Quotes About Girlhood

Across much of the developing world, by the time she is 12, a girl is tending house, cooking, cleaning. She eats what's left after the men and boys have eaten; she is less likely to be vaccinated, to see a doctor, to attend school.

Her rage flopped awkwardly away like a duck. She felt as she had when her cold, fierce parents had at last grown sick and old, stick-boned and saggy, protected by infirmity the way cuteness protected a baby, or should, it should protect a baby, and she had been left with her rage--vestigial, girlhood rage--inappropriate and intact. She would hug her parents good-bye, the gentle, emptied sacks of them, and think Where did you go?

The thought that, insignificant as she was, she yet might do some good, made her very careful of her acts and words, and so anxious to keep head contented and face happy, that she forgot her clothes, and made others do the same. She did not know it, but that good old fashion of simplicity made the plain gowns pretty, and the grace of unconsciousness beautified their little wearer with the charm that makes girlhood sweetest to those who truly love and reverence it.

Why is it so important for us to listen to girls? Because a girl's voice may be the most valuable and most threatened resource she has.

It was a very cool thing to be a smart girl, as opposed to some other, different kind. And I think that made a great deal of difference to me growing up and in my life afterward.

I had a great family. Nobody ever told me that I should stop raising my hand in class or that I should become - as a girl, that I should somehow become less confident.

It's just fun just being a girl.

People think I'm girlish and flippant, but I was an honours student. I was voted Girl Most Likely To Succeed at North Mesquite High in Texas. My best subject was science. I won a scholarship.

The story doesn't begin with grown women being massacred in the workplace or in the press. It begins with innocent little girls who become convinced, for whatever reason, that the girl within them isn't good enough.

An eleven-year-old girl is many things, but she is not stupid.

This was it. This was what she had longed for throughout the lonely years of her girlhood. Suddenly she felt lonelier than she had ever felt. And so excited she could barely breathe, Tresham stepped up beside her, drew her arm through his again, set his free hand lightly over hers, and said not a word. She had never loved him more.

I was not a girly girl. I was a tomboy.

I was kind of a tomboy.

Having lost the training and rites that prepare a girl for becoming truly queenly, a mature woman, we have instead beauty-queen contests for five-year-olds.

Part of the racialized sexism wants everyone to think that a 15-year old Mexican is not a girl, she's a woman. We know she's a girl. We can never emphasize this enough, because this is the fate of colored girls globally right now: the denial of their girlhood, the denial of their childhood, and the constant state of risk and danger they are living in.

I was still mourning- clinging to the broken heart of girlhood, to broken connections. When that mourning ceased I was able to love again.

I had absolute freedom to create things on my own and in silence. No rush, the artificial rush by media. Certainly no rush to grow up. We had plenty of boyhood, plenty of girlhood.

Scout, I´m telling you for the last time, shut your trap or go home - I declare to the Lord you´re gettin´ more like a girl every day!" With that, I had no option but to join them.

As a young girl, there were the obvious messages about what girls could and couldn't achieve. And to compound the limitations I felt being leveled upon me, I realized at the age of nine, that I was gay.

Not having a mum is massive for a young girl really.

I want to encourage other young girls not to grow up too soon. Just enjoy the now.

In fact I was slightly badly behaved at school and got in trouble. I would get a bee in my bonnet about something I thought wasn't right, and I would ape about too, to make everybody laugh. That was my way through my girls' school, because I wasn't very academic.

Sometime the shittiest, most oppressive thing about being a girl is how good you're supposed to be all the time. And sometime that feeling of an enforced, expected goodness can come from feminism. The thing about being a poet, an artist, a writer is you can't be good. You shouldn't have to be good. You should, for the sake of your art, your soul, and your life go through significant periods of time when you are defying many notions of goodness.

When you're a little girl, living your dreams, even tiny little stages in someone's backyard are amazing.