The teenage girl spends long periods in front of the mirror examining her hair, her skin, her body. The theme is familiar from juvenile books. The fact that she has red hair and freckles is enough to plunge her into despair. Staring at herself is a natural stage of her development.
     And it is not necessarily easy, as Maria Peura's text demonstrates. In the real world a girl, in a sympathetic environment, grows into a woman who is at home with herself. According to sociologists and doctors, this development is disturbed in contemporary Finland. Young girls are not doing well. Even compared with the other Nordic countries, young girls (7- to 13-year-olds) in Finland 'grow up' young. The problems are reflected in the statistics.
     There are twice as many depressed girls and women in Finland as there are boys and men. Four to 15 per cent of girls and women suffer from eating disorders. Last year, 37 per cent of chlamydia cases appeared in women under 20. Violent crimes have become commoner in the 15-to-20 age group.
     Feeling bad is externalised into a concern about how one looks. A nine-year-old anorexic is no longer a rare case. 'A negative opinion about one's own body is significantly linked with self-hatred, loneliness, feelings of inferiority, exhaustion and a dislike of school,' a psychiatrist says. The extract from Kreetta Onkeli's novel Beige tells of what it is like for a young woman to feel she is 'too big'.
     In Finnish society success at school, university and career is now a challenge for women in the same way as it has traditionally been for men. The majority of university students are now women; a recent study demonstrated that in Finland businesses led by women do better, on average, than those led by men.
     Simultaneously there is another trend: the image of women promoted by advertisement, the press and television series. The feminist scholar Sari Näre speaks of the 'visual interference' to which girls are subjected. She considers it a child protection problem. 'The sexualisation of public space is part of the commercialisation of sexuality. This visual environment is part of our children's daily life. It is, in other words, a question of the difficulties for children that are brought about by the increasing intimisation of public space. This militates against the rights of children and young people, who should have the right to grow up in peace, with freedom of the imagination and of their own space in their own minds.' The immediate environments of many children are lacking in close models, support, security and love, and 'the prime responsibility for the construction of one's own identity becomes the burden of the child him or herself.'
     The Finnish national economy this autumn is in a better state than at any point since the recession years of the 1990s; career fathers and mothers have added their mites to the pile. One may ask whether children and young people have been forced to pay for this good fortune. Mending the ills of girls (and boys) means, according to Sari Näre, that even liberals must cease to fear the enforcement of prohibitions, however nannyish that may perhaps seem.
     However - on the basis of my own experience only - I still argue that the influence of a child's environment cannot rob her of her freedom of the imagination. A child shapes stories in her head, whether the hero is Little Red Riding Hood, Barbie, Catwoman or J.K. Rowling's heroine Hermione. These tales offer support, even if they are strange or violent, in the same way as stories and children's books; the weak conquer the strong, and the ugly or even the poor
can win their prince.

Kristina Carlson
Editor-in-Chief