Before downloading said book to my kindle ipad app, I read a
few reviews to get a better idea of what I would be in for. The conclusion
seemed to be, that whatever criticism you may find of Brooks’ retelling, it
succeeds at its main purpose: that of being good, honest memoir. I also found
these quotes about memoirs while reading a review from “bhodges” from the
website, By Common Consent:
You’re sure to hear a
few such discordant notes as Brook’s fingers glide up and down the scale, but
to focus on such slips overlooks the book’s overall melody... Memoirs aren’t
intended to tell a disconnected story of one’s life, but to invite readers into
an intensely subjective world... American publisher William Sloan says readers
of such works are not so much saying to the author ‘Tell me about you,’ but
rather ‘Tell me about me; as I use your book and life as a mirror.’”
And this was certainly the phenomenon that I experienced
while reading the first few chapters, recalling the fierce and often tumultuous emotions of my middle school years like nothing I
have ever read before. Of course it was also the first time I’d really read a
first-hand account of what it was like to be a young and awkward girl growing up
in the LDS faith. I think the beauty of good memoir is that it allows one to reflect
and to experience without sitting in
any sort of judgment seat –without wondering which influences were “good” or “bad,”
or, worse in this instance, without trying to fit everything that stemmed from
my being a Mormon and a young woman into a tidy, brown-paper package of “good.”
To quote the first paragraph if chapter 3, “The year we all
turned twelve, the boys in my Sunday School class received the priesthood…That’s
what Chuckie, Mike, and Brian got for their twelfth birthdays. I got Marie Osmond’s Guide to Beauty, Health and
Style.” Following this statement, there is no overt discussion of gender roles
in the church, of whether or not things are as they should be in LDS youth
culture. There is instead a rather poetic and humorous description of the pin-sharp
impressions that the pictures and quotes from Marie Osmond, the Mormon dream
girl who was apparently achieving perfection here on earth, left on Brooks’ idealistic
young-adult mind. I loved that she could
still picture the exact poses and quotes from various pages of the book. Because,
while I’ve never actually seen a copy of Marie
Osmond’s Guide to Beauty, Health and Style, I played out my own versions of
this experience time and time again. For me, there was the Guide for the Winter Woman by a company called Chroma (I'd never actually been tested by a Chroma color analyst specialist, but my mom was certain
that I was a “Winter”). How I poured over those black and white sketches of
different Winter woman hair styles, and dreamed of the day when my own long,
unruly, always-parted-down-the-middle, never-styled-or-touched-with-product locks
would be transformed into a glorious, womanly hairdo! There was my subscription
to the magazine Seventeen from which
I eagerly read make-up tips. And how could I forget the day during my junior
year of high school when I discovered The
Fascinating Woman on our living room bookshelf and began studying it with something
akin to religious zeal (if you've never heard of this book, please look it up).
That author explains a sort of kinship that she felt with
Marie Osmond as a fellow Mormon girl. But more, you get a sense of how adhering to this guide filled a void of purpose in her life. She writes, “You and me, Marie, wrestling
the dark energies of childhood depressions and nascent eating disorders…What to
do with our bodies? If they were not instruments of priesthood power, and not
yet instruments of eternal procreation, what was our purpose?” This next quote
especially struck a chord with me: “Marie, your precisely numbered regimens
gave me great comfort. Especially the idea that with a little practice I could change, I could convert
those long columns of personal minuses into a perfect string of pluses.” This idea that I would overcome all -or at least most- of my flaws while
in this earthly life -why oh why was this idea so strongly ingrained in my mind? What’s
more, what was there to make me think that once I had reached a state of “Marie
Osmond awesomeness” there was anything to guarantee that I would stay there? I
wish someone could have disillusioned me of these ideas a lot sooner. I think I'd have been much happier for it.
I’m still not sure what all of this has to do with growing
up as a young woman in the church. Maybe the author and I just both happened to
be intense young women, demanding too much of ourselves at a very young age in
our quest for finding meaning in life and eventual perfection. Whatever the
case, growing up in the church added many subtle colors to my life, colors that
have been integrated into the “whole” of me in some ways that I think I am only
beginning to understand.
I certainly don’t mean for this to be a negative post. I
think the overall impact of my experiences in the young womens’ program of the
church were overwhelmingly positive (After all, it was at a young womens’ activity
that I learned the side-part for my hair, the only “style” I ever really adopted. Ouch. Sorry, I couldn’t
resist that one). But in all seriousness, I had many wonderful experiences
studying scriptures, serving in the church, and, most of all, feeling the very
real and immediate love of my Heavenly Father –many of these experiences
brought on as a direct result from my involvement in the church as a youth. And
that is to say nothing of the sense of belonging and confidence that I so
desperately needed and was able to find therein.
As you've probably guessed though, I’d like to open up a
discussion about being a young woman in the church. What were your experiences?
Was there too much emphasis on health and beauty? Did you place unrealistic
demands on yourself in order to “prepare” to be a saintly wife and mother someday?
Did you sense a vacancy of purpose during those years of waiting for the
dreamed-of temple marriage to arrive? And, most importantly, what do you think
could be done to improve the system –in the church and in the world at large? –How
can we encourage young women to “dream big” without coming up with crazy
expectations of personal perfection? How can we give motherhood the respect it
deserves, without making it the “end all, be all” of mortal existence? After
all, and now speaking from personal experience on this one, being a mother will not stop a woman from needing to be an individual -a person-
too. And, as much as these words may be spoken during Young Women lessons, how
can we get our young women to actually believe them?
How can we help our young women to love their bodies, to love their idiosyncrasies, and, yes,
even to love their imperfections -or, at the very least to make peace with
them? How can we better prepare them for the possibility of their
R.M. in shining armor never making his long-awaited appearance? How can we
better prepare them for a life that will almost always fall short of their
visions of a celestial home here on earth? I think these are very big and very
important questions (while also giving some insight into why I am completely terrified
to raise a teenage daughter). I’d really like to hear your ideas on these issues. Please sound off below.
