The Progression of an American Girl
by Madison Stahl
Drury University
Madison Stahl is an English and Writing major at Drury University who will graduate in 2025. Her work has been featured in Drury University's Currents literary magazine. When she isn't writing, she attempts to play clarinet and tends to a rather large collection of vinyl records.
A lone balloon drifts in the circle of loved ones, each holding a pastel pink or blue cupcake. The proud mother-to-be pops the balloon, and pink confetti falls. The women cheer; the men smile.
The mother beams as she opens carefully wrapped gifts of frilly dresses in sizes that are already too small, lace headbands that won’t contain her newborn’s full head of hair, and baby dolls that her daughter will grow up nurturing. She receives a few necessities, but mostly, her girlfriends are too excited to welcome another girl into their world.
The mother welcomes her pink bundle of joy into the world just after midnight a few weeks later. Her husband encourages her, and his world flips upside down upon first glance. She cries when her daughter cries.
The girl grows more and more each day, seemingly more quickly than the day before. Her mother and father work long hours, so she spends much of her youth with her grandparents. She learns about what it means to be a lady from one side, and from the other side, she learns what it means to be American.
Her mother walks her in for the first day of kindergarten. The girl clings to her, but the teacher’s kind hand guides her into the next chapter. Her mother cries once she gets to her car. Not long after she leaves, the girl is seated next to a boy. The teacher believes she’ll be a good influence on his rowdiness. He teases her relentlessly from the classroom to the playground; he pulls on her ponytail that her mother re-did five times before leaving the house, steals her supplies bought with money her parents fought over, and chases her around the playground as the recess duty staff vent about their troubles. Later, she tells her mother about the boy and learns that he might like her more than a friend. So, it must be love when she hears her father tease her mother about weight loss and wrinkles.
Toward the end of elementary school, the girl has her first male teacher. The school lacks funding and modernity, so the annual HVAC blowout is expected. She wears a tank top with capris. Her teacher makes a call right before lunch, glancing over at her, then she sees the nurse in the doorway. In her office, the girl receives her choice of a stained sweatshirt or a faded school spirit shirt with holes and a ripped seam. She chooses the t-shirt, leaving the sweatshirt for the girl in spaghetti straps entering as she exits. She sees a couple of male maintenance workers wearing tank tops and shorts but assumes they must have a better reason than her for wearing them.
That boy from the first day of kindergarten follows her into middle school. When she enters her 7th-grade history class for the first time, he stands up, flattens his shirt across his chest, then points at her. A few of the other boys start snickering. Confused, she looks at the other girls and wonders if something is wrong with her. She sits down next to a girl wearing a sympathetic look. Even she has bra lines.
She selects a locker in the corner during her physical education class. The sympathetic girl from her history class chooses one next to her. Her friend’s shield can’t stop other eyes from finding the girl’s arms and legs covered in hair. She hears snickering and turns around, seeing the other girls pointing at her unwaxed eyebrows and darkened peach fuzz above her lip. Someone compares her to a science fiction character as she finishes dressing and leaves the locker room.
The bus drops her off at the corner. She notices the man wearing a gray hoodie and baggy pants out of the corner of her eye but tries to assume everyone’s best intentions. As she walks home, a rusty truck slows and drives alongside her. The older man in the truck tells her she’s too pretty to be walking the streets alone. She walks faster toward home, and she thinks she hears the man behind her catcalling and snickering with the truck driver. Once inside, she gathers herself, then asks her mother if she can start shaving. Her mother doesn’t cry.
After conquering middle school, she finds herself at the bottom again in high school. Her freshman classes are packed to the brim. In her math class, she approaches a girl sitting alone who eyes her, then slams her book bag into the seat next to her. Another group of girls notice her struggle but don’t offer to help. She sits at the back of the class, barely able to read the board. The tardy bell rings, then she sees her friend from middle school sigh with relief after sitting down next to her. She was all she needed.
She serves at a restaurant, her first job at sixteen. The pay isn’t much, but she enjoys the independence. A customer orders, and she takes it to the cooks who only know her as the pretty waitress. After returning to the table, the customer claims the order is wrong and asks to speak to the manager. He doesn’t press further once he finds out the manager is a woman. She begins cleaning another table. The ticket is still there; the tip line only has a phone number.
She finds herself in love at the beginning of her senior year. Her science teacher asks her to tutor a classmate after school. She mumbles about chemical formulas as he gazes at her, telling her how smart she looks. She never knew love before, so she assumed that’s what she was feeling and receiving. On prom night, she told him she needed to leave early as she was working a morning shift the next day. He accepted that and still made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. She wakes up to a text from an unknown number: one picture of a magazine-clipped woman and the boy who made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world.
She gets an academic scholarship that covers enough of her costs to attend college. After all, it was the least she could do for her mother’s sacrifices. The upperclassmen urge her to rush her freshman year, so she does. She finds refuge in her sorority sisters while also staying true to herself. College makes her feel like she’s finally understanding where she’s meant to be. The sisters go out on Friday nights to downtown pubs and clubs where whatever happens is the fault of their own choices. This was proven when the girl backed into a man holding his third mug of beer. Only a drop falls to the floor, but the man whips around. His drunken stupor rages until he sees her figure. A sister loaned her a bodysuit and jeans, which made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. He reaches for her waist, but a sister pulls her hand to the dance floor.
