flick’s and comedy shows. Our ‘girls’ can be the source of much discomfort for females. Literally. As I mentioned earlier when we first start growing this sign of true womanhood many of us are very excited, then comes the day when we go with our moms to buy our first bra. It’s exciting, magical even, but then the enchantment wears of and you realize that you’re stuck having to wear these things for the rest of your life. But it is not entirely horrible; bras can be an asset to those of us trying to improve our appearance.

            Like with our hips, bigger is usually considered better when it comes to our ‘girls’ (especially if we are trying to attract a mate) which can leave those of us with smaller chests feeling deficient. This is where the bra comes in. With today’s technology and inventiveness there are now many different types of bras on the market, push up and padded bras can make even the most modest chests look like they were copy and pasted from Dolly Parton.

Being in the small chest camp I cannot say that I have any kind of personal experience with the other side of the problem, but I can certainly understand how girls who are very well endowed might feel uncomfortable with their size. Don’t worry there’s a bra for you too. It’s called the sports bra, and if you haven’t tried it you should.

A hundred years ago a woman with either of these problems would have had to just make do the best she could with whatever bras she could get her hands on, but nowadays we have something that any woman who truly wishes to change herself may take advantage of. Breast enhancements and reductions, though expensive, can solve all of your chest problems making your ‘girls’ exactly the perfect size.

Likewise a few dozen years ago if you didn’t like what you saw in the mirror you could disguise it with layers of foundation, blush, lipstick, and mascara, that’s right voluptuous eyelashes are within your reach. If need be you can even where fakes! But there is only so much makeup can do for your oddly shaped nose. Now before you get too depressed about this unfortunate reality, remember, I said that this was a few decades ago. These days there is this magical process that any girl can go through to make her facial features exactly what she wants, it’s called plastic surgery. Plastic surgery can make even your Cinderella fantasy come true, as long as you don’t mind a surgeon for a fairy godmother and a knife for a magic wand.

The bottom line ladies, is that we no longer have to settle for the bodies we were born with. We can now pinch, prod, mangle and squish ourselves into any shape we want. We are the new play dough