Entries Tagged 'Girl Culture' ↓

On Wendsday I tuned in to a Twitter Chat sponsored by @parentella on bullying, girl bullying specifically. Ainsley’s having a rough year. She’s being “shut out” by all the other girls. It’s been going on for a couple of months now.

I’ve asked hundreds of grown women and younger girls about “girl bullying” and while everyone thinks this is a horrible and terrible thing to experience and someone should do something to stop it right now, before more girls get hurt, I have yet to meet a single woman or girl who has said, “that happened to me and here’s how I stopped it.”

The consensus appears to be that there really isn’t an effective way to stop it. Not as a whole. Not as a broad social problem. I, certainly, have never experienced an effective way to stop it. I’ve never met a teacher, principal, parent or girl who has had a simple formula to stop this distinctly feminine social hell.

Ainsley’s school does everything one might think would work, there are workshops about bullying, classroom discussions, “no tolerance” pledges taken by students, a “girls lunch” where the teacher keeps the girls in the classroom to have an open discussion about what kinds of bullying or annoying and hurtful behaviors are going on. On paper this works. In reality, it appears to have little effect. Or maybe it does – maybe things would be 100 times worse without these efforts.

I often hear women say, “then you meet these girls’ mothers and you realize where they got it.” While this appears logical, I have to question the theory because I have yet to meet the woman who has said, “oh, I never experienced anything like girl bullying in my life.” They ALL say, “yeah that happened to me in 3rd grade or in my senior year or at my first job.” Which means that it is so profoundly widespread that one would have to assume that all mothers across all cultures, tribes, ethnicities and religious belief systems essentially suck or have a tendancy toward meanness and actively teach this to their children.

No, I’m positive that the parents of many bullies are nice people, or have learned to become nicer people at least.

Which leads me to another questioning of bully assumptions: that bullying is learned behavior.

I question this because if you hang out with a room full of two-year-olds they are all selfish, bullying little monsters. Every last one of them is a terrible friend. They bite, they steal toys, they punch, they jocky for position at games, insist that they are always right, thrive on praise for being the best at even the littlest thing, can’t take the slightest competition or criticism at all, demand that everyone bow to their whims and if they don’t they will use manipulative methods like tantrums and screaming fits to get their way.

It’s the people around them who teach them how to be good friends, get along with others, share and cooperate. The adults around them are motivated by not wanting their two-year-old to be a social outcast for such deplorable behavior. They are also motivated by not wanting the other parents to shun them for raising such an A-hole.

Based on this, I believe it is friendship that is the learned behavior. Kindness toward the weird, different, better, worse, annoying human is the learned behavior.

My theory, and please test this and let me know if you come to a different conclusion, is that girls have no idea what they are doing socially and they are kind of bad at it, until they get better at it. The girls who stay bad at it account for the frequent comment, “God, adult women are even worse,” which is something I hear many adult women say about their coworkers and sisters-in-law.

Sometimes it takes a parent, teacher, principal or counselor saying, “You’re being awful and no one is going to want to hang out with you if you keep acting like this.” On both ends. Maybe, the pack of girls is annoyed by a particular trait – bragging, bossiness, whining, crying, secret violating – that is making it feel really, really good to be mean to her. This trait, right or wrong, will likely always lead to social danger unless the entire scope of culture changes, which isn’t likely to happen quickly, at least not while she’s still in the 3rd grade. Maybe it’s motivated by pure unadulterated jealousy – a natural human emotion that takes conscious effort to overcome. You know, like the time I recieved a press release about a book being published by a college senior, who had already scored better writing credits than I have in 15 years of diligence and brilliance and the subject of her book was how F#$% hard it is to be so F#$%& PERFECT. I steamed in pure jealousy for days and never did that book review, even though it might have been applicable to The Girl Revolution.

My conclusion is that we all have a little bit of Mean Girl in us, and we all have the capacity and the responsibility to overcome it.

Later, I’ll give you ways to help you daughter develop a core self that can withstand her turn in the Mean Girl Firing Range. Ways to instill a deep sense of self that won’t crumble in the face of girl bullying. As a parent, you don’t have the power to stop girl bullying in all its forms. But, you do have the power to help your daughter navigate it, stand up to it and insulate herself from it.

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Ainsley’s 3rd grade friendship troubles around bragging and I’m guessing, vying for the position of “queen bee,” possibly taking the wrong tone with people, gave us another opportunity to discuss friendship – what it means and how to get it.

