- Home
- Rachel Simmons
Odd Girl Out
Odd Girl Out Read online
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Book
About the Author
Discussion Questions
Tips to Further Enhance Your Reading of Odd Girl Out
First Mariner Books edition 2011
Copyright © 2002 by Rachel Simmons
All rights reserved.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhbooks.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Simmons, Rachel, 1974-
Odd girl out: the hidden culture of aggression in girls/
Rachel Simmons.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-15-100604-5 ISBN 978-0-15-602734-2 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-547-52019-3 (rev. ed.)
1. Aggressiveness in children. 2. Girls—Psychology. I. Title.
BF723.A35 .S56 2002
302.5'4'08342—dc21 2001006864
Text set in Galliard
Book design by Kaelin Chappell
Printed in the United States of America
DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my parents,
Claire and Luiz Simmons,
whose constant faith, love,
and support made this book possible
and
To Jane Isay:
heroine, world changer, and friend,
who believed, and believed, and believed.
Foreword
When it was first published, Odd Girl Out lit a fuse in the culture, setting off a passionate public dialogue about girls and bullying. Parents and girls who had struggled without recognition suddenly gained a platform, language, and community. Now, this thing that had lived in the shadows had come to light.
Although I wrote the book as a journalist telling a story, I ended up becoming part of the story itself. Odd Girl Out's publication launched me on a book tour that never quite came to an end. I began working with schools, families, and youth professionals to fight the bullying epidemic. I became a classroom teacher and co-founded the Girls Leadership Institute, a nonprofit organization that teaches girls, schools, and families skills for healthy relationships. I wrote two more books: Odd Girl Speaks Out, a collection of girls' writing about bullying and friendship, and The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence.
This is why I had to revise the book. I wrote it as an observer, but I have revised it as a practitioner. The new edition contains a decade of strategies, insights, and wisdom I have gathered while teaching and living with girls, interviewing administrators, coaching parents, and talking with school counselors. In four new chapters, readers will get down-to-earth tools to help a girl survive one of the most painful events of her life. I share the lessons I learned the hard way and the best practices I collected from extraordinary colleagues.
When I first wrote Odd Girl Out, there was no texting, no Facebook, no cell phone cameras, no video chats. Today, girl bullying has gone digital. Cell phones and computers have become a new kind of bathroom wall, giving users the ability to destroy relationships and reputations with a few clicks. Social media has been a game changer, transforming the landscape of girl bullying.
Technology has also altered girls' everyday relationships, indeed girls' very sense of self. It is not uncommon for a girl to say, "I don't exist if I'm not on Facebook." Many girls sleep with their cell phones on their chests, waiting for them to vibrate with news in the night. They treat their cell phones like extensions of their bodies and are inconsolable if they lose access. In 2010, the average teen texted three thousand times per month.
There is now a seamless integration between girls' virtual and real lives, and this new era of BFF 2.0 has brought both blessing and curse. On the one hand, cell phones and social networking sites like Facebook allow girls to connect in exhilarating new ways. On the other hand, Facebook makes many girls anxious, jealous, and even paranoid about their friendships. Girls have instant access to photographs of parties they were excluded from, or conversations they were not invited to join. Cell phones are posing thorny new questions about friendship, such as: Is my friend mad at me if I text her and she doesn't reply? Why is she texting while I'm talking to her?
This new edition guides readers through the sprawling world girls now inhabit online. In two new chapters, I explain the ins and outs of cyberbullying. I also explore the more common cyberdrama, or day-to-day conflicts and confusion that social media can ignite. I share concrete advice on how to guide girls through the new challenges they are facing.
Still other changes have evolved within the hidden culture of girls' aggression. As the issue of girl bullying has risen to new prominence, it has attracted a more troubling kind of attention. Reality television show producers discovered that mean girls sell, and they churned out scores of programs featuring breathtakingly aggressive females. These programs rewarded their stars with book deals, product lines, and other spoils of celebrity—and gained a rapt teen following. The scramble to commodify the mean girl trickled down to even the youngest consumers: children's television programming began to highlight an array of snarky, sarcastic girl characters. As a result, girls now observe ten times the amount of relational aggression on television that they see in real life. In an analysis of television programs, researchers found that the meanest female characters on television were frequently rewarded for their behavior.
Invariably, these changes in the culture inflect girls' relationships. With more aggression to absorb, there is more to mimic. When aggression is sold as entertainment or an accessory to friendship, it is harder to define the behavior as problematic. Girls perceive an incentive to claim power through aggression. More than ever before, girls face pressure to be and act and look in ways that undermine their healthy development.
