Blog Post #3

I really enjoyed “Letter to a Daughter at Thirteen” by Kingsolver. I feel like this piece can be relatable for any daughter or mother. I thought this piece was very sweet, yet extremely insightful into the struggles of motherhood. The main point I got from Kingsolver was that mothers are always watching their daughters. They want to protect them and guide them based on what they have learned in life. Even though this is motherly instinct, you still need to give a child space to explore and try to figure things out for themselves.  The mother/speaker of the piece realized how wise beyond her years her daughter is and compares her daughter’s life experiences to her own and it is a remarkable difference; yet she cannot blame it on the parenting styles. It all comes back to being a strong woman. Confidence, pride, interests, and self esteem are all things women need to embrace from a young age. These are things the speaker didn’t learn until she was older and in college. Without these aspects, she struggled to be perfect and thought any attention from a male was a positive sign. She didn’t realize that it was good to have your own passions and ideas. For the speaker, reading women/ feminist writings was her passion. She said on page 154, “But these writers allowed me to imagine other possibilities…By concentrating on what I could do to make things better for people who were worse off than me, I taught myself to feel significant. Word by word, day by day, I revised the word stupid out of my journal.” Once a woman finds herself and explores their options, they don’t feel as much pressure to look a certain way, or impress certain people, or be a “perfect” woman. She writes to her daughter, “I vowed early on to give you more choices than I had… But I took a deep breath, knowing that even this- especially this- you had to learn to do for yourself.” Growing up as a female is all about learning as you go, and doing what is a passion for you- not fitting a mold. The author does a great job in expressing the pride she has in her daughter, and all the moments she looks forward to. This piece somewhat reminded me of the Taylor Swift song, “The Best Day,” which is a letter to her mom about all the things she remembers and loves about her mom. This is almost like a reply to the piece Kingsolver wrote. I also thought about the organization, “Love is Louder Than The pressure to be Perfect,” which is about finding your own passion and voice, gaining self-esteem and not feeling the need to be “perfect.” I find passion in being a part of this organization, and I thought of this when the speaker wrote about always feeling stupid, and being a superacheiver. She even wrote, “… the word self esteem had not been invented.” Below are the links to the Taylor Swift music video of “The Best Day” and to the “Love is Louder…” organization website.

http://www.loveislouder.com/the-movement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4_6eQm7RTQ