My church regularly sponsors a summer camp for teenage girls. The purpose of this camp is to inspire young women to think about good choices and to recognize their value as young women. For most girls, this camp is a positive experience, an opportunity to stay up all night with friends and do whatever girls do when they get together outside of the eyesight and arms’ reach of their parents. It’s fun to see these girls come back from camp, faces graced with sly smiles and eyes speaking of secret fun known only to one another.
Yes, Girls’ Camp is usually a good thing. But not always.
This year I was invited to an evening dinner at Girls’ Camp. After driving a couple of hours, I arrived at a beautiful cabin overlooking a large pristine lake, surrounded on all sides by aspens and pines. The scene was truly picturesque, like something out of a landscape painting or a travel brochure.
As I stepped out of my CRV, I noticed the girls were wearing what appeared to be prom dresses. Approaching one of the leaders, a woman I’d met only once before, I asked why the girls were dressed up. She said it was part of the theme of the camp: after giving each of the girls the same amount of money, they all went to a thrift store where they purchased old prom dresses to wear for the evening gala. Fun, right!
It didn’t look like fun. It looked like a reality show gone bad, very bad.
I asked this woman why some of the girls weren’t so dressed up. She just shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t want to participate.” Then she slipped off to mingle with a group of very thin, very pretty teenage girls.
Later in the evening, I sat visiting with a woman I knew, herself a talented musician, and I asked my question again. She looked at me for a moment and said, “Well, you don’t have a lot of choice if you’re not a size five.”
I was stunned. In a setting created for the sole purpose of reinforcing a young woman’s positive self image, some brainiac had managed to find a way to humiliate those without the perfect shape.
Like most acts of humiliation, I don’t imagine this one was intentional. Instead, it probably occurred—I hope—due to a lack of foresight rather than any real maliciousness. But malicious or not, I sat there, surrounded on all sides by real natural beauty, and watched as the girls moved and mingled in two separate but very distinct circles—one for those who managed to fit into pretty dresses and another for those that had to just make do.
And while the humiliation may not have been intentional, I doubt very seriously if it hurt any less.
*
My father was not a stable provider. There were times, even long periods of time, during my life that he failed to provide anything of value to my brother and I. Looking back, I don’t think those years were intentional. I think he was just a man with a problem he didn’t know how to fix.
Unfortunately, one of those times occurred when I was in high school. My high school had a dress code; this code required students wear slacks and dress shirts as opposed to jeans and t-shirts. Of course, such clothes cost money and if the money is not there…
At one point in my junior year, I owned no pants that didn’t have holes worn in the seat or the knees. I owned no shirts that weren’t falling apart at the seems. Since it was just my brother and I, we tried to repair the clothes as best we could, but often we just made a bad situation worse. Even years later, I recall the humiliation of being asked to leave school because my slacks were so worn out that my underwear was showing through the seat.
Another incident: my cousin, a pretty, popular young woman who studied ballet, was a year younger than I. Her family owned an electrical repair business and, as a result, were quite wealthy. One day, while passing between classes, I spotted her talking to a group of her friends, several other attractive and popular young women.
I don’t what I was thinking or expected. Maybe I was being a rebel; more likely I was looking for any kind of acceptance. As I approached I caught her eye and said hey.
All conversation stopped. She stared at me for a moment, then looked away. And after a moment, the group moved away from me and as they passed, I heard one girl ask my cousin, “Do you know him?”
She didn’t answer.
*
I survived high school and those young women who couldn’t find the perfect size five dress will survive Girls’ Camp. There will be tears, to be sure, and on some days—even years from now—the memories of this moment will still sting and burn. But they will survive.
Yet, there is a tragedy and it has nothing to do with dress sizes. It has to do with what could have been. It has to do with the fact that we only have a few opportunities to teach these girls before they’re off and running into an often cruel and terrible world, and then our moment to teach them is gone forever. What, then, is the most important lesson we can give them?
I doubt that it has to do with how to look good in a prom dress.
As I drove home in the dark, I realized Girls’ Camp was a success, for the lessons taught that night will not be forgotten any time soon.
In the last 15+ years some things about Girls’ Camp have changed while others are still the same. Prom dresses at camp? What do prom dress have to do with camp certification? Popular girls verus the unpopular girls? The tradition continues.
Boy, did this post bring back long buried memories of some of my own personal humiliations growing up with a emotionally challenged single parent!