This image from Blue Nation Review has been trending on Facebook. It depicts the consequences of a girl thinking that being smart is way cooler than boys, cigarettes, parties, or being popular.

You cannot teach this to girls. I have two daughters of my own, one 30 and one 16. I also have given workshops on college campuses as a Women’s Issues Director student leader. You can instruct, cajole, demand, and give a song and dance, but young women will always hear you with wariness. Their internal voice of rebellion and personal freedom will always have a contradictory argument for you. “You don’t know what it’s like, Mom, being a teenager today.” Women between the ages of 13 and 22 are confident they know better than those of us who’ve been around the block more often than we care to count.

No, you cannot teach values and principles to girls. But you can model them.

Your daughter will be as disciplined as you are, not as disciplined as you tell her to be. She’ll read because she sees you reading. She’ll appreciate regular exercise because she remembers seeing you get up uncomplainingly every morning for a walk or run. She’ll unconsciously prefer to skip drinking with her buds in order to get some extra studying in, because she grew up seeing you turn down alcohol or attention from husbands/lovers in favor of opportunities to grow or stretch.

In the end, she’ll be her own person, but you’ll see the positive and negative influences you modeled for her appearing in her life more regularly than you might think. Especially given how much she may argue with you. Go ahead and lecture her once in awhile, but don’t beat the dead horse. She’ll get it, just by remembering what she’s seen you do.

My mom modeled that women are nothing without a man. She spoke like a feminist, but her words were just parroted from current events. Her actions made it clear to us girls that her husbands/lovers were much more important than we were. I began to unconsciously believe that my future was predicated on having a man in my life. When I hit 14 and noticed that I was being noticed, I made the most of it. I fell in love regularly, a serial monogamist, sure that each boyfriend was “the one”. I hadn’t been out of high school a year before I was pregnant and married, in that order, and considered myself a success.

I was so proud of my firstborn daughter that I went back to my high school to show her off to my former teachers. They all cooed and smiled over my cherubic infant, except for Mr. Stewart, my English teacher. I walked into his empty classroom, he turned around from whatever he was doing, saw me standing there smiling with a baby in my arms, frowned, shook his head, and said, “You should have gone to college.” Then he turned away and went back to what he was doing. Not another look or word.

I stood there, surprised and mortified, then quietly left. I have never forgotten that moment, and I will be immensely grateful to Mr. Stewart for the rest of my life. In pondering his words, I realized that all he knew about me was my work in his class. I’m sure he knew I was an editor on the school paper and involved in Drama Club, but for the most part, his assessment of me was based on the papers I turned into him. He knew my work, and thought I was good enough to go to college.

No one had ever told me that before. I think he never said it because he assumed I would go. I had always been told I was too stupid to go to college and my parents refused to pay for it. No one told me I could apply for scholarships or loans. My high school GPA was 3.4, but I thought that’s just what students get who do their work.

I did well in school for two reasons: I was lucky enough to be born intelligent; and Mom taught me to be obedient, or else. A teacher was an authority figure to me. If the teacher said “do this”, I did it. But college? No. I was sure I wasn’t qualified, and definitely knew I couldn’t afford it with my salary at Taco Via.

I have done my greatest work when there has been no man in my life, when I fought the unconscious impulses of my upbringing that fiercely whispered I was not whole without a man. I earned a double-major with honors in just 35 months in between husband #1 and #2. I became a student leader statewide and a lobbyist during those years. I began a career as a legislative analyst, able to read, analyze, and write law when I was focused on me and my child and not on my looks, night life, or other means of seeking a man.

Imagine where I would be right now if I had gone to college straight out of high school. Imagine the career I would have if I had paid more attention early on to the talents I own that make my happy. Imagine the kind of marriage I could have if I had waited until I found my own place in the world, obtained my own healing, before seeking a life partner.

I know I am not a good role model for my daughters. I am certainly a better one than my own mother, but I have enough of a sense of my strengths and shortcomings to know I must allow other women to influence my girls, as well. First Lady Michelle Obama is a woman I greatly admire, and I speak of her in casual conversation with my girls. I talk about all of the women who have influenced me over the years, and the lessons I’ve learned from them.

I’ve also demonstrated change to my girls. I’ve been fearless in sharing my shortcomings, and showing them that it is possible to be better today than I was yesterday. Between me and Michelle Obama, and the trove of great female role models out there, I know my girls will find their place and much happiness. What more can a mother ask?