In my travels over the last ten years, there is one comment that I hear almost everywhere: girl bullying is not only meaner; it's younger.1 While three-year-old girls have always used relational aggression (the use of friendship as a weapon) to control their peers, today's girls seem to reach developmental milestones sooner. Name-calling, exclusion, and popularity wars start as early as kindergarten. It is unclear if girls are mimicking behavior they do not really understand, or if we are now noticing what was there all along. Still, the age creep of girl bullying, even if it has yet to be backed up by research, is difficult to ignore. Parents cannot wait until their girls are in elementary school to educate themselves and their daughters about aggression and bullying.
Not all the changes of the last decade are troubling. There has been remarkable social change. The number of researchers studying girls' aggression has skyrocketed. Scores of studies have been completed and published, providing the first critical mass of research on girls' psychological aggression.2 Today, it is harder to argue that the cruelty of girls is a trivial phase, rite of passage, or "girls being girls." Just a few years ago, the term "relational aggression" was largely unknown. Now
, training to understand and intervene in girls' aggression is increasingly common in school districts across the country.
State and federal governments are also taking notice. By early 2011, twenty states had passed legislation requiring schools to create anti-bullying policy (my father, a state legislator, is the primary sponsor of Maryland's Safe Schools Reporting Act). The federal government launched Stop Bullying Now, a wide-ranging, multi-agency initiative to reduce bullying in schools. And news media is also taking notice: after several tormented children and teens committed suicide, the plight of bullied youth and their families became breaking news. National news programs like NBC's Today and CNN's American Morning led with stories of peer assault, cybercruelty, and bullying among teens. The unwelcome attention this exposure brought to school communities put others on notice: crises that were once private community matters could wind up leading a national newscast. The issue's new prominence has inspired more parent advocacy and increased vigilance among school administrators.
There have also been some surprises along the way. I have noticed increasing numbers of boys and their parents gathering in the audience of my talks. After student assemblies, boys wait in line along with girls to ask me questions. They share stories of being targeted by a class's "mean girls," or admit to "acting like mean girls" themselves. Research confirms a shrinking gender gap in behaviors like relational aggression, especially by the time boys reach middle school. These behaviors are clearly not owned by girls, and adolescent boys are telling researchers that relational and social aggression—actions that damage friendship and reputation—concern them more than physical intimidation.
It is unclear if the incidence of these behaviors is higher today, or if we now have a language to name what is happening. Researchers who once asked boys only about physical violence are now reframing their questions. Although it is true that girls disproportionately engage in some of these behaviors, it is also surely time for boys to have their say. In the meantime, this book may be written about girls, but many of its stories and strategies apply to boys and girls alike.
Despite the extraordinary changes of the last decade, girl bullying looks a lot like it always did, and it is far from over. Every day, girls eat lunch in bathroom stalls because they are too afraid to sit alone in the cafeteria. They sit in class, anxious and panicked, obsessively wondering who will play with them at recess. They open their cell phones to screens blinking with venom. They also struggle to confront toxic friends and speak their truths. As ever, girls need our help and support.
By now, I have spoken to tens of thousands of people. Many enjoy my advice, but most want to hear stories. They are curious about the other parents and girls I have met: How did they feel? What choices did they face? How did they overcome their struggle? The hidden culture of aggression in girls can be a hurtful, lonely place. But it is in others' stories that we can hear and see ourselves. We know we are not alone. We know, too, that there is hope. We know it will not always feel the way it does right now.
In this new edition of Odd Girl Out, I am proud to share all that I have learned with you. The stories, including yours, must continue to be told.
Introduction
When I was eight years old, I was bullied by another girl. I remember very little about that year. My memory is fractured by time and will. I was in the third grade, wore pigtails, and had a lisp. I was known to my teachers as a "rusher," the girl who tore through long-division worksheets and map quizzes, making careless mistakes I was told I could avoid. But I loved to finish first.
So did Abby. She was my popular friend, not a particularly close one. I still don't know why she did it. First she whispered about me to my best friend, who soon decided she'd be happier playing with other girls. When we went to dance class after school at the local community center, Abby rounded up my friends and convinced them to run away from me. Into the center's theater I would sprint after them, winded and frantic, eyes straining in the sudden darkness. Down over rows of slumbering chairs and up on the stage, I would follow the retreating patter of steps and fading peals of laughter.
Day after day I stood in half-lit empty hallways, a stairwell, the parking lot. In all of these places I remember standing alone. In the early evenings before dinner, I cried to my mother while she cooked. The sorrow was overwhelming, and I was sure I was the only girl ever to know it. This is what I remember most.
