I think competition has always brought out the worst in me. Some people find competition encourages them to challenge themselves in different ways, but it made me more anxious and less confident.
While some may think every afterschool group for girls is the same, just like girls, we’re all unique in our own ways. Those differences and lack of uniformity (pun intended) are an important part of creating as many different places, for as many different kinds of girls as possible.
All of us have something special to offer girls we work with, and it’s important that each girl can find a space that fits her. GFS is the group I wish I’d had as a child.
Instead, I had competition and uniformity.
While I have no doubt that there are girls who thrive in these environments, I wasn’t one of them. Being part of a competitive, uniformed organisation as a child who was already ‘othered’ damaged my fragile self-esteem.
Before joining the group, I was alone a lot. My mother worked between two and three jobs, my father wasn’t around, and my grandparents were still employed full-time.
I didn’t fit in at school and I didn’t have any relatives my age either. So, when one of the girls I played with in my neighbourhood gave me the idea to join a group for girls run out of her school’s auditorium I was excited.
As an adult, I wish I’d never joined.
In a competitive environment, differences may be attacked instead of celebrated.
While the group was part of a national organisation, because it was a competitive group run out of a specific school instead of an independent location, the group was divided between girls who went to that school and girls who went elsewhere. I went elsewhere.
The other girls, parents and volunteers never let me forget it.
When I was around nine-years-old, my group had an outing helping out at a restaurant. I was having fun taking part until a volunteer (another girl’s mother) came up to me yelling until I ran away crying.
Why was that? Because I was ‘stealing achievements’ from the other children, and I ‘shouldn’t be there’ because I went to a different school. I still remember all of it to this day.
At the time, I thought I’d done something wrong. My grandmother found me outside of the restaurant crying – I had been scared out of the supervised area into a public parking lot in the dark.
I didn’t experience sisterhood, bonding, support or learn any life skills. I didn’t make any lifelong friends or stay in contact with anyone from the group.
In the years that followed, I avoided girls I recognised from the group because of the feelings seeing them brought up.
All that competitive group taught me was that I was different, and I should feel bad for it. I should sit down, be quiet and make space for ‘the right children’ to take the lead.
The girls put out the same competitive hostility. When I first joined, I was anxious every time I came in, because my uniform wasn’t decorated with achievements yet.
I hadn’t won any badges or awards yet, and the children noticed.
The girls acted exactly the way the adults had taught them to – they bragged, they competed, and they made each other feel bad for not earning achievements and reaching goals as quickly as they had.
Those with more achievements were thought of as better, and those with less were less in that space.
So, I’m sure you’re starting to see how competitiveness wasn’t good for a girl like me, but what about uniforms? After all, aren’t they ‘the great equaliser’?
As a disabled fat woman from a low-income background, I have never felt good about myself in a uniform, and they never helped me fit in or feel more equal either.
If anything, uniforms made the appearance-based bullying and insults worse. Not only did uniforms look different on my body, but they left me tremendously uncomfortable.
Uniforms are designed for a specific body-type, and my fat, chronically-ill body wasn’t one of them. Wearing uniforms always made me feel self-conscious and out of place.
While I didn’t feel like I had a choice with my school uniform (which I also hated), I would go out of my way not to wear my uniform for group. Sometimes even going out of my way to hide it so I could pretend it had been lost. I think it’s still hidden in the narrow gap behind my mother’s washing machine.
It’s not as though I had nice clothes or a lot of options to choose from instead of a uniform either. I was made fun of when I wore my casual clothes too.
But if I was going to be made fun of either way, couldn’t I at least be comfortable and wear something that didn’t make me feel like a puzzle piece trying to jam into the wrong spot?
Uniforms are pretty expensive for something you’ll grow out of quickly and won’t wear outside of it’s intended purpose. And I was fat, tall, and constantly sick. Size consistency was impossible.
As I previously mentioned, I grew up in a single-parent household, and because I had to wear uniforms to school too, that’s multiple uniforms and multiple expenses.
So, just like most children from families like mine, my required uniforms were usually second hand.
Did they always fit? No. Did I have another other choice? Also no.
So, how exactly are marginalised girl children meant to overcome the challenges they will face in life when they aren’t even allowed enough comfort or autonomy to build their self-confidence and resilience?
Sameness doesn’t close the gaps of social bias, it makes them bigger.
I don’t believe in sameness. I believe every single girl is different, and every girl should feel comfortable, safe and supported. I can’t go back in time and do things over, but I love that groups like ours exist for girls today, and that I get to work in support of them.
I don’t want to compete against other groups. Whether your organisation is competitive, uniformed, or both, I think we’re all doing important things for different girls.
I just think GFS would have been better for a child like me. Running our groups differently gives girls the chance to make a choice about what is best for them, based on their personality and life circumstances.
I love GFS because girls aren’t made in matching cookie cutter shapes. We don’t try to change them, we change to fit them instead.
-Linsey McFadden, Communications and Marketing Coordinator
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