Blog #5 Kathryn Boyle

The dialogue of "Girl" is that of a mother telling her daughter all the things she must be in order to actually be a woman. Since it is the mother who is telling her these things, we as the reader assume that she is speaking to her daughter from experience and there is some love behind it. Even though the mother's words are seem rather harsh and laced with a kind of bitterness, we can assume she is telling her daughter these things because she has a certain image that she feels would benefit her daughters life. Now while we can brush off the mom as either bitter or worrisome, if the narrator had been the father, our perception would have changed drastically. If we were to talk the same exact words and the same tone and put a man as a narrator, it would come across as if he were being verbally abusive. Mothers and daughters can get away with saying things like this to each other, but for example if a father were to call his daughter a "slut" it would be almost the same as him slapping her in the face. When men give these comments to women it suddenly becomes sexist and oppressive, even if they are just the same words that came from a woman's mouth.