At twenty-one, she meets her future husband at a booze-filled frat party. He was the only one not binging, and she’d never seen a guy resist temptation so soundly. One evening, she makes dinner for his parents. Most of the meal is store-bought, but no one seems to mind. Instead, his mother hints at wanting to be a grandmother. She also makes a couple of judgments about the girl’s makeup and outfit, but the potential joy of becoming a grandmother restrains her. As the girl cleans up the kitchen, his father asks him if she’s good in bed – his whisper almost purposefully loud enough for the girl to hear over the running water. His son brushed the comment off, but she knew they’d talk about it later.
She vows not to be like her parents when he proposes. She finds something old and something blue fairly fast. Her something borrowed becomes her mother’s veil, and her something new is her father showing up. The newlyweds dance to “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Her mother sheds a tear at the bridge. Some things are meant to be.
The honeymoon season comes and goes, and soon, she finds herself working a nine-to-five job with three children. Her work is monotonous, but not as tiring as her home life. She is needed, but not in the ways she wants to be needed. She learns she can’t please everyone. Her job takes over her schedule as it preys upon her family’s livelihood. Her boss doesn’t understand the need for vacation when she already has everything you could ever want as an American pursuing the Dream. The grandparents are angry because she isn’t home with her children. We tried to raise her right, says one side. He should’ve been pickier, says the other. She should be lucky he gave her three healthy boys. Both sides agree on that.
Her husband comes home late one night. Memories of her college days flood her mind as she catches scent trails of alcohol, perfume, and smoke. For a moment, she sees the boy she shared her ambitions with on the porch as they forgot about the party inside. She reaches for him, but he turns away, heading for bed. She spends her late night catching up on chores. He’s a man. He just doesn’t think I’ll listen to him. She finds divorce attorney cards at the bottom of the washing machine.
Life is a bullet. As it speeds towards its end, the girl watches as it passes her. She can feel the heat radiating off the metal, the smell of gunpowder, and the loud whizzing of its spin as it soars past her ear. She doesn’t wait to see where it pierces; she continues on.
Midlife gives her a new workplace she adores. She embroiders for the local schools and sports teams who want to carry their team spirit with them. Her youngest son, on a full athletic scholarship to his dream university, sometimes brings her lunch on Friday afternoons. For once, she doesn’t have to worry about her family’s well-being.
She thinks about her past more than she’d like as she tries to find love again. Much of her workplace is staffed by older ladies with sepia wedding portraits on their desks who can’t say much more about modern dating other than it’s changed, honey, goodness knows how it’s changed. A baseball coach stops in every two weeks to pick up a load of advertising materials, and that keeps her looking forward. When the secretary calls to the back, she brings him his boxes. Once, their hands brushed against one another and she realized he had no ring; she thanked him for stopping by with a bright smile that day.
After a long while, she retires. Nothing changes much over the course of her final career; the thread ends still need to be wet to slide smoothly through the needle eye, older ladies will always call you honey, and men may never take hints. Retirement feels like freedom. Her sons have lives of their own, but they visit. She loves more than anything to hear chants of “grandma!” when she opens the door. As her grandchildren hug her legs, she sees the proud parents. Her sons carry the smile of their father; their wives have their mothers’ eyes.
Her friend from middle school still visits. Each time, they remember just how refreshing it is to talk to each other. One afternoon, she agrees to lunch with her friend’s brother. “You’ve got to get out there one more time. For the thrill,” her friend said as she dialed his number.
She talks about her ambitions, and he listens. He loves that she reads every evening on her porch swing; that she repurposes her children’s old clothing into donations for the local shelters; that she still watches corny love movies that play every Thursday night on cable. She sees a mother’s eyes gazing back at her.
Most of the time, she is with her granddaughters. Her eldest son and his wife enjoy traveling for work and leisure, so she doesn’t mind hosting sleepovers. After all, their dreams are much bigger than hers. The girls learn what it means to be American women.
Interview with the Author
1. What inspired you to write this piece? What was your thought process throughout?
“The Progression of an American Girl” is a collection of experiences belonging to me or other women in my life. I was inspired to write this piece after a conversation with colleagues about our negative experiences with men. I expected the bad dating app experiences and stereotyping, but I was particularly shocked to hear how young they had been when they first began receiving the negative treatment. While we could laugh at the moments in retrospect, I quickly realized how unsurprising it was to hear them. Every woman has a unique story, but this negative treatment is all too familiar. I wanted this piece to represent the prevalence of sexual discrimination in American society; its roots take space in our daily routines and become a “normal” part of every woman’s life.
2. What do you hope readers will take away from your piece? What effects do you want the piece to have on the person, community, or society?
This piece aims to show just how fast we can pass through life passively accepting our inequality. When it becomes “normal” for us to live with discrimination, we forget how far we’ve come to gain equal opportunities. The moments featured in the piece are all based on true experiences that continue to affect women. I hope this piece encourages readers to become more aware of general marginalization in our society. I also hope this piece speaks up for the women that find themselves in the words.
3. What is your favorite piece of fiction (short story, novel, flash fiction, etc.) that you’ve ever read? Why?
I struggled to find a passion for reading and writing until I read The Great Gatsby. I had a wonderful English teacher who could pull endless strings of meaning from the novel; class was never boring! Gatsby inspires me to place meaning in every word I write.
4. If you plan on continuing to write, what are some goals/plans you may have for your future?
I’m currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in English and writing. Throughout the rest of my undergraduate journey, I plan to continue writing and sending my work out as much as I can. It’s challenging to press the submit button, but it’s so worth it to find a place in supportive writing communities!