The Female Brain by Louann Md Brizendine Read Free Book Online Page B

off-the-wall ideas—and clothing choices—and why they are constantly staring at themselves in the mirror. They are almost exclusively interested in their appearance, specifically whether the boys who populate their real and fantasy worlds will find them attractive. Thank goodness, says Shelley, they have three bathrooms in their home, because her girls spend hours in front of the mirror, inspecting pores, plucking eyebrows, wishing the butts they see would shrink, their breasts grow larger and waists get smaller, all to attract boys. Girls would likely be doing some version of this whether the media were there to influence their self-image or not. Hormones would be driving their brains to develop these impulses even if they didn’t see skinny actresses and models on the cover of every magazine. They would be obsessing over whether or not boys thought they looked good because their hormones create the reality in their brains that being attractive to boys is the most important thing.
    Their brains are hard at work rewiring themselves, and this is why conflicts will increase and become more intense as teen girls struggle for independence and identity. Who are they anyway? They are developing the parts of themselves that most make them women—their strength for communicating, forming social bonds, and nurturing those around them. If parents understand the biological changes happening in the teen girl brain circuits, they can support their daughters’ self-esteem and well-being during these rocky years.
    R IDING THE E STROGEN- P ROGESTERONE W AVES
    The smooth sailing of girlhood is over. Now parents find themselves walking on eggshells around a moody, temperamental, and resistant child. All of this drama is because the girlhood or juvenile pause has ended, and their daughter’s pituitary gland has sprung to life as the chemical brakes are taken off her pulsing hypothalamic cells, which have been held in check since toddlerhood. This cellular release sparks the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian system into action. It is the first time since infantile puberty that their daughter’s brain will be marinated in high levels of estrogen. In fact, it is the first time that her brain will experience estrogen-progesterone surges that come in repeated monthly waves from her ovaries. These surges will vary day to day and week to week.
     

     
    The rising tide of estrogen and progesterone starts to fuel many circuits in the teen girl’s brain that were laid down in fetal life. These new hormonal surges assure that all of her female-specific brain circuits will become even more sensitive to emotional nuance, such as approval and disapproval, acceptance and rejection. And as her body blossoms, she may not know how to interpret the newfound sexual attention—are those stares of approval or disapproval? Are her breasts the right ones or the wrong ones? On some days her self-confidence is strong, and on other days it hangs by a precarious thread. As a child she was able to hear a wider spectrum of emotional tone in another’s voice than a boy could. Now that difference becomes even greater. The filter through which she feels the feedback of others also depends on where she is in her cycle—some days the feedback will reinforce her self-confidence, and other days it will destroy her. You can tell her one day that her jeans are cut a bit low and she’ll ignore you. But catch her on the wrong day of her cycle and what she hears is that you’re calling her a slut, or telling her she’s too fat to wear those jeans. Even if you didn’t say or intend this, it’s how her brain interprets your comment.
    We know that many parts of the female brain—including an important seat of memory and learning (the hippocampus), the main center for control of the body’s organs (the hypothalamus), and the master center of emotions (the amygdala) are particularly affected by this new estrogen and progesterone fuel. It sharpens critical thinking and