Girlhood
GIRLHOOD
TEENS AROUND THE WORLD IN THEIR OWN VOICES
MASUMA AHUJA
Algonquin 2021
For my parents, who always taught me that I could be any type of girl I wanted to be.
Contents
Introduction
Alejandra, 17. Buenos Aires, Argentina
Amiya, 14. London, United Kingdom
Anna, 14. Sydney, Australia
Ayaulym, 19. Almaty, Kazakhstan
Chanleakna, 16. Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Melbourne, Australia
Chen Xi, 16. Singapore
Claudie, 13. Pango Village, Vanuatu
Desireé, 15. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Diza, 14. Mumbai, India
Emilly, 18. São Paolo, Brazil
Emma, 16. A Small Village by the Sea, Ireland
Favour, 13. Minna, Nigeria
Halima, 17. Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan
Jocelyne, 19. Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Luciana, 16. Guatemala City, Guatemala
Mandisa, 18. Durban, South Africa
Marta, 14. Milan, Italy
Merisena, 13. Cité Soleil, Haiti
Miriam, 16. Sundsvall, Sweden
Naya, 16. Berlin, Germany, and Damascus, Syria
Raksa, 19. Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Ruksar, 17. Lucknow, India
Ruoxiao, 18. Kunming, Yunnan, China, and the United Kingdom
Ruqaya, 16. Baghdad, Iraq
Sattigul, 16. Ulaankhus, Mongolia
Shanai, 18. Bayonne, New Jersey, United States of America
Sofia, 18. Panama City, Panama
Sophie, 17. St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America
Varvara, 18. Saransk, Russia
Viona, 15. Kieni, Kenya
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Author
Introduction
Chen Xi stays up all night studying for a test. Miriam has butterflies in her stomach every time she talks to her crush. Merisena worries about her father getting hurt when he leaves for work. This is what girlhood looks like around the world.
I asked thirty girls whose lives span twenty-seven countries to share diary entries and a few photos with us. I wanted to see their world through their eyes, and in their own words.
These are their stories about what it looks like to be a teenage girl moving through ordinary life in different contexts and circumstances, often at the edge of the headlines we read in the news. What does it mean to grow up in a family that had to flee a war? What do you dream of when you grow up in poverty? What is it like to raise a child as a teen mom? To deal with mental illness or eating disorders? What does it mean to navigate a crush or a breakup with your boyfriend or girlfriend? To balance friendship and fun with endless hours of homework and pressure to achieve? To figure out who you are and how to be a girl and a woman in our world, in the age of Instagram and Boko Haram?
If you go by the numbers from 2015 to 2018, this is what a portrait of girlhood around the world looks like:
• One in five girls around the world marries before the age of 18.1 In fact, every single day, 41,000 girls under the age of 18 marry.2
• Every year, an estimated 16 million girls between the ages of 15 and 19 give birth.3
• About 130 million girls between the ages of 6 and 17 are not in school. Their parents might need them to work, they might be living in a place where it’s not safe to go to school because of violence, or they might be married or be mothers who are expected to stay home and take care of the family instead of going to school.4
These facts paint a dark and dire picture, showing how the simple fact of being a girl can be political, and the many ways in which girls are silenced or policed. They highlight the prevalence of violence, repression, or abuse that girls face just because they are girls; laws that limit girls’ rights; and cultures that dictate how girls are allowed to dress, act, or live.
For example, in India and China, there are millions of “missing girls”—female fetuses are sometimes aborted because boys are preferred, or girls are neglected because families give more attention and resources to boys. In Afghanistan, millions of girls are out of school because of ongoing conflict, as schools have been bombed and burned, teachers abducted and attacked. In parts of Nigeria, girls have been abducted while going to school. Until 2020, in Tanzania, Equatorial Guinea, and Sierra Leone—all countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which has the highest rate of adolescent pregnancy—girls were banned by law from going to school after they had children. These conditions aren’t limited to just Africa and Asia. In the United States, between 2010 and 2018, about 250,000 children under the age of 18 married; some were as young as 12 years old, and most of them were girls. Since 2016, states have started passing laws to ban child marriage, but many still do not have such laws on the books.5
There are other important ways in which girls around the world are restricted. Cultures keep them off sports fields, and communities dissuade them from pursuing education and ambitious dreams.
These facts define the circumstances within which girls live, but beyond these headlines and circumstances, we rarely hear from girls themselves about what life is like for them.
We do get to see, on the other end of the spectrum, pieces of life from influencers—filtered updates, curated posts, life in snippets. Not the ordinary, humdrum stuff that fills most people’s days but never makes their feeds.
I wanted to know: What does a girl growing up in Iraq dream of? What does a girl in New York or Nigeria stay up nights thinking about? How would the story of girlhood be told if girls were the ones to write it?
