Hermione Granger’s Influence on “Smart Girls” and How our Culture Views Them
I am currently reading Reviving Ophelia by clinical psychologist Mary Pipher, which explores and analyzes how modern culture steals authenticity from girls once they enter adolescence, replacing it with cultural/peer pressure to create a sort of “false self” in order to conform to a certain image. It’s insanely interesting and I can’t recommend it enough, but it gave me a brainwave.
Dr. Pipher describes the general experiences of adolescent girls as a group, saying, “Many of the girls I teach at the university can remember some of their choices – the choice to be quiet in class rather than risk being called a brain,” as though being brainy and acknowledged as such was some sort of crime.
She also outlines how schools treat girls: “In classes, boys are twice as likely to be seen as role models, five times as likely to receive teachers’ attention and twelve times as likely to speak up in class … They are called on more than girls and are asked more abstract, open-ended and complex questions. Boys are more likely to be praised for academic and intellectual work, while girls are more likely to be praised for their clothing, behaving properly and obeying rules.” Dr. Pipher goes on to list more ways in which the education system builds up boys while tearing down girls in terms of academic confidence, ability, and success. Girls are trained not to view themselves as smart.
Upon reading all this, I thought, But that wasn’t my experience at all! In high school, I was a nerdy, brainy girl, and I owned it! I made straight As (or nearly that – math was rough), I was frequently a top scorer in my favorite classes, and I was a member of the National Honors Society. I was known as “the smart one,” the one who never went anywhere without a book, the one classmates were excited to have on their team in review games because they knew I’d help them win. Teachers praised me as a complex and analytical thinker, a brilliant writer, and a model student. I was known for my smarts, and I was never teased or bullied because of that – if anything, quite a few classmates seemed a bit in awe of me. My being a girl and being smart simultaneously was never questioned. I don’t tell this to brag, but to let young girls and women know that their gender does not prevent them from being recognized and praised for their intelligence. Boys don’t have the monopoly on the academic world anymore.
So, upon reading this, I thought to myself – what changed? What made the educational experiences of girls in the 90s and girls now so different? Then it hit me. Reviving Ophelia was published in 1994, therefore primarily relating to cultural commonalities in the early 90s. Guess what was published in 1997? Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Everyone loves Hermione. Everyone wants to be Hermione. Many little girls in the past two decades grew up watching or reading HP, and I’ll bet most of them idolized Hermione. She became a huge role model for girls, as she still is. And what is she? Intelligent, clever, studious, brilliant, spunky, creative, determined, outspoken. She’s always the first to raise her hand in class, everyone knows she’s top of her class, and she’s well ahead of most of her classmates even as a first year. Hermione is smarter than any male character and that’s even joked about – you know, “Harry and Ron would’ve died ten times over without Hermione!” Hermione is brainy, bold, and brilliant, and that is her glory.
It cannot be underestimated how much Hermione has influenced how contemporary culture views smart girls. Before, as shown by Dr. Pipher’s analysis, “smart” was not popular for girls. Being a nerd was social suicide. Now, that’s hardly true. The fact that HP has since become so significant in pop culture cannot be unrelated. Smart girls used to be discouraged and reviled, HP was released, smart Hermione is revered as one of the greatest heroines in pop culture, and now smart girls are praised. Somehow I cannot imagine that to be a coincidence.
Thirty years ago, “brainy” was a damning word for a girl. Now, with Hermione’s help, it’s quite a compliment. It’s no longer “Ugh, what a nerdy loser!” Instead, it’s “Wow, I wish I could be as smart as her.” Cultural perceptions of intelligent girls have changed. Perhaps the brightest witch of her age played a role in that.
