Brave girls
After last week’s revelations about the Japanese man who donned a wetsuit in the middle of the tsunami’s destruction to swim out and rescue is wife and mother, I’ve been thinking a lot about bravery.
Bravery is experienced almost universally across cultures. In most, it’s a highly gendered characteristic, celebrated chiefly as a sign of masculinity. It’s an outward show of virility and potential success. Most cultures distinguish between risk-taking and bravery although often reward them in the same way when done successfully.
Though this post isn’t about bravery in general, it’s an observation that unlike in the US - where bravery is embraced and rewarded in the same way for men and women alike, in the UK, bravery is a strictly male thing. Women and girls are actively discouraged (it seems) from being brave. This bothers me.
Two weeks ago, I spent my Sunday with a wonderful new friend, 6 year-old Maddy, and her brother and father, standing by the side of a road handing out water bottles to bike racers in the Wally Gimber. Having 3 brothers and awesome parents, I’m pretty sure Maddy is going to grow up to be an amazing girl, full of gumption and gall, maybe become a bike racer like her dad, or a successful attorney or writer or astronaut. Mostly because it’s quite difficult to impart wisdom to boys about being brave (as is their cultural rite as boys in England) without some of it rubbing off on her.
Encouraging bravery is necessary if you’re trying to promote self-confidence because it’s all about believing in yourself, regardless the outcome.
I don’t have too many gripes about English culture, mostly just amused observations about its quirks. But the English discouragement of female bravery is fundamentally horrible. It turns us into a culture of co-dependent, self-depricating, shy and (sadly) often un-interesting individuals who would rather be glamour models than business women. (I pray this isn’t the fate of little Maddy).
Female bravery is looked down upon because it means standing out from the crowd. (Humiliation is fine if it happens en masse, but unbearable if it happens to you all alone). English women like to make mistakes in large groups (note the monstrous occasion that is the English “hen-do”), and they don’t mind looking the fool, but looking the fool in the promotion of one’s personal or professional success means looking ambitious (and there is little less English than appearing to try hard). Bravery requires enthusiasm and caring. The English might be good-humoured, but (see my previous point), enthusiasm and keen-ness is hard to swallow for a culture that invented “cool” (not caring).
That being said, I know a few amazing, keen, very brave English women. I raced with and against some of them yesterday.
England needs brave girls. It needs to promote a culture of bravery, regardless of gender. Bravery breeds intelligence, self-confidence, independence and ambition. Where are our role models who can displace the glamour models? I’ll puke if I see another female olympic athlete pose nude for some boy mag. Don’t turn our bravery into just another way of producing a beautiful body. Acts of bravery can be small. They can mean letting us make mistakes. Let us learn how to fail, for failure (as most the big British business minds will tell you) is the the currency of success. Let us not be perfect, for perfection sows the seeds of doubt. Let us race against the boys. Let us do things alone. Let us not compromise ourselves or what we believe in. Let us not be afraid our bravery will signal some sort of un-femininity.
In our marketing, can we learn to celebrate our desire to be brave? English girls are in shackles, wanting to be brave, but up against a culture which doesn’t let them. Which brand is going to realise this first?