The only way to find out, of course, was to ask girls themselves. So that is what I did.
This question led to a series I wrote for the Washington Post’s The Lily, which featured twelve girls from ten different countries. This book was born from that series.
I gave each girl instructions for writing diary entries, but then I encouraged them to ignore those instructions and follow their instincts. I wanted to know what was on their minds, how they were spending their days, and how they were feeling.
Some girls had never written a diary entry before. Some girls chose instead to message me at the end of every day with updates. And others shared photos of journals they’d been keeping since childhood.
Because I asked for written entries, I could only include girls who have learned how to write and are comfortable with words. And these pages only feature girls who were able to share and who felt safe sharing their stories. How much and what you will read about each girl’s life was up to her. Each girl decided what to share with us, and how she would like to be represented. While the diary entries have been lightly edited for length and clarity, and some have been translated from their original language, they are all the work of the girls I interviewed.
To accompany each girl’s diary entries, I have researched and written about the context of her life—about her community, her circumstances, the themes she explores, or the country in which she lives—to help you better understand the slice of life that each girl shares with us.
This book could not be comprehensive—there are more than a billion girls in the world, each with her own voice and her own story, and this is not an atlas of girlhood, after all—but I hope it is representative of a vast range of girls’ experiences.
Despite the differences of where they live, there is so much of life that looks the same across latitudes and longitudes, across borders and oceans: the daily moments of worrying about homework or laughing with friends, par
ents who just don’t understand them, and plotting big dreams for the future. The girls explore what it’s like to feel like an outsider, to find friends and communities who understand them, to experience leaving home, and the ways in which they’re trying to make their plans and dreams come true. I hope the range of stories will help you see the different ways in which girls are navigating similar challenges as they begin to make sense of themselves and the world.
As I put this book together, I thought often about the only experience of girlhood that I am intimately familiar with: my own. My teenage years were split across three continents, and I rarely encountered stories like mine in popular culture. I read a lot growing up, but there were so few books about girls whose lives looked anything like mine. I caught glimpses in places, but they were rare. So I spent many of my teenage years explaining my other homes to people who often had only a few cultural references or stereotypes—America is like Friends and the Baby-Sitters Club, and India is the land of snake charmers. But in reality, life was so much more than any of these stereotypes or single stories.
In putting together this book, I found echoes of the emotions and types of experiences of my own teenage years. While the specifics of each life are different—and make for colorful and rich stories—many of the themes that teenage girls experience and explore are similar: a longing for the adventures ahead, dreams burning big and bright, and the angst and growing pains of figuring out their own place in the world.
I hope that as you read these stories and are transported around the globe, you find glimpses of yourself in unexpected corners, too. ◊
Alejandra
17 years old
Buenos Aires, Argentina
What do you want to do when you grow up?
I want to travel, to pursue the career that I am going to study. At this moment I am deciding whether to choose medicine with specialization in traumatology [a branch of medicine that focuses on injuries after trauma, such as violence or accidents] or odontology [a branch of medicine like dentistry, which is the study of teeth].
How do you like to spend your time when you’re not in school?
I like to move, go to the field, go for a walk, run, ride a bike, go to a friend’s house or have a friend come over to my place, listen to music in my room, play with my brothers. Or I’ll spend some time with my mother and father, either go shopping or go to the square [a public space in the city] with my family for a while.
I love doing sports; I like all of them. I do not like being locked up at home, not that I have anything against my family, but I feel suffocated and I need to go for a walk in the neighborhood at least.
Are there any particular activities that you enjoy?
I train [for soccer] 2 or 3 times a week and we have tournaments on weekends. I have also been doing photography courses for two years.
Tell us about your friends.
I am a very social person; I have friends everywhere. Real friends, I do not really have many. I’ve had experiences where I enjoyed individual people, but in the end they did not turn out to be who I thought they were. But it’s a good part of the life experience. I know that I have people to tell if something happens to me. I know I’m not alone.
But the concept of a best friend doesn’t apply. Maybe because I still haven’t met someone like that. I’m young, soon I’ll be 18, and I know that many people are waiting for me to meet them.
“I would love to be able to play football wherever I am,” Alejandra says, “My dream is to travel with a camera and a ball.”
She’s grown up in a country that’s known for its soccer team—the men’s team has won the World Cup twice. In fact, you can find Argentinean soccer fans in countries across the globe, in their blue-and-white striped jerseys, cheering for Argentine players Lionel Messi or Diego Maradona, two of the world’s most famous footballers (as they’re called outside the United States).
But what is it like to be a girl, and a soccer player, in a country with such vibrant soccer fandom and culture? Alejandra’s life in Buenos Aires gives us a peak into this world. She grew up watching boys and men playing soccer, and eventually, with a little fear and a lot of encouragement from her family, she decided to give the sport a try too.