At first, I admit, I was completely and totally without advice for her. Remember when a young Matthew Broderick played Tic Tac Toe with the computer (back when the invention of a computer inspired awe and amazement in us) in War Games? Joshua, the computer, learned “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” It’s unwinnable. That’s how I feel about girl drama and frenemies.

What was your earliest heartbreak? Was your first experience of emotional devastation caused by a guy? Unlikely. If you are a woman, chances are your first experience of emotional treachery was at the hands of another girl.

Naomi Wolf says in her Bazaar article, Black Swan and Female Rivalry, which looks at the various terrible ways we sometimes treat each other, vying for position, sometimes vying for the same man, sometimes just out of pure spite, envy and boredom.

As a woman, it took me a good 30-something years to really understand what I wanted and needed out of friendship and figure out how to get it, and how to avoid the wrong people (drama-makers, takers and emotional-vampires). I’ve had bad friends, bad crowds, frenemies, been way too forgiving and loyal to people who weren’t deserving. I’ve also, at times, been a bad friend and screwed up in some major ways.

Like every parent, I’m hoping and praying that my daughter will learn from my mistakes and let me teach her how to both choose good friends and be one. I, personally, adore having friends. I think it’s so fun and intimate. I feel blessed by my current friendships: online and in-person, on the other side of the world and right next door, those from my early years and those I met yesterday.

Tips for Attracting Only the RIGHT Friends

The trick, in my experience, is avoid deciding WHO you want your friends to be. We get fixated on certain people and then hope they are what we want or expect. We might decide that Ivy, the cool, popular girl, is the one that should be our friend. That, we think, will make us happy. But, if Ivy is a gossip, a bully, a mean girl, is jealous or spiteful and always tries to steal your boyfriends, make the other girls side against you, or informs you that your clothes are ugly – well, obviously this is not a person who will make you happy.

Far more effective, is to decide what QUALITIES you want in a friend and how you want to FEEL in a friendship.

This will give you a sort of check-list to refer to when you meet someone. You might have “honest” and “loyal” on your list of qualities, meet someone and realize after you’ve hung out a few times that they lie and gossip about their other friends. The fact that “honest” and “loyal” is on your list will make the lies and gossip stand out like “red flags” and you are less likely to ignore such a warning. Maybe this person isn’t meant to be your BFF.

Writing down the feelings you want to feel when you’re with your friends gives another sort of check list. Say, you’ve had a few girls-night-outs. Ask yourself, “how do I feel when I’m around this person?” Is it really fun? Do I feel excited? Does time fly and I wish it weren’t over when it’s time to go home? Do I feel understood? Do we talk about things that I find interesting or exciting? If so, this is a fantastic friendship to pursue and will probably bring blessings to your life.

But, if there are other feelings . . . maybe an anxiety tickle in the pit of your stomach, maybe an urge to get up and leave several times, maybe your inner-self whispers “be careful” or “don’t cross her,” such feelings are likely NOT on your list of feelings you wish to have in a friendship and one should run, not walk, away from that person.

Learn it and Teach It

Writing this down, or putting it on your Dream Board, has magical qualities that cannot be intellectually explained. It’s a form of spiritual power. It’s a form of prayer. Is there a bigger power than the personal power of being able to create your own life?

You can’t teach this to your daughter unless you learn it first. If there are drama-makers, gossips, liars, emotional-vampires, “dementors,” joy-stealers or other intolerable people in your life, ask yourself, “what they are doing there?”

The list or Dream Board has another useful magic power, it can make people, who don’t possess the qualities you’re looking for, get suddenly busy or move.

At first, you might think you’ll be sad about this, then you’ll notice how much lighter, happier and more joyful you feel now that someone’s not sucking the joy out of your life with their incessant complaining, gossiping or back-biting. You might feel pity for your “friend,” but let me assure you there are plenty of other complainers, gossips and back-biters who will fill the void of “friendship” for them. Whatever you do, Dear God, please resist the urge to “fix” or “help” them.

Girl Culture and friendship can be rough and emotionally scarring, especially for girls, where it’s a form of currency or capital. The stakes (your heart and your daughters’) are high and that makes friendship a crucial discussion point with girls.

Sit down with your daughter and talk about your past friendships – the mistakes you made, how it made you feel, what you would have done differently. She can’t learn from your mistakes if you don’t share them.

