I can’t think of even one Nancy Drew mystery I ever read cover to cover, and I know a tried to read a few as a child. I was an avid reader of The Hardy Boys even before Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy, but I found Nancy (even the TV version) too girly. A funny assessment really because Nancy Drew was the kind of girl I would still like to be, would like my daughter to grow up to be. Not the modern version but the pre-sixties model. She may have worn twin sets and sensible shoes, but she rarely, probably never, doubted herself or asked for advice or let her boyfriend, Ned, get in the way of solving the mystery. She was self-reliant, confident and free from the need to inspect her inner self. And this last bit is a good thing you might be asking yourself right now (especially if you are female). My answer is a resounding YES. The reason being that women today, young and old, are not only encouraged to introspection: they are expected to inspect their inner and outer selves to the point of inertia and find themselves lacking whenever possible.

So what brought this up? A few things. First there was a review in the Edmonton Journal bemoaning the new Nancy Drew movie. Apparently, the mystery solving machine teen has been burdened with self-esteem issues. Next I was browsing the month’s Oprah (because it is great blogging fodder) and discovered that the theme of the month is how to lose your inhibitions and gain confidence in yourself. Finally, I happened across a blog entry written by a woman who, with her children, is visiting her mother for the summer and lamenting the fact that their life long issues still have the power to render her childlike and doubting herself. The combined effect of these things got me thinking about self-esteem and particularly about the self-esteem of the women, and girls, I know. And, of course, it got me thinking about myself. Especially myself of late.

Let me digress a moment, and I swear there is a point to this, someone posted a link to a CNN article on the board this morning about the horrific treatment of widows in India. It has been making the news quite a bit lately because the widow of John Lennon, Yoko One, has taken up their cause and is trying to push some widow amendment or other through the United Nations. A pointless gesture that will amount to lip service, but that is another digression for another day. I was not a bit surprised by the article’s contents but the whole caste system in India and the appalling way women and children are treated there should not surprise anyone with an double X set of chromosomes because women, as Ms. Ono once so aptly put it, are still “the niggers of the world”. Which leads me back to my original line of thought on the whole self-esteem thing. When do women lose their self-esteem? Or did we ever really have any as a gender? Are we raised and then socialized to see ourselves as inadequate and in constant need of outside tweaking and propping by a world that needs to hold us back in our place?

It doesn’t take more than a quick perusal of the magazine rack at the check out of your local grocery to see what is expected of women. There are magazines selling information on every topic the 21st century woman needs to know, and she needs to know a lot. How to stay young and beautiful. How to cook quick nutritious meals when you are short on time because you had to stay late at the office (or are pulling the second shift at Walmart). How to be beautiful, sexy and a vixen in bed even if you are over 40. How to decorate and organize yourself, your home and your life. And if you are not sure what these magazines are getting at, you can always read about those who put these principles to practice in the latest issue of People or US.  Even though most self-confident of our gender are still appraised first by their packaging and then by their contents. What is that?  You object? Aren’t men today beginning to be judged the same way at times?  Aren’t they subtly plied with similar notions in the handful of magazines aimed at them. Well, at times they are, I guess, but how is that progress? Dragging new victims into the quagmire doesn’t make it less of a muddy obstruction.

Once upon a time I was an insecure, overweight teen who thought that all my problems would be solved if I were thin and could wear the same clothes as my thin friends and my thinner sister. Teachers would like me. Boys would like me. I would be popular. But the truth was that my thin friends and sisters were prisoners. They were just as insecure about everything that I was, but they had the added burden of maintaining an exterior that solved no problems for them and may have created new ones. Teachers didn’t like me much because I didn’t buy into their enthusiastic nonsense. I questioned everything they said and did so in that rather pointed, but earnest, manner that irritates like the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. Boys did like me but I deliberately held them at arms length. And, according to an old dear friend, I could have been popular, but I chose not to be. Something that is more clear to me now than at the time she made the observation about ten or twelve years ago. But was it really a matter of a lack of self-esteem on my part? Was it really me or the round hole the world gave me to inhabit. I wouldn’t say that I never have moments of doubt at this point in my life. My late husband’s illness, years of caregiving and surviving and then being widowed, rattled my foundation at many different points. Instead of stopping me though they had the curious effect of making me more determined to reclaim my confident, carefree self because long ago there was a little girl who really was free of issues and believed that there was nothing she couldn’t do or wasn’t entitled to. I don’t know if I am full circle yet, but I do know I am closer, much closer, to who I am and where I belong than I have been at any other point in my life.

I am hardly the only woman who didn’t come into her own until adulthood and then only after a series of soul battering hard knocks. And I would like to be able to say that most, if not all, women eventually reach an epiphany that allows them to say, “Fuck it” to the world and live their lives without worrying about what “they” think or what “they” might be saying, but, sadly, I know that this is not the case. Why? Do we have Oprah and self-help books to thank for this? Or our mothers who don’t know any better and continue to run that same childhood reel on us whenever we phone or visit them? Is it a society? The warped world view that teaches our little girls to define themselves by the boys who like them,  or 20 year olds that it is nearly past time to begin physical self-preservation. Are we still being victimized as  mature women (I think that  mature is defined as past 30 but since 40 became the new 30 I am no longer sure of that) when we are told that the only way to avoid complete irrelevance is to cryo-freeze ourselves via botoxification. Are we victims when we listen? Where is our self-esteem.

I began teaching in the public school system around the time that it was popular to “teach” self-esteem. There was the completely misguided theory at the time that self-esteem was something that could be given to a child through constant meaningless praise. Any teacher can tell you that children see through shallow praise quite quickly and that it is only through accomplishments and personal success that students gain confidence in themselves and their new skills  and that eventually this translates to other areas of their lives. 

To tell you the absolute truth, I am beginning to suspect that self-esteem is not a real thing at all. Perhaps Dr. Phil made it up when he was still working the Oprah Show. I am sorry that Nancy Drew is its latest victim though. She was a doer who gained confidence through doing what she loved and helping people in the process. She relied on her intelligence and ingenuity. She wasn’t interested in fitting into any pre-cast molds. Poor Nancy. There is a lesson there, but probably not the one that the filmmakers intended.