Puberty transforms the girl’s body from familiar self into strange flesh.

Evidence

The little girl approaches it with worry and displeasure. As her breasts and body hair develop, a feeling is born that sometimes changes into pride, but begins as shame; suddenly the child displays modesty, she refuses to show herself nude, even to her sisters or her mother, she inspects herself with surprise mixed with horror, and she observes with anxiety the swelling of this hard core, somewhat painful, appearing under nipples that until recently were as inoffensive as a navel. She is worried to discover a vulnerable spot in herself: undoubtedly this pain is slight compared with a burn or a toothache; but in an accident or illness, pain was always abnormal, while the youthful breast is normally the center of who knows what indefinable resentment. Something is happening, something that is not an illness, but that involves the very law of existence and is yet struggle and suffering. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 738

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Sartre’s concept of the body-for-others and the ‘in-itself’ vs ‘for-itself’ — the girl’s body becomes an object alienated from subjectivity. — connects to: In Freudian terms a girl’s sexual development can stall into frigidity or homosexuality.; Menarche initiates girls into an irreversible before-and-after divide in selfhood — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 747; Children fear future bodily change as a threat to their own identity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 729 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes the phenomenological basis for how woman-as-Other begins at the bodily level through puberty’s self-estrangement.

Broader Connections

• Puberty’s bodily changes alienate the girl from herself and the world #exemplifies (0.95) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 835
• Puberty alters a girl’s sensory relation to the world before she understands it #expands (0.80)