Sit down with her and make the list of qualities and feelings you want from your friendships, put them on a dream board, pray for them, wish on a star, throw a penny in a fountain. When she meets someone new ask her how she feels when she’s around that person (which is not the same as asking how she feels about that person).

Then sit back and trust that great friendships are coming your way.

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Ainsley has been doing great in school. She is a high achiever and she loves school. We celebrate her accomplishments at home, encourage her to be proud of her achievements and create expectations for her to exceed them.

She has 41 accelerated reading points, due to reading the first three books of the Harry Potter series this term. The goal the teacher set for her was 7.7 points. She’s over-the-moon excited. It’s the most points in her class. She’s proud. And she should be.

She told her friends.

That’s where the trouble comes in.

They’ve been giving her the cold shoulder. Don’t want to play with her. Shutting her out. Excluding her. You know, that girl thing that girls do when they are mad at other girls (and don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about or that this is an unfair or untrue stereotype). There are four of them that play together and three of them are now banded together.

Banded together against The Bragger. In this instance, The Bragger is my daughter.

The subject of feeling proud of ourselves comes up frequently in women’s self-help and personal-growth books. Leslie Bennetts, in The Feminine Mistake, writes about of how women are afraid to tell their friends, too loudly or excitedly, that they made a huge deal, got a promotion, accomplished a goal or achieved a raise. Women are far more likely to complain to each other than to brag about our major achievements and successes to each other.

Why? There’s a steep social price that begins in the early days of school. Most girls and women have experienced it at one point or another.

The subject of bragging comes up at our dinner table quite frequently. Ainsley’s little brother, Zack, has a habit of goading his sister every time she gets corrected or in trouble. If I tell her to pick up her after-school mess by the door, he will chime in, “I always pick up my stuff, right Mom?” This makes Ainsley’s head spin with fury. How dare he point out the ways in which he believes he is better than her. The other night, when Ainsley said it makes her feel bad that he thinks he is better than her I asked him, “Do you think you’re better than Ainsley?” He simply replied, “Yes.” We were hysterically laughing at his genuine four-year-old response.

Maybe it is just because he is four, or maybe it is because he is male, that he unequivocally believes this. My husband, for instance, will unequivocally state that he “is a great father and a great husband.” No amount of evidence to the contrary will sway his belief about himself. I’m not saying he’s not, but when was the last time you heard a woman say, “I am a great mother and a great wife,” without pointing out her own lack of perfection or her fallibility? Never. Why? A familiar phrase from school rings in my head when I ask the question: “You’re so conceited!”

Naively assuming that girls today are more mature and evolved than my generation of girls at the elementary level (being influenced by my current more mature friends who are genuinely happy for me when I accomplish something), I recently told Ainsley that being proud of one’s accomplishments and telling others about them – otherwise known as bragging – was okay and not rude. I was soundly told that I was wrong because “her teacher said it was rude.”

Far more powerful, effective and potentially damaging to one’s self-worth and innate feeling of accomplishment (or innate desire to accomplish) than her teacher’s opinion, or mine, is a click of girls making it clear, “bragging will not be tolerated.”

I have to wonder how much ambition and accomplishment is lost in the world due to grown women continuing to abide by these playground rules.

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The Spark Summit hosted experts on body image and girlhood, who fielded some complex questions and came up with some great answers.

Q1: Brooklyn, NY: What do you have to say about sports, for example, competitive cheerleading, which are broadly feminized and ALWAYS over-sexualized by media?

Q2: From Wellesley, MA: Have any of you brought your research results to media industry producers in hopes of affecting positive change in media images?

Q3: From NOW, NYC: Has anyone done any research on the relationship between sexualized images of women and violence against women?

Q4: From Alabama: How do we address the female athletes and actors/celebrities who make the choice/say “yes” to being sexualized in photo shoots, etc? Can educational efforts be targeted to the subject?

Q5: From San Francisco, CA: Have there been any studies on the relationship between early sexualization of girls and the trend of homo-erotic images and teen girls kissing girls primarily for the pleasure of boys?

The answers were interesting, visit the Spark Summit website to read them.

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Some things never change. But New Moon Girls ISN’T one of those things. In 1992 it came on the scene as the first girl-edited magazine for 8-14 year olds. Now it’s meeting girls’ 21st century needs with a safe social network for girls worldwide.

Happy Birthday New Moon!

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