Homecoming Queen AND Football Star: The Pressures of Modern Girlhood

The New York Times has a new article about high school student Brianna Amari, who last Friday was crowned homecoming queen while on the field as her team’s only female Varsity football player. GENaustin admires and congratulates Brianna for her amazing accomplishments. There are so few girls who are on high school football teams, and no doubt Brianna had to overcome many challenges to win a place and become the only girl on the team. The NY times also describes Brianna’s other activities, which include kicking the  the game-winning field goal (on the same night!), being a straight-A student, and being treasurer for student government. With her many activities and talents, Brianna seems like the perfect example of the expectations facing modern girls and women: the pressure to balance all areas of life, and succeed in all of them. (And this pressure doesn’t even include the impossible expectations girls feel to somehow look like the airbrushed models they see in magazines.) While Brianna is clearly special, GENaustin hopes that she, and the many driven, dedicated, brilliant girls like her also know: no one is perfect, and that’s okay. Allowing yourself to relax, take a break, and realize that no one expects you to be super-human are also incredibly important in being successful & healthy in the long-run.  

Part of what GENaustin does at the We Are Girls Conference on November 12th is to give girls grades 5-12 the tools to love & accept themselves for who they are, and deal with the pressures of modern girlhood in a healthy, productive way. Do you know a super-achieving girl who’d benefit from attending the day-long conference with her peers from all over Texas? Visit www.wearegirls.org