Under the eyes of a thousand stars
Alison Roy explains how fathers (and father figures) can help daughters to find their identity. Amy is a striking young woman who appears confident and clear about her views, especially when it comes to boys. ‘I don’t let them push me around or decide how I should look,’ she insists. However, when I ask her about her social media profile, she is less sure of herself. She tells me it is important to be seen in the ‘right way’ online. ‘By whom?’ I ask, and she shrugs. I add that this implies that there is a ‘wrong way’ to be seen. She nods emphatically and tells me that she sometimes uses tools or apps to alter her lips, eyes and cheeks, and on occasions, her body (breasts and bum). She acknowledges that there is a ‘dark side’ to social media but is amused by my questions and concerns about how this could be affecting her sense of self. ‘You don’t understand,’ she says, ‘We do everything on our phones – I mean everything; we even do relationships. It’s all happening on our phones for everyone our age.
We’re on show – all of us – all of the time!’ ‘Amy’ is a composite of many young women I have met. I often refer to current times for adolescents as being like living in a hall of mirrors, where it is becoming increasingly difficult to find an accurate reflection of themselves, while there is a greater emphasis on their appearance. This means that young women, in particular, go to more extreme lengths in order to be noticed and accepted. I am also seeing younger children ‘redesigning’ themselves electronically. Even before they have their own social media accounts, many parents will have posted hundreds of photos or videos of them online, without even considering their consent. Even the less worrying aspects of building an online profile seem to involve investing serious amounts of effort and personal resources into getting ‘likes’, ‘follows’ or subscribers, and feeding an insatiable appetite for the approval of others. By comparison, the time invested in getting to know and understand oneself, as well as who to trust, or not, and what to share with whom, is minimal.
Daughters in context
A daughter’s shape will change significantly throughout her lifetime, physically but also psychologically, emotionally and socially. She may see her gender and core identity as a girl/woman shift, something we are beginning to understand better. For the purpose of this article, I am referring to a daughter as someone who may present with both feminine and masculine aspects of her personality but who was born biologically female, and I have used she and her pronouns while acknowledging that there are individuals who may identify differently. In terms of identity, a daughter will usually have an idea of herself in relation to the parental couple who brought her into being, even if she does not remember either or both of her birth parents. Her earlier ancestors all played a part in her story before her arrival into the world, something I have written about elsewhere in relation to the adoption experience. A daughter, therefore, is not an isolated being. She is born under the eyes of a thousand stars, some of whom have long since died, but their light can still be seen and felt throughout her life.
The eyes of the father
In my experience of working with young women, I have come to recognise that the eyes of the father hold a particular brightness for a daughter, and influence how she sees herself and how she relates to others. As a daughter, sister and mother myself, I am familiar with the restrictive perspectives of girls and women – how we should look or behave and what we can achieve. The father/daughter relationship can be thought about within this context. There are several papers and books written about the significant role of fathers in a child’s life. Music writes in Not Just Mothers that those who fulfil a paternal function for a daughter help to facilitate the process of her individuation and the sense of a separate self. Waddell writes about the centrality of our early relationships with our caregivers on personality development, and how these relationships prepare us for later life disappointments and frustrations.
Tokarczuk’s novel, Primeval and Other Times, portrays the father as both benevolent and malevolent, and explores the father/daughter relationship within the context of primeval beginnings. She uses the analogy of root systems growing deep beneath an imaginary and isolated village, where everything is interconnected but often hidden, which is perhaps also a metaphor for female sexuality. The novel is set during the First World War, when the men have gone away and the women are left to manage everything. It explores the role of the father in setting boundaries and bringing a sense of purpose to the family. The young daughter protagonist only begins to speak (outside her own head) for the first time when her father returns. The eyes of the father upon her, enable her to see herself differently and recognise her own separate shape. The novel also explores the rapacious and sadistic behaviour of men with power and authority in the form of the invading Russian soldiers who have no leadership or concept of the eyes of the father on them, setting limits and establishing a moral and social code. The father’s role alongside the mother is also significant in helping the daughter manage the different ways that she is seen by others and understand the potential threats.
