Scilly little flowers

Some jonquils that arrived from Richard's cousin and family in the Scilly Isles

This is being written the next day. I didn't get round to writing a blip before midnight because I got kidnapped and taken to another world where you can only write stories, and not anything factual.

While I was there I wasn't allowed any sleep until I'd written about 800 words (must check the word count now I've said that) with a beginning, a middle and an end (there are proper ways of discussing story shape and development that I was supposed to learn when I took courses but I ignored all that and still write by instinct not rules).

It was the story that kidnapped me really. I needed to get a character down into something readable to share with others.

What really bothers me - what really really bothers me - as a mother of both daughters and a son, as a mother of a teen daughter and a no-where-near teen daughter; as a woman who remembers being a girl, who remembers being a young woman; as a woman who knows what it feels like to want to be noticed but not touched, as a woman who experienced inappropriate behaviour from older men; as a woman who hears what some mothers of sons have said about the "inappropriate" looks and behaviour of very young girls... What REALLY bothers me is the sparcity of the use words "Innocence", "vulnerability", "experimentation", "role play", "dressing up", "harmless fun". Girls are not causing problems by being girls or by dressing up - even as their bodies develop.
I nearly called my story "Seesaw". If it hadn't been so late I may have made it longer and called it Seesaw.
I wanted to emphasise the importance of that mid-way point for young people that could and should go on for years, or at their own pace; it should be full of innocence and experimentation, free of judgement and - importantly - young people (and in particular young girls who so often can appear more mature than they feel) should have the freedom to seesaw up and down from childhood to adulthood until they are ready. Older children are all too often called young adults, told what they are and what they are ready for instead of deciding for themselves. Girls are too often sexualised before they are ready because of the way they look, and accused of giving boys and men "the wrong idea" by what they wear, say or do. Those seesaw years are for young people themselves to control. We should never force them to behave or not behave a certain way, wear or not wear certain things.
Somewhere along the line a woman discovers that certain ways of looking give people certain ideas about you. That in itself is wrong and unfair, but when it happens at a young age it is especially damaging. I was one of those who developed slowly and the unwanted attention I received didn't happen at an exceptionally young age. To girls I knew who did develop early the attention started very young, but it shouldn't have happened at all. It's inappropriate to invade a girl's innocence - whatever she looks like. Let the children play until they want to grow up. Nurture youth and don't kick it into adulthood. Take girls seriously as human beings and not decorative objects. And that's what my story is about. I deliberately didn't give my character an age, but she is not particularly old or young - she's in those seesaw years where she wants to think about being a woman but still be a child. She wants to experience attention but not in an inappropriate way. She wants to dress up and pretend she's grown up but not really do anything grown up. Not yet.
It's here: Thing