Girls who pursue transcendence avoid seeing their menstruating bodies as mutilated.

Evidence

This feeling of degradation will weigh heavily on the girl. She would retain the pride of her bleeding body if she did not lose her self-respect as a human being. And if she succeeds in preserving her self-respect, she will feel the humiliation of her flesh much less vividly: the girl who opens paths of transcendence in sports, social, intellectual, and mystical activities will not see a mutilation in her specificity, and she will overcome it easily. If the young girl often develops psychoses in this period, it is because she feels defenseless in front of a deaf fate that condemns her to unimaginable trials; her femininity signifies illness, suffering, and death in her eyes, and she is transfixed by this destiny. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 761

Categorization

• DEFINE: Deploys the immanence/transcendence apparatus: activities opening paths of transcendence inoculate the girl against the shame of her body.
• SEED: Angle: the resilience of adolescent girls as a function of access to transcendence—sports and intellectual life as prophylaxis against bodily shame.
• XREF: connects to: Girls experience their bodies as sexless plenitude, not as lack. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 683; Women who claim freedom reject being reduced to their bodies as passive flesh — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1041; Puberty’s bodily changes alienate the girl from herself and the world — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 835

Broader Connections

• Girls experience their bodies as sexless plenitude, not as lack. #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 683
• Puberty’s bodily changes alienate the girl from herself and the world #contradicts (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 835
• Women who claim freedom reject being reduced to their bodies as passive flesh #responds-to (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1041