The New Girl

A second factor was the production of a more assertive generation of middle-class girls who saw wider horizons for themselves. 

Sally Mitchell has contended that the introduction of the school uniform promoted among young girls a liberating sense of girlhood  

I wonder, however, whether late-twentieth-century schoolgirls joy in getting rid of school uniforms when they leave adolescence comes anywhere close to the tum-of-the-century girl s dramatic liberation when she first dressed in a costume distinctly her own, which marked her as neither child nor woman, had pockets, made it possible to run and climb, and let her add a boy-style shirt and tie.74 

Some of the content was quite subversive. For example, an issue of the Girl s Realm of 1914 carried an article, The Woman of the Future, which expounded at length that One of the greatest social crimes that has ever been committed was man s enslavement of woman. The author anticipated women s future role  

There was scientific evidence that could be used against women s advancement, especially the theory of evolution. For example, the sociologist Herbert Spencer had concluded that the difference between the sexes could best be understood in terms of a somewhat earlier-arrest of individual evolution in women than men. 79 In fact, many scientists of the time had discovered proof in their research of women s intellectual inadequacies 80 and, of particular importance, Charles Darwin himself had found scientific evidence of female inferiority It is generally admitted that with women the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization. 81 

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When we were lined up in front of the concert hall yesterday, Shasta, the new girl I told you about from... 

Mitchell, S. (1995). The New Girl Girls Culture in England, 1880-1915. Columbia University Press, New York, p. 89. 

Her family moved and she was in a new school. Some kids invited her to a party, and once the party started, she saw the lines of white powder on the shiny mirror. She wanted to fit in she hated being the new girl. She wanted these people to like her. So she tried it. 

A year later in 1942, the major governing body for African-American tennis tournaments—the American Tennis Association (ATA)—sponsored the New York Girls Singles Championship at Althea s club. With her aggressive and dominating style of play, she won the tide easily. It was her (3 0) first of what was to be many victories, on and off the court. 

In juvenile court T.L.O. s attorney argued that the search hy the vice principal had violated the girl s privacy under the Fourth Amendment. However, while the court did agree that the Fourth Amendment did apply to searches in schools, the search of T.L.O. s purse met the standard of being reasonable under the circumstances. The appeals court also upheld the search, but the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed the decision, calling the search unreasonable. The case then went to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

A provocative, nontechnical article on the ability to choose, with the aid of a flow cytometer, the sex of our children was written by L Belkin ( Getting the Girl in The New York Times Magazine, July 25, 1999, pp 26-55). Results from a clinic that sells this technique to prospective parents have been reported by Fugger EF, Black SH, Keyvanfar K, Schulman JD (1998). Births of normal daughters after MicroSort sperm separation and intrauterine insemination, in-vitro fertilization, or intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Hum. Reprod. 13 2367 2370. 

Figure 4.4 "The Radium Girls" were women in 1920s New Jersey who painted watch faces with radium, an element that glows in the dark. Because the women were in constant contact with the radioactive element, they experienced numerous health problems years later. Some even died because of radiation poisoning.

You are one of the very luckiest of people—to be growing up in the Age of Science. For a long while, boys and girls used to say, I wish I were a pioneer, or I wish there were something left to discover. Nowadays, it is perfectly clear that science offers a great variety of new things to discover and that many of the new pioneers will be scientists. 

In another of the student magazines, The Mermaid, an account is given in 1909-1910 of the new woman chemistry student The modern Chemistry Girl in the smart, brand-new Lab is, you may be sure, quite up-to-date, and, if the truth be known, a source of perpetual worry to most of the rather dull men, who have uneasy visions of their names on the terminal lists preceded by those of a whole string of young girls. 91... 

Up until 1914, women had entered university as part of the New Woman movement.2 Marriage and child-raising were still the preference of the majority, while the unmarried could still be ladies of leisure. A career for a middle-class girl as a necessity was a new dimension. An incredibly blunt article in 1915 by The Editor of The Girl s Realm laid out the new reality ... 

BEYOND THE LABORATORY a deathly hush fell. Harford went away to assemble a team of laborers, the hired girls disappeared into the village, and Mrs. Gill and her new familiar, Annie, retreated to her cottage to prepare for the annual fair held at the end of June in honor of bookish St. Edelburga. As for Sarah, at first I had no idea what had happened to her except that she certainly never came near me. 

In multiple-child families, it is the arrival of the second child that often helps break the magical hold of child number one, who can experience a significant loss as maternal attention necessarily shifts to care for the new brother or sister. Without benefit of an additional child, however, a few mother/only child relationships can continue primarily attached throughout the boy s or girl s growing up. The special quality of the relationship remains unrivaled by the mother s husband or by significant relationships the older... 

Values change as the boy or girl becomes more drawn to ideals, attitudes, and tastes defined in opposition to the adult world, distinguishing the new counterculture of the teenager from the old-fashioned culture of the parents. 

Where possible, give the child some sense of choice in designing separate living conditions with each parent in order to help the boy or girl reassert some sense of control in each of the new homes. 

Somewhere between the ages of nine and thirteen, a boy or girl usually declares independence from childhood. For adolescent growth to begin, the traditional boundaries that defined and confined the child must to a degree be broken in order to create freedom to grow. In words and actions, the adolescent rejects the old identity for the new, by communicating ... 

Do introduce yourself to the secretary, nurses, and physicians. Give away business cards and let the office know they can contact you if they have any questions. People always want to help the —new" guy or girl in the office. Make sure you tell everyone that you re —new". I was a —new" sales rep for the first year in my territory. 

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