In my practice, I often work with parents alongside their children, but it is usually the father (or the one who holds the paternal function) who expresses more ambivalence in relation to a daughter. One mother described the relationship between her male partner and their teenage daughter from her perspective. ‘He will big her up one minute and cut her right down to size the next. But underneath all that, he is terrified of losing her.’ Portrayals of both men and women are often oversimplified or caricatured. Women or female children are more likely to be described as irrational or overly emotional, whereas boys and men can be accused of not having the capacity for feelings or being unable to show empathy. Perhaps we are all guilty of oversimplifying things with regards to gender differences, and in doing so, we marginalise each other, when we have more in common than our discernible differences. Within Tokarczuk’s novel, one of the biggest challenges for the daughter is working out the difference between men like her father who is safe but doesn’t always notice her, and the Russian soldiers whom she instinctively knows she should hide from.
For daughters who have not had a safe experience of being with a father, or who have encountered unsafe men in their formative years, it can be difficult to know the difference between those who will care and protect, and those who will abuse and/or exploit. I have come to understand how it is much more challenging for these young women to set limits and develop self-protective behaviours in the real world and online. As an art student in the 1980s, I enjoyed the writing of John Berger, who has been helpful in articulating my thinking about the way that women see themselves, and how they are conditioned to observe themselves through the eyes of the other. In his book, Ways of Seeing, he writes about women and the significance of the male gaze, and how a woman ‘must continually watch herself.’
Young women have described to me their confusion in how their fathers react to them. This is summed up by the comments young women make about their fathers that they dislike them rolling up their school skirt, or hate them wearing crop tops or lots of makeup, but may also yell at them for not making an effort if they wear jeans when they go out as a family. Exasperated, I have heard young women repeat the phrase, ‘I literally can’t win,’ indicating that they don’t think their fathers would be happy with them whatever they were wearing. This idea of winning or losing the father’s approval and feeling confused is a theme which comes up frequently in my work with young women. Feminists argue that it is predominantly a patriarchal societal view of a girl or woman which makes it difficult for her to see herself as she is or for who she could be. She has been conditioned to understand her shape through the eyes of a man, the first man being her father.
Finding a shape that fits There is a certain amount of ‘shape shifting’ during adolescence, a process articulated by Pullman in his Northern Lights trilogy. In these coming-of-age novels, everyone has a ‘daemon’ – a visual presentation of the soul in the form of an animal. Throughout childhood and early adolescence, the daemon regularly changes shape. However, in late adolescence, the personality settles and the daemon becomes fixed. Since the arrival of smartphones, anyone can be a photographer, reporter, critic or voyeur. With a touch of a screen, we can capture an image for all the world to see. This means that finding a shape that fits is much more complicated, and it is harder to protect adolescents from exploitative or harmful influences. Rather than benevolent ancestors looking down like protective stars from above, our daughters are being subjected to ever-present scrutiny and judgment from god-like mortals down on the ground.
This predicament is profound for the development of a child who longs to be seen and accepted. So many young women are seeking a version of beauty for themselves that involves changing their shape and airbrushing out imperfections, while also describing feeling invisible or unacknowledged, and this is taking its toll on their sense of self and their mental health. If a daughter has the protective and proud eyes of a parent reflecting a true likeness back at her, she is more likely to see herself clearly and hold her shape. Waddell emphasises the importance of having an available and authentic presence – ‘The opportunity to know oneself, and hence to develop as oneself, requires the availability of a presence which has qualities of receptiveness and responsiveness... which are honest, not counterfeit.’ A father or paternal figure has a significant role to play for a daughter in supporting her to emotionally regulate and build authentic connections with others. He can only do this when he is willing or supported to engage with his own feelings and notice what he is bringing to fatherhood. If he can reflect on who he is, he will be better equipped to properly see who his daughter is and enable her to find her shape. If a daughter has the protective and proud eyes of a parent reflecting a true likeness back at her, she is more likely to see herself clearly’
Alison Roy is a psychotherapist, author and trainer. She worked in the NHS for over 25 years and now works in private practice. Alison was the co-founder and Clinical Lead for a specialist adoption service (AdCAMHS), has written a book about adoption and contributed chapters to books relating to creativity, trauma and exploitation.