Odd Girl Out (3 page)

In their important book
Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children,
Michael Thompson and colleagues point out that every child wants three things out of life: connection, recognition, and power. The desire for connection propels children into friendship, while the need for recognition and power ignites competition and conflict. My point is that if all children desire these things, they will come to them, and into learning how to acquire them, on the culture's terms, that is, by the rules of how girls and boys are supposed to behave.

When I began this journey three years ago, I wanted to write so that other bullied girls would know they were not alone. As I spent more and more time with the girls, I realized I was also writing to know that
I
was not alone. I would soon discover that the bullying I endured in third grade was only the tip of the iceberg. I discovered that I harbored pain and confusion over many relationships in my childhood.

Around the circles of girls I met with, I could see I wasn't the only one who felt this way. The knowledge that we shared similar memories and feelings, that someone else understood what we had previously held inside, was amazing. The relief was palpable, and it opened unexpected doors that we were able to enter together. If we began the journey at the memory of bullying, we ended up asking, and answering, more questions about the culture we live in, about how girls treat each other, and even about ourselves than we had ever thought to imagine alone.

 

When
Odd Girl Out
was first published, the little research that existed on alternative aggressions was buried in academic journals. It went unnoticed in the media frenzy over school shootings. Public commentary continues to suggest that bullying is most dangerous between boys or when it culminates in physical violence. In chapter one, "The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls," I explore what may be unique about girls' aggression and analyze school attitudes toward girl bullying.

This chapter also examines the phenomenon of covert aggression between girls. A great deal of girls' anger flows quietly beneath the radar of teachers, guidance counselors, and parents. It is not, as one woman told me, "something you find in your child's drawer." Girls, ever respectful, tend to aggress quietly. They flash looks, pass notes, and spread rumors. Their actions, though sometimes physical, are typically more psychological and thus invisible to even an observant classroom eye. There is the note that is slipped into a desk; the eyes that catch, narrow, and withdraw; the lunch table that suddenly has no room. Girls talk to me in this chapter about how and why they act in secret.

The barbs of a girl bully go unnoticed when they are hidden beneath the facade of friendship. In chapter two, "Intimate Enemies," I explore dynamics of bullying and emotional abuse between close friends. The importance of relationship and connection in girls' lives, along with the fear of solitude, leads many of them to hold on to destructive friendships, even at the expense of their emotional safety. Aggressors, on the other hand, are hurting the close friends they appear to love.

Although I set out to understand severe episodes of bullying between girls, I quickly discovered that everyday episodes of conflict can be just as harrowing. In chapter three, "The Truth Hurts," girls answer the question, "When you are angry or upset with someone, do you tell them about it?" They unpack their fears of direct conflict with one another and explore the indirect acts they choose instead. Girls dissect the politics of how and why they gang up on each other. They explore how repressing anger and avoiding confrontation can lead to disastrous consequences.

Some of these disasters are now digital. Social media, such as e-mail, online chat, and texting, offer the perfect alternatives to the direct conflict so many girls disdain. Cyberbullying has become vicious and wide-ranging, while girls have become virtual addicts to their gadgets in the drive to stay connected to their friends. In chapter four, "BFF 2.0," I lead readers through the sprawling landscape of girls' digital relationships and report on the unique challenges of these new communication channels.

Of all the insults girls can hurl at each other, one of the worst is getting called a girl who thinks "she's all that." In the chapter of the same name, I ask girls why they can't stand it when someone appears conceited or full of herself. If this is indeed the age of girl power, why would someone else's success bother them? The girls open up about why they keep jealousy and competition secret from one another, and along the way introduce me to a code they use to communicate uncomfortable feelings.

I count myself among the many women and girls who have demonized the girl bullies in their lives. At some point, I began to wonder what it would be like to see Abby today, and I imagined the questions I might ask her. In chapter six, "The Bully in the Mirror," several former and current bullies talk about why they hurt and betrayed their friends. Listening to their stories, I consider my own past, wondering why so many of us are quick to separate ourselves from the "mean girls," and how this may affect our ability to address the problem of girl bullying.

The culture's socialization of girls as caretakers teaches them they will be valued for their relationships with others. In chapter seven, "Popular," I challenge some of the current research on what makes girls popular. In particular, I look at how the politics of girls' relationships can lead to mistreatment and aggression. I explore why some girls may be nice in private but mean in public and why other girls simply abandon their friends.

Not all girls avoid conflict. Aggression may be biological, but the face of anger is learned. Although I found alternative aggressions most severe among white, middle-class girls, I spent time in other communities where assertiveness and direct conflict are valued in girls. In "Resistance," I explore the history and practice of direct conflict and truth telling in African American, Latino, and working-class communities. Although girls from these specific communities are at the center of this chapter, the reader should not take this as a sign of their exclusion from others.
Odd Girl Out
focuses on life under rules of feminine restraint that all but refuse girls open acts of conflict. Those girls are primarily, but certainly not only, white and middle class.

The attention shown targets and aggressors of bullying often means the situation parents face is overlooked. Parents and guardians of targets harbor intense feelings of shame and helplessness, yet they are as isolated from one another as their daughters. Often they can only watch as their daughters come home crying day after day. Called at work because of a stomachache that doesn't exist or watching their girl's increasing isolation, they are embarrassed that their child is scorned. Some blame themselves, while others are angry at their daughter's passivity. Girls, if they confide the problem, often beg their parents not to intervene, fearing retribution.

