Women, Why Are We Bullies?

Let’s face it, more than likely we’ve all done it – excluded another woman for whatever reason, abandoned a friend because she didn’t fit what we thought she should be, turn on someone because the group turned on her too. We may not want to hear it. But, women are vicious and cruel to each other more often than not. The culture of sisterhood is best described as a culture of envy and dark-of-night aggression. We’re not born that way. We learned it and our girls are learning it too.

You can see it in the collective eyes of a pack of third-grade girls. It begins early, the girl in class who tells your daughter she wants to be her best friend and strong-arms the other little girls into keeping away from her at recess.  By the teenage years, the competition, the “better-than-you” has gone well beyond getting left by yourself during lunch.

I personally appreciate boys. They don’t belabor any point. They get mad. They yell. Maybe they duke it out on the playground. It’s done. Girls will loathe you until the day you die for wearing the same shirt as them. A group of women I spend time with had this discussion the other day as it related to moms at school. We all wondered why the bullying hadn’t ended once high school was over. It actually had gotten more vicious with age.

Sending our oldest off to public school this year has been a huge eye-opener for me. I think I realized in the back of my head that women were not exactly kind and gentle to each other on a regular basis. I’ve found myself in the midst of my fair share of nasty shiz done to me as well as been a part of things that should have never happened to other women in my life.

I also figured that somewhere in the realm of parenthood my husband and I would eventually have to tackle the inevitable bad things girls do to each other and hope we had along the way led our daughters in a direction away from that petty hell.

Then our daughter had a run-in with another girl in her class this year who spent a whole lot of time trying to make sure the other girls hated our kiddo. It was cruel and we all – right down to her teacher, administrators and other parents – were incredibly surprised to see it starting already in first grade.

I figured that meant I would have to pop my brain out of fairy tale land pretty freakin’ quick and wrap my head around ways to positively overcome this girl-related craziness. That’s when I first met Rachel Simmons.

While she now would truly be one of my top 10 people to have dinner with, I’ve never actually met her. But, she found me anyway – on the “Parents Books” shelf in the library at our daughter’s school where I just happened to pick up her incredible book, Odd Girl Out, Revised and Updated: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls

In it, I thought I’d find the answers to help my sweet 6-year-old navigate the rocky waters on the way to womanhood. What I found was a book that made me stand up and take stock of life, look at how women treat each other every day and make some most necessary changes.

Simmons, a long-time author and public speaker, basically puts women on notice. We may think we can read a book and fix our kids, she says. But, really, what we need to do is shift our own paradigm and realign the way we treat the women around us every day before the mean girl culture that permeates school (and life) today can shift as well.

This isn’t just a call to re-evaluate our sense of self. It’s a call to honor our girls, to keep them safe, to steer them away from bullying, drugs and depression and even suicide. Aggression amongst women is dubious and rampant. Our daughters have learned it from society, from culture and even (sadly) from us.

I started Odd Girl Out without knowing what I was getting into and found myself led on a path of reliving my high school years. They were a mix of the general foolishness and naive space that pretty much dominates any 16-year-old’s life. But, her research, the conversations she had with teens and women who had been bullied as teens were remarkably resonant. She states from the beginning how girls are raised to “be nice” and to not act aggressive. Responding with emotion and anger is frowned upon by society, perpetuated by women, and girls then begin to look to more hidden and secretive – ultimately more destructive – ways to cope with the emotions they’ve been told are bad.

I sat down and realized for the first time how often these sorts of things have happened in my life on either side of the coin and Simmons guided me through the whys and hows of that in a way that was educational, non-judgemental and straight to the point.

I honestly couldn’t put the book down. It made so much sense and it wasn’t long before our oldest daughter and I were able to work together to come up with new strategies for both of us that we could work on now and for the long term. Simmons laid out tools for dealing with bullying, ways to help keep your daughters from being a victim or victimizing another girl, clear strategies for parents and teens in particular for internet safety, coping with conflict between friends and more.

Odd Girl Out was one of those tough reads that you find yourself eternally grateful for having discovered. The great news is that while you can often read these kind of books, come to the end, close it and walk on your merry way, Simmons doesn’t let you get away that easy.

Her website and blog take you beyond the research and conversations right into today, talking about current issues like asking the question if breastfeeding is sexualizing girls or one mom’s response to her 7-year-old thinking she is fat. There are videos that offer support dealing with teen issues like suicide, sex and friends who are brutalizing each other. She also has launched some fun, cool initiatives to keep girls. teens and women plugged in, connected and fighting the tough fight of overcoming the culture of envy that permeates the lives of girls and women.

It has been a long time since a book has moved me so deeply and cut right to the chase about the things girls and women cope with every day. I highly recommend checking out Odd Girl Out and Rachel Simmons’ website. She inspires compassion, keeping it real and giving girls/women tools to empower them on their journey.

At OBE we always recommend that you support your local independent bookseller by purchasing through them. But, if you do prefer ordering online, please consider supporting OBE by clicking on the link to the book in the above review or below and complete your purchase from there.

Odd Girl Out, Revised and Updated: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls

Tags: bullying, Culture, girls, mental health, Odd Girl Out, Our Big Earth Media Co., Rachel Simmons, society, Teens, women

Category: CREATE & LEARN, Rainy Day Book Club