Odd Girls and others

I've been reading Rachel Simmons's Odd Girl Out. It got a lot of press last year some time, all about how girls really weren't so cooperative and care-centered as we'd all been led to believe (at least by Carol Gilligan and Lyn Mikel Brown) but rather that they engaged in "alternate aggressions"--verbal bullying, games of exclusion and inclusion, clique-ishness, etc.

Well, duh.

But actually the book's more complicated than that little summary implies. In fact what Simmons really argues is that all that cooperation and care is the sunny side of the "alternate aggressions"--that, finally, girls are smart about relationships, that they are socialized to know that relationships are important, and that therefore the way they wield power is through their (peer) relationships.

I remember.

I remember fighting with my younger sister, then promising to be her "best friend" if she wouldn't tell on me. I remember reneging on the promise every time she threatened to become burdensome or annoying. I remember finding her burdensome and annoying daily--not because she was, necessarily (though she may have been) but because a friend my own age would always trump my baby sister.

I remember moving to a new school partway through seventh grade and having someone tell me she really liked my pants. I remember the pants--they were red double-knit flares that I had bought all by myself. They fit well and I liked them, but I knew somehow that this compliment was not what it appeared to be. I brightened anyway and turned to the girl to accept her compliment, only to hear her say, "Yeah, they really suit your personality. They're--personality pants!" And then she collapsed into giggles, surrounded by her giggling friends.

I remember being in a tight-knit group of friends in high school, and how three of us would frequently gang up on one member. Sometimes it might have been me. One time it was my dearest friend--the godmother of my daughter, now. We made her believe that a group of us was going on a school-sponsored trip to Japan and that she couldn't come with us. We elaborated on the plan day after day on the schoolbus, falling into mock-guilty silences when she approached, then "reluctantly" revealing the "truth" about the trip...that it did exist, that she couldn't come. Which was no truth at all, but it took us weeks longer to reveal that. Why did we do it? Why did she forgive us?

My daughter is 13 now. She spent six years at an elementary school where she wasn't one of the "most popular" girls, but she got along fine. Then for sixth grade she went to a new school, a middle school that had kids from various other local elementaries including her own. All the old groups broke down. One of her best friends started trying to fit in with a more popular group--by teasing Mariah. By insulting the very thing they'd enjoyed together the day before. Every day, she got in the car after school sullen and surprised, off-balance. I could hear the pain in her voice when she asked me what was wrong with her, what was wrong with her friend, that this could be happening?

Simmons says we need to call this abuse, name it what it is so that we can intervene, teach girls better ways to interact. I'm not sure. That is, it is a kind of abuse, certainly. And the examples I've drawn are fairly minor--no one was driven to despair, or drugs, or disaster, in any of the instances I remember. And certainly many of us could use anger management, and conflict management, skills. We practiced these alternate aggressions, no doubt, because we didn't know how to handle our anger, our feelings of distance and separation from our friends. We still don't, in many cases.

As a parent I recalled to Mariah how horrible my own middle-school years had been. I told her some of the stories of ostracism and meanness that I could remember. Her eyes opened wider and wider as I told my stories. Inadequate as a parent though I may be, she still thinks I've got it more together than she does, and to hear that I suffered as she was suffering seemed to empower her. She didn't come into open conflict with her friend, but she found other friends, other groups who were welcoming. And she switched schools, though the social scene was only part of the reason. I don't know if we can get teachers to intervene, but I do hope we can be more open about our own experiences.

I didn't tell Mariah what a bully I had also been. I'm too ashamed of those memories, but I think I have to--in case she finds herself on that side of things, as well. I started to see it last year--badmouthing a girlfriend to another one day, then sweet-talking her the next. Teenagers are volatile, certainly, but they also--don't we all?--use their friends, sometimes.

This stuff causes Mark to shake his head and mutter "chicks are weird." (He's quoting an old buddy from years back whose words have become a catch-phrase in our house.) To him, we are. He grew up with a brother, in a masculine household. I've learned to function in his world, and he in mine, but Mariah bewilders him, and I think he's shocked and somewhat disbelieving when I share my own similar history. How do we get these stories out of their female ghetto, make them heard in the wider world, without just sounding "weird"?