Entitled To Be Exceptional

Being exceptional - unusually skillful, smart, creative or otherwise more capable than the norm - may include a judgment both by others and ourselves as being an “outsider.” Gifted and talented people can experience a self-defeating aversion to expressing talents that might separate them from other people.

This can be a challenge for all of us, but many girls and women may be especially sensitive about fitting in, and deny their capabilities, find it hard to recognize and embrace their abilities, and have a low sense of entitlement to be exceptional.

In her book "The Sound of a Silver Horn: Reclaiming the Heroism in Contemporary Women's Lives", Kathleen Noble, PhD points out that primary religious and secular myths, including stories from Beowulf to the Brothers Grimm to Disney, idealize women "for their modesty, beauty, chastity, piety, obedience and selfless performance of domestic duties" and perpetuate stereotypes that make it "extremely difficult for women to be seen as strong, resourceful, courageous, and real, the ingredients of true heroic stature."

She uses the Snow White scene “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” as an example of “the question that serves most forcefully to blind us to our strengths."

Dr. Noble says women need a hero myth that inspires them "to take risks, to make noise, to be courageous, to become unpopular" and notes that a woman "to live heroically must belong to herself alone; she must be the center of her own life to pursue a wholeness or integrity that is fluid, inclusive and interconnected.”

The task of being a “fully functioning female human being,” she notes, “is a formidable and heroic challenge because a female hero must insist upon herself, something that most women are neither taught nor encouraged to do." At some point, a woman ”must discard some part of herself in order to create a larger self and give birth to her own possibilities."

In her book "Smart Girls," Barbara Kerr notes that the Fear of Success syndrome “may still live on in girls' and women's tendencies to negotiate and avoid conflict or competition when friendship or intimacy is at stake."

The creative contributions of gifted and talented women are needed more than ever, by women willing to be "improper" if that's what it takes. Standards, rules and expectations about creative work, often defined by men and male institutions, can limit what women feel or perceive they are entitled to be.

Academy Award-winning actor and screenwriter Emma Thompson commented in an interview that "A lot of the criticism about my comedy work by men has been "I think you're marvelous, but you just can't do that.' They think I should be attractive, do serious drama; they're threatened by a moderately good-looking woman who tries to be funny as well. We are taught to take women only on a very few levels."

Perhaps characters such as Sydney Bristow in "Alias" [played by Jennifer Garner]; Shu Lien in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" [Michelle Yeoh] and Mackenzie Allen [Geena Davis], the first woman president, in the tv series “Commander in Chief,” may be helping create new myths and role models of heroic, self-aware and confident women who are able to more fully realize their many strengths and talents.