Watching my daughter’s strong sense of self has forced me to reflect on my own adolescence through the wildly misogynistic early 2000s
“N
ow there’s a girl who’s comfortable in her own skin,” my father-in-law said about my daughter, his granddaughter. She was about one year old and we were watching her bounce happily in her high chair, egg smeared across both cheeks as she shoved pieces of fritter into her mouth.
I realised with pride it was true: she was comfortable. My pride was followed quickly by unease. How long had it been since I could say I was comfortable with myself?
My daughter is almost four now and I’ve thought of my father-in-law’s words many times since that day. She’s at a precious age, no longer a toddler and still just on the precipice of childhood proper. She interacts with the world without self-consciousness and has not yet learned that society may expect something different from her.