Alejandra writes about the sisterhood and friendship she’s found on the team. She writes about how her teammates support each other on the field and off, the friendship she’s found with her brother and in her family, and the ways in which she’s longed for a best friend, the kind you see in movies.
Our friendships, especially in our teenage years, can be such a powerful force. They help shape the people we become and the ways in which we understand the world. ◊
Alejandra plays on a girls’ soccer team set up by La Nuestra, or La Nuestra Fútbol Femenino. This group uses soccer to help promote gender equality and fight gender-based violence, and it’s one of many larger efforts across the country. As recently as June 2019, thousands of women in Argentina organized and took to the streets to protest the high rate of violence against women in the country.6
The data on gender-based violence in Argentina is staggering. The rate of femicide (the murder of women and girls because of their gender) is very high, and statistics suggest that one woman is murdered there about every 32 hours.7 In 2017, the country’s Unique Registry for Cases of Violence Against Women documented more than 85,000 reports.8 ◊
Translated from Spanish
April 20
My morning involved house cleaning with my whole family. As I helped my mom, dad, and uncle, I watched the girls play in the women’s lightning tournament* organized by the neighborhood girls on Saturday mornings until 2 p.m. The men’s lightning tournament takes place almost every weekend and runs until midnight or later.
Today I could not participate in the tournament because I did not sign up and because I had to help at home.
In the afternoon, we watched my dad and one of my uncles, who is a goalkeeper, playing in the men’s tournament.
When night came, I went to my friend’s house and bought empanadas, gummies, and chocolate, and decided to go to the terrace to spend part of the night. I haven’t seen her for a long time, and I missed her. I’ve known her for about two years, and I really love her. Since I met her, she has been there when I needed her, and whenever I want to do something, she accompanies me, and I her.
I think that in my 17, almost 18 years, my friendships have been few, but unique. I don’t share the best friend label you give to someone else, at least not so far, maybe because I haven’t found “my best friend.” I think that is like what happens in movies. The friends I have and whom I really consider to be real friends are few. I try to get along well with all the people I know or who are around me, to be friendly and be there when they need me. I like to do it, and the truth is that I do not expect anything in return, but well, there is always someone who will not like you.
So I prefer to enjoy the moment, have no hard feelings, laugh with everyone, listen to those who need it and try to help them. If I need someone to talk to, I know that some people are going to be willing to listen to me, some friends who will always cheer me up, my cousins who are always here to listen to me or accompany me somewhere, but mainly my family.
[There’s] my mom, who I fight or argue with a lot. Since we are very similar in character, we do not like to lose in anything so in fights sometimes it is chaos because neither of us wants to give in . . . [but] our relationship never lacks hugs and apologies. At first I refused to accept the resemblance . . . She is always in a hurry and has a thousand things to do, but when it comes to us there is nothing else; if some neighbor or family friend needs something, she is there. She tries to emit joy throughout her day, starts singing at home; with my little brother, she makes jokes at any moment.
I share great and pleasant conversations with my dad in the car while he takes me to school and then goes to work .
. . we have very different views on many things and sometimes it’s hard to make him understand my reasons but at least he tries. Many times he tells us his stories from the past, and something always makes us laugh, they are often sad, but he always tries to leave us with some lesson.
My older brother . . . since he started college, I almost do not see him anymore. He is studying, or at his girlfriend’s house, or with friends.
We always talk about a million things. Apart from being siblings, we are very good friends, and we have many things in common which makes it twice as interesting each time we talk. We can spend hours and hours talking and the topics of conversation do not end until one of us remembers that we have things to do the next day and we need to sleep. He is always willing to help me however he can, and he listens to me above all. Whenever I tell him something that makes me feel bad, he hugs me.
And my little brother is always there making me laugh or angry, just making me forget about everything else. He is a beautiful beast. Since he learned to stand, everything was revolutionized in my house. Since he learned to walk, he practically does not walk, he runs from when he gets up until he falls asleep. He talks, screams in every moment, and there are things that he says that make me totally surprised. Every day he’s bigger, more awake, and more restless. He likes to go out; all the neighbors know him.
No matter what, he is happy being away from home, he runs behind Pol, our dog, runs with him all over the block, over and over, back and forth, laughing and screaming. Inside the house is the same. Whenever he is with the dog he wants to play or bother him. He is very affectionate, and if he sees you, many times he goes and asks you for a hug, he tells you “I love you” and gives you a kiss.
April 23
After four days of holidays and a weekend, I returned to the routine. I arrived at school, and I found out that the chemistry teacher had resigned. That improved my morning, I did not like to have classes with her at all, not because of the subject, but for how the teacher taught it. We had a new teacher, whom I liked, and I really got a good first impression, so I hope I’m not mistaken.