Puberty converts the girl’s imagined future passivity into a settled bodily fate of waiting

Evidence

Throughout her childhood, the little girl was bullied and mutilated; but she nonetheless grasped herself as an autonomous individual; in her relations with her family and friends, in her studies and games, she saw herself in the present as a transcendence: her future passivity was something she only imagined. Once she enters puberty, the future not only moves closer: it settles into her body; it becomes the most concrete reality. … As she is already detached from her childhood past, the present is for her only a transition; she sees no valid ends in it, only occupations. In a more or less disguised way, her youth is consumed by waiting. She is waiting for Man. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 832

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the existential mechanism by which the girl’s imagined future becomes concrete: waiting as her mode of being in time, against the boy’s active routing toward adulthood.
• XREF: connects to: Puberty’s meaning differs by sex because it announces different futures. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 760; Puberty’s bodily changes alienate the girl from herself and the world — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 835; Puberty alters a girl’s sensory relation to the world before she understands it (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Puberty’s bodily changes alienate the girl from herself and the world #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 835
• Puberty alters a girl’s sensory relation to the world before she understands it #expands (0.80)
• The older girl’s growth becomes smooth adaptation instead of upheaval #contradicts (0.80)