"Starving Daughters"

A starving daughter lies at the center of each perfect girl. The face we show to the world is one of beauty, maturity, determination, strength, willpower, and ultimately, accomplishment. But beneath the facade is a daughter--starving for attention and recognition, starving to justify her own existence.

The starving daughter within annoys us, slows us down, embarrasses us. She is the one who doubts our ability to handle a full-time job and full-time school. She gets scared, lonely, homesick. She drinks too much, cries too loud, is nostalgic and sappy. When neglected, she seeks comfort in cookies, coffee ice cream, warm bread--transgressions that make the perfect girl in us angry.

The starving daughter emerges in midnight confessions, a best friend's sudden tears, a suitemate buried in mountains of covers, shades drawn, eating ice cream in the middle of the day, and watching Buffy reruns in the dark.

Starving daughters are full of self-doubt. We don't want to worry so much about making other people happy but feel like we can never say thank you enough times, never show enough humility, never help enough, never feel enough shame. We feel guilty. We fear conflict. We are dramatic, sensitive, injured easily. We are clinging to all kinds of attachments that, in our minds, we know we should let go of, but in our bodies, we feel incapable of relinquishing. We feel self-pitying, sad, even depressed.

We are tired of trying so hard all the time. We feel like giving up. We feel hopeless. We want love, acceptance, happy endings, and rest. We wish that we had faith, that we weren't ruled by our heads and could live in our hearts more often. We want to have daughters--little girls who will love us unconditionally. We steal small things, such as candy bars and bras--that make us feel special for just a moment. We try to fill the black holes inside of us with forbidden foods. We never feel full. We always feel cold. We starve for a god.

We don't like to talk about this part of ourselves. Our whole lives, we have received so much affirmation for the perfect part that the starving-daughter part feels like and evil twin. Sometimes we can even convince ourselves that the sadness, self-doubts, and hunger don't exist, that we like to be this busy, that we like to eat small, unfulfilling portions or work out constantly.

For a while . . . but then the phone doesn't ring when we want it to or we get passed over for a job or a fellowship. Then the starving daughter makes herself known like an explosion. We collapse from exhaustion, or pick a fight with our boyfriends or families, or sob in the locked bathroom stall. Some girls experience their deep sadness in going on binges (food or alcohol), sleeping all day, sleeping around, buying lots of clothes they don't need, ignoring professional or relational opportunities, dropping out of the race altogether. Some of my best friends have retreated inside themselves in this way, refused help, wasted away, or cloaked themselves in excess weight. We get mono and can't move for weeks. We hate losing control. We hate being "wimps". We fight these breakdowns, but the starving daughter emerges, young and scared and sick of our shit.

Young woman struggle with this duality. The perfect girl in each drives forward, the starving daughter digs in her heels. The perfect girl wants excellence, the starving daughter calm and nurturance. The perfect girl takes on the world, the starving daughter shrinks from it. It is a power struggle between two forces, and at the center, almost every time, is an innocent body.

Courtney E. Martin "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters"