The first time I read What Girls Are Made Of by Elana K. Arnold, I recommended it to anyone who would listen. I remember both thinking to myself and saying out loud, "This would have changed my life if I had read it in high school." I thought that every adolescent girl--nay, every English-speaking human over the age of 15--needed to read it. I even brought it up at an interview for a middle school teaching job. They asked me to share a book I enjoyed, so I mentioned What Girls Are Made Of, and I remember that my explanation of why I liked it so much involved the range of bodily functions that it depicts. I was like, "This novel is so gross! I love it so much!" A lot of blood comes out of vaginas in this novel, and it is glorious. As a grown adult woman who should be too smart for this, I am still ashamed of my bodily functions, so this representation is sorely needed.
The other thing that I will always and forever love about What Girls Are Made Of is its unflinching representation of what it's like to grow up as a girl in a patriarchal society and to unpack a deeply rooted patriarchal history. Through protagonist Nina, Elana K. Arnold depicts the process of discovering your autonomy and giving yourself permission to consider what you want out of life rather than trying to please men and blindly adhering to societal norms. Nina accomplishes incredible growth over the course of the novel. It took me about ten years to achieve the level of growth that she manages over the course of the, I don't know, month of real-time plot in this book.
Arnold does a brilliant job of highlighting the obstacles that stunted her development and that get in the way of her growth, but Nina manages to clear these hurdles. Even though her alcoholic mother tried to pass on her skewed worldview to Nina, and even though Nina is fighting against a patriarchal society that has been inhospitable to women for thousands of years, Nina develops a sense of self-worth and starts exercising it. In reflecting on how she managed to pull this off (and why the amount of growth we see in this novel took me ten years), I realized that there is a foundation for it even during her ugliest moments. Even at her ugliest, Nina is an honest and transparent narrator, and she tells her whole truth about her actions and motivations. This requires self-worth. Nina believes that her story is worth telling, and she is brave enough to reveal the most disturbing parts of it. She demonstrates self-compassion and shame resilience, and she continues to cultivate these skills over the course of the novel. They facilitate her growth, and she could not have done it without them.