Sixteen years later, I was attending graduate school in England. It was raining the day I rode my bike to the library in search of answers about what had happened with Abby. Exactly what pulled me there is hard to say. Something about the memory seemed terribly off-balance to me. On the one hand, I could remember few details. On the other, the anguish of being abandoned by all of my friends and of losing my closest at Abby's hand felt real and raw. It was something that never receded gently with the rest of my childhood memories. I wanted—I needed—to fill in the blanks.
That day, I carried with me the memory of a late night at college, when a casual midnight snack led to six of us confessing that an Abby haunted our past. It was exhilarating to discover we'd all been through the same ordeal. Like me, my friends had spent years believing they were the only ones.
Armed with that knowledge, I pedaled carefully along the slick streets, certain there would be volumes of books waiting to explain how and why girls bully each other. When my first few computer searches turned up next to nothing, I chalked it up to rusty research skills, or rushing. Then I called the librarian over for help. As it turned out, I'd been doing just fine on my own.
In a sea of articles on boys' aggression and bullying, there were only a small handful of articles about girls. There were no accessible books. No guides for parents. No cute survival manuals for kids. As I sat reading the articles, I could not see myself or Abby in what most of these researchers called bullying. I was first surprised, then frustrated.
I sent out an e-mail to everyone I knew in the States and asked them to forward it to as many women as they could. I asked a few simple questions: "Were you ever tormented or teased by another girl? Explain what it was like. How has it affected you today?" Within twenty-four hours my in box was flooded with responses from all over America. The messages piled up as women told their stories into cyberspace with an emotional intensity that was undeniable. Even on the computer screen, their pain felt as fresh and unresolved as my own. Women I never met wrote that I would be the first person ever to hear their story. It would be a long time before I knew it was because I was the first to ask.
Silence is deeply woven into the fabric of the female experience. It is only in the last thirty years that we have begun to speak the distinctive truths of women's lives, openly addressing rape, incest, domestic violence, and women's health. Although these issues always existed, over time we have given them a place in our culture by building public consciousness, policy, and awareness.
Now it is time to end another silence: There is a hidden culture of girls' aggression in which bullying is epidemic, distinctive, and destructive. It is not marked by the direct physical and verbal behavior that is primarily the province of boys. Our culture refuses girls access to open conflict, and it forces their aggression into nonphysical, indirect, and covert forms. Girls use backbiting, exclusion, rumors, name-calling, and manipulation to inflict psychological pain on victimized targets. Unlike boys, who tend to bully acquaintances or strangers, girls frequently attack within tightly knit networks of friends, making aggression harder to identify and intensifying the damage to the targets.
Within the hidden culture of aggression, girls fight with body language and relationships instead of fists and knives. In this world, friendship is a weapon, and the sting of a shout pales in comparison to a day of someone's silence. There is no gesture more devastating than the back turning away.
In the hidden culture of aggression, anger is rarely articulated, and every day of school can be a new social minefield that realigns itself without warning. During times of con
flict, girls will turn on one another with a language and justice only they can understand. Behind a facade of female intimacy lies a terrain traveled in secret, marked with anguish, and nourished by silence.
This is the world I want the reader to enter. It is where, beneath a chorus of voices, one girl glares at another, then smiles silently at her friend. The next day a ringleader passes around a secret petition asking girls to outline the reasons they hate the targeted girl. The day after that, the outcast sits silently next to the boys in class, head lowered, shoulders slumped forward. The damage is neat and quiet, the aggressor and target invisible.
Public awareness of bullying has grown in recent years, propelled by the tragedies of youth gun violence. The national conversation on bullying, however, has trained its spotlight mostly on boys and their aggression. Defining bullying in the narrowest of terms, it has focused entirely on physical and direct acts of violence. The aggression of girls, often hidden, indirect, and nonphysical, has gone unexplored. It has not even been called aggression, but instead "what girls do."
Yet women of every age know about it. Nearly all of us have been bystanders, targets, or bullies. So many have suffered quietly and tried to forget. Indeed, this has long been one of girlhood's dark, dirty secrets. Nearly every woman and girl has a story. It is time to break the silence.
I set out to interview girls between the ages of ten and fourteen, the years when bullying peaks. On my first day, I worked with several groups of ninth graders at a coed private school on the East Coast. My plan was to encourage an informal discussion guided by a list of questions I'd written down. Standing before each class, I introduced myself, explained my own history with bullying, and told the girls what we'd be discussing. Without fail, the girls would do a double take. Talking about what? During class? They snickered and whispered.
I started each session with the same question: "Do you think there are differences between the ways guys are mean to each other and the ways girls are mean to each other?" The whispering stopped. Then the hands flew like streamers. Suddenly, they couldn't talk fast enough. Their banter was electric. The girls hooted, screeched, laughed, snorted, and veered off into personal stories, while notes flew around the room, accompanied by rolling eyes and searing and knowing glances.