Chelsea Swan

Girlhood written in 1869 is an etiquette guide written for girls in the mid-Victorian period. It’s interesting to read more about the idealisation of “Girlhood” and how girls were encouraged to play up to these ideals, following rules and characteristics which would help them be ‘Good’. Girlhood was a preparatory time for womanhood. I think this book shows the strict censure that is the legacy we now live with. That to be talented in anything other than womanly duties was to be judged and found wanting, to be prideful, to have fun, to smile, were sins against what one should be. Girls were to be punished for letting their mind wander….to be punished to think, to dream, to exercise the mental powers left wanting. To be chided for thinking, for having even that small amount of autonomy. You were filled with little guilts and shamefulness overwhelmed any sense of the real self. Does it not still. Does not every woman feel judged for every action, word, appearance, as we have been trained to judge others. Is it not exhausting. Can it not take up the whole day if you let it? Make up, eating right, counting calories, going to the gym, saying the right thing, doing the right thing, smiling, constant thoughts or what ought to be, how to put across the correct persona, analysing the situation, the audience, always mindful, always aware, every second of every day, and then if you have kids, a husband, a family to fit in with, a status to protect, a requirement that if you do not fit in it could mean an inability to survive, and then when the day is over you may watch television, get re-trained, train your children, oh but then where is the time for truth and creativity. You must be willing to be a destroyer, a self-hater, a failure in 1000 ways, in order to be a female artist and to speak from a position of truth. I am sure you could make pretty pictures and make money at it and fit in and treat art as a job, a role, but that is not truth, it is not honesty, it is the system, do do do repeat.