I overheard a mother in the grocery store telling her young daughter not to be so opinionated, loud and aggressive the other day because people wouldn’t like her if she was. The young girl was simply expressing what she thought about a teacher who slacked on the job. She wasn’t yelling. She was using a normal tone of voice and sounded very matter-of-fact and intelligent to me!

“He thinks the girls are stupid and gives us lame assignments. I’m bored. I think he hates women,” she was saying to her friend while the mother picked out fresh veggies.

I got it that she thought she had more in her, more brains, more possibilities, more brilliance. But her teacher didn’t and her mother didn’t - or if she did, she didn’t think it was safe to express her thoughts or emotions. Rather - she encouraged her daughter to dumb herself down to be accepted. Bad advice. It bothered me. I heard and still hear the same thing - “Dumb yourself down if you want to be liked. Stop sounding so smart. You intimidate people.” It’s kind of like how the Chinese used to force girls to bind their feet so they couldn’t walk because they felt large feet were unattractive and small feet were beautiful. The girls had no choice. If they didn’t bind their feet they weren’t accepted, rarely married and were shunned.

Beginning around the age of six a girl’s toes were broken and her feet were bound with cloth. Every day the girl’s feet were bound and rebound. The mother would tighten the bandages, then make the child walk back and forth until all the toes were neatly tucked under the foot. The government didn’t outlaw this practice until 1958. It’s hard not to recoil in horror at the image of the foot binding. However, when mothers and family and friends and society does the same to young women by asking them to “bind” or restrict their minds, souls and passion for learning, for exploration, for risk and for life - they’re doing the same thing - just with the spirit and mind and soul. The damage is even greater because the binding, if successful, hurts the girl and everyone who might have benefited from her intelligence and passion. The only thing more heart-breaking than loved ones attempting to bind our minds and spirits is when we ourselves impose limits upon ourselves. There’s a wonderful quote about this:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?… Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” ~ Marianne Williamson

I still fight the tapes in my head from years of hearing, “Girls can’t do that. Girls shouldn’t do that. Let the boys win or they won’t like you. Don’t be so intelligent, you’re intimidating. Better to be liked than to be smart.”

The next time you get a chance to encourage a young girl to explore and push the limits - please do. And the next time you think you can’t do something, or should be quiet, or not risk speaking up - do. And if you can’t, think about the foot binding. Is mind binding really so different? I think not.