Personal Narrative: My First Grader Girl

For my senior project, I made books with my first grader girls, focusing on fostering both increased self esteem and positive feelings about being a girl. Each page tackled a different prompt: things they liked about themselves, a woman they admire, things the girls liked about each other, a job they thought would be hard to a girl to have, the best part of being a girl, what it means to be a girl, and that they’re strong. I tried to give the girls as much freedom as I could in answering each prompt. Some of their answers made me laugh, while others troubled me. Some were expected, and others were surprising. When the project concluded, I felt like I had gotten a much better understanding both of the girls individually, and of the way 6 and 7 year old girls feel about themselves and what connotations being a girl has for them.
One girl was only able to think of three things, while another came up with ten. The things they liked about themselves ranged from superficial, such as the way they dress, or their hair, to personality traits, one girl saying she liked that she’s “crafty”, another saying she’s glad she’s colorful. While the answers spanned a wide spectrum from external to internal, the thing that perhaps struck me the most was the way some of these girls seemed to only see value in themselves through their appearance. It was hard to see that the traits they saw worthy of praise within themselves were almost purely based on their appearance. This was mirrored in how they responded to the prompt for the third page, things they liked about each other. Again, a lot of “I like you because of your hair” type of answers were given. Even at 6 and 7, this was the traits they deemed of value that other girls