In chapter nine, I explore how parents find themselves thrust into a world not unlike their daughters'. They want to help their children but fear making things worse. They are first torn, then muzzled, by their own confused feelings. Even as they struggle to help their child, they fear confrontation with another parent. Some choose to wait for the problem to pass or the phase to end.

When it's time for action, read chapter ten. "Helping Her Through Drama, Bullying, and Everything in Between" has my answers to the most pressing questions parents have asked me over the last decade. You will get my best thinking on what to say, how to say it, and the optimal course of action. You will also hear the voices of women and girls who told me what they wished their parents had done to make their lives easier during their ordeal—and why so many of them refused to tell their parents the truth.

When should your daughter get a Facebook account or cell phone? What kinds of limits should you set on use, and how do you talk to her about technology? For the answers, see chapter eleven, "Raising Girls in a Digital Age." Readers will learn what every parent of a girl should know about safe, ethical, and responsible use of social media.

Over the last decade, I have spent countless hours with educators and administrators—indeed, I have become a teacher myself. We work on the frontlines of the battle to end bullying. It is a complex and confusing war to wage. In chapter twelve, "The Road Ahead for Educators and Administrators," I share effective intervention and prevention strategies for classroom teachers and school leaders.

Are girls' problems with conflict confined to friendship and bullying? In the conclusion, I visit girls at a leadership workshop and discover unexpected parallels between their identities as girlfriends and girl leaders. Remembering the girls of chapter two, I explore links between girls' behavior in abusive friendships and the trauma of relationship violence. Finally, I consider the loss of self-esteem that besets girls around adolescence. Since alternative aggressions explode between girls around this time, I suggest potential connections between the two.

 

Because I wanted the girls to feel comfortable saying anything, teachers almost never joined my interview sessions. At one woman's insistence, I allowed her to sit in the back of a classroom I was visiting. Thirty minutes into a lively discussion about the ways girls are mean to each other, she was sitting stiffly, her face tightening in anger. Finally, she raised her hand.

"You know," she said, "not all girls are mean. Girls are wonderful! Women are the most important friends you'll ever have, and I don't think it's fair to talk only about the bad parts of girls." Although I could not agree with her more, the remark haunted me. It would be a grave mistake for the reader to interpret this book as a condemnation of girls and women. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Our culture has long been accustomed to celebrating the "niceness" of girls. The stories of
Odd Girl Out
may therefore unsettle some readers. But my attempt to name the aggression of girls should not be read as an attempt to disparage them. For the purposes of this book I interviewed only girls who identified as aggressors or targets. Not all girls bully, nor do they inflict injury in such severe ways.

I want to make clear that my deep affection for girls and women has guided this project every step of the way. Throughout my life, women and girls have nourished me with strength, wisdom, and care. I credit a great deal of my own success to older women mentors, many of whom were invaluable in helping this book come to life. And without the women closest to me, I would never have had the courage to arrive at many of the personal insights I share in this book.

Writing this book changed my life. I was astonished to find how many of my own fears and questions about relationships were echoed in the girls' remarks. Their stories forced me to look hard at my own fears of conflict, especially my need to be a "good girl." It is my hope that readers will be able to confront their own fears and pose their own questions. Such a journey of reconnection is certainly not easy, but it is well worth the trip.

The Linden School campus is nestled behind a web of sports fields that seem to hold at bay the bustling city in which it resides. On Monday morning in the Upper School building, students congregated languidly, catching up on the weekend, while others sat knees-to-chest on the floor, flipping through three-ring binders, cramming for tests. The students were dressed in styles that ran the gamut from trendy to what can only be described, at this age, as defiant. Watching them, it is easy to forget this school is one of the best in the region, its students anything but superficial. This is what I came to love about Linden: it celebrates academic rigor and the diversity of its students in equal parts. Over the course of a day with eight groups of ninth graders, I began each meeting with the same question: "What are some of the differences between the ways guys and girls are mean?"

From periods one through eight, I heard the same responses. "Girls can turn on you for anything," said one. "Girls whisper," said another. "They glare at you." With growing certainty, they fired out answers:

"Girls are secretive."

"They destroy you from the inside."

"Girls are manipulative."

"There's an aspect of evil in girls that there isn't in boys."

"Girls target you where they know you're weakest."

"Girls do a lot behind each other's backs."

"Girls plan and premeditate."

"With guys you know where you stand."

"I feel a lot safer with guys."

In bold, matter-of-fact voices, girls described themselves to me as disloyal, untrustworthy, and sneaky. They claimed girls use intimacy to manipulate and overpower others. They said girls are fake, using each other to move up the social hierarchy. They described girls as unforgiving and crafty, lying in wait for a moment of revenge that will catch the unwitting target off guard and, with an almost savage eye-for-an-eye mentality, "make her feel the way I felt."

The girls' stories about their conflicts were casual and at times filled with self-hatred. In almost every group session I held, someone volunteered her wish to have been born a boy because boys can "fight and have it be over with."

Girls tell stories of their anger in a culture that does not define their behaviors as aggression. As a result, their narratives are filled with destructive myths about the inherent duplicity of females. As poet and essayist Adrienne Rich notes,
⁴
"We have been depicted as generally whimsical, deceitful, subtle, vacillating."

Since the dawn of time, women and girls have been portrayed as jealous and underhanded, prone to betrayal, disobedience, and secrecy. Lacking a public identity or language, girls' nonphysical aggression is called "catty," "crafty," "evil," and "cunning." Rarely the object of research or critical thought, this behavior is seen as a natural phase in girls' development. As a result, schools write off girls' conflicts as a rite of passage, as simply "what girls do."