The Lawrence field hockey team celebrates with the Class B state championship plaque after it edged Freeport 1-0 Nov. 5 at Messalonskee High School in Oakland. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

It’s been a week since my friend Shirley walked alongside me, sighed, and said, “I am a woman; therefore, I wear guilt like skin.”

Those words hit me hard — I wrote them down immediately. Then last Sunday, two stories appeared in the news: one about a dilapidated Lawrence High sports field, and another about tweens obsessing over skincare. Suddenly, it all clicked. This wasn’t just a passing conversation or an unrelated news cycle. It was a reminder of how we keep letting young girls and women down, and how that disappointment becomes part of us.

The guilt Shirley talked about? It’s the real, lived experience of being a woman in a world that promises progress but rarely delivers.

Take the Lawrence High School field hockey team. For 19 years, their field has never once been “adequate,” never met official requirements, even during their championship season in 2022. Now their field is unusable, and the girls are left wondering if their hard work matters. They were taught dedication is secondary and that they should just deal with subpar conditions because no one was in a hurry to fix it.

What message does this send? That their efforts aren’t worth the investment? That they’re less deserving? And how long does it take before these young athletes internalize that and start to feel guilty for wanting better? Wearing guilt like skin is what happens when you’re consistently told you’re asking for too much.

Then there’s the piece on tweens obsessing over skincare products. Young girls, not even old enough to vote, hoping to “perfect” their complexions because they’ve already been conditioned to believe their worth is skin deep. Companies are now stepping in, telling them, “Don’t buy our stuff, you’re too young!” But where were these companies when this culture was built? The damage is done. These girls aren’t just looking for flawless skin — they’re looking for validation, and they feel guilty when they don’t look perfect. Guilt, again, becomes their constant companion.

Shirley’s comment is still rattling around in my head because it fits seamlessly into this narrative. Women — whether young athletes or tweens obsessing over beauty — are constantly made to feel there is something wrong with them. The Lawrence field hockey team isn’t just facing an unsafe field; they’re told, Your sport isn’t as important, so wait your turn. As they wait, they internalize that their voices don’t matter.

Similarly, the tweens caught up in the skincare craze are told, Your skin isn’t perfect, so here’s a product. When it doesn’t fix everything, they feel like failures.

This isn’t just about fields and face washes; it’s about a pervasive culture that feeds women guilt at every turn. We’re made to feel guilty for wanting better conditions, guilty for not looking a certain way, guilty for not being everything to everyone, and guilty if we speak up. And this guilt isn’t something we shrug off at the end of the day. It stays with us. It becomes our skin, as Shirley so perfectly expressed it.

The Lawrence field hockey players must feel it. The frustration they’ve been dealing with isn’t just about wanting a better surface to play on — it’s about wanting to be seen and treated fairly. But they’re likely wondering, “Should we just be grateful to be able to play at all?” No, they shouldn’t. They deserve better. And yet, there’s that guilt creeping in, making them feel like they’re asking for too much.

And those tweens with their skincare routines? They’re navigating a world that tells them they’re not enough, at an age when they should be playing and discovering who they are. Instead, they’re slathering on creams, worrying about wrinkles that won’t show up for decades. They’re already feeling that guilt — the guilt of not being perfect enough to exist comfortably in their own skin.

Shirley’s words stick with me because they highlight the burden we carry, often without realizing it. From the time we’re young, we’re taught that we must always strive to improve, and that, if we fall short, the blame falls squarely on us. We learn early to wear that guilt as naturally as we wear our skin, and it stays with us for life.

So, is it any surprise that young girls and women are depressed at higher rates than ever before? Not really. We’re not just dealing with personal insecurities; we’re contending with a world that keeps telling us we’re not enough, no matter how hard we try. And that’s where the real failure lies — not in the girls or women themselves, but in the systems, cultures, and institutions that perpetuate these feelings of inadequacy.

Yes, we wear guilt like skin, but it’s not because we’re flawed. It’s because society keeps handing it to us, and somewhere along the way, we start believing it’s true.