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Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls
Dirty looks and taunting notes are just a few examples of girl bullying that girls and women have long suffered through silently and painfully. With this book Rachel Simmons elevated the nation's consciousness and has shown millions of girls, parents, counselors, and teachers how to deal with this devastating problem. Poised to reach a wider audience in paperback, including the teenagers who are its subject, Odd Girl Out puts the spotlight on this issue, using real-life examples from both the perspective of the victim and of the bully.
301 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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January 15, 2009
I honestly think everyone should read this book – especially parents of girls. It’s about the ways in which girls deal with anger and aggression, as opposed to the ways in which boys do. The premise is that boys tend to be more direct in their aggression - physical confrontation - while in contrast, girls use an indirect approach known as relational aggression. Wikipedia's definition of relational aggression is a form of aggression where the group is used as a weapon to assault others and others' relationships. It uses lies, secrets, betrayals and a host of other two-faced tactics to destroy or damage the relationships and social standing of others in the group. [wikipedia article:] To be honest, reading this book has brought up a lot of memories. The following is the most vivid.
When I was little, I was an incredibly outgoing kid. I would talk to just about anybody, anywhere. I didn’t worry about making friends; it was just something that happened as I went along. I was very outspoken, too.
That all changed in the third grade. Even though I’m now 28 years old, my third grade year still ranks as one of the worst in my life. Third grade actually started off quite well. T. and H., girls who had been two of my best friends for several years, were in my class. There were also other girls in my class whom I easily befriended. One of these girls was K.
K was a year older than the rest of us; her mother had requested that she be held back, that she repeat the third grade, because she didn’t feel her daughter was mature enough to enter the fourth grade. If only her mother hadn’t made that decision, I probably would have turned out to be a very different person. At the beginning of the year, K became friends with H., T. and me. My birthday was in September, and that year I had my first ever birthday party. I invited six girls, and K. was one of them. We all had a great time.
One day in early October, during recess, as I was approaching T. and K., I heard them talking; they didn’t notice me behind them. K. was asking T. to play with her that day, and specifically asking her *not* to play with H., and T. agreed. I didn’t say anything to them; instead, I went and found H., and repeated the story to her. We concocted a plan to have T. and K. overhear H. asking me not to play with K. We put our plan into action, and that act of retribution was how one of the worst periods of my life began.
Immediately, K. began turning the rest of the class against us. She made up stories about us, told lies to other students about us, and once even told lies about me to my mother (who was a classroom volunteer). Instead of playing K’s game and trying to turn others against her, we simply defended ourselves; yet her campaign of hate was successful. Within a week, my third grade experience had gone from being great to being hell. Additionally, H. and I were enrolled in our school’s Gifted program. This meant that once a week she and I went to a special Gifted class, instead of to regular class with everyone else. For this, K. denounced us as nerds, and said that because we were “Gifted”, we thought we were better than everybody else. In addition to being nerds, she claimed that we were weird, strange, and not the sort of person one should be friends with. Suddenly no one in my class liked me and H. People whom I had liked now refused to talk to me – or if they did talk to me, it was only to call me names or to threaten me. Then, to make matters worse, I got glasses. I certainly need glasses – and I needed them back then – but nothing gives third graders ammunition like glasses. I was taunted relentlessly, and called Four Eyes more times than I could count. I had my glasses snatched off my face during recess. I had them held over my head, just out of reach (I have always been short).
I don’t know if my third grade teacher knew what was going on or not. One thing was certain: K. was one of my teacher’s favorites. K. had been in that class during her first time through third grade. As I mentioned above, she hadn’t failed the third grade; in fact, her grades had been quite decent. As such, she didn’t need to learn the third grade curriculum. Instead, the teacher drafted her to be somewhat of a teacher’s aide, a classroom watchman, and all about helper. Several times I was lectured by my teacher for various actions (both real and imaginary) reported to my teacher by K. The few attempts I made to convince the teacher that K was the one causing problems were met by disbelief and/or the advice of “Don’t be a tattle-tale.”
I had started the third grade outgoing, friendly, willing to strike up a conversation with anybody, and always willing to speak my mind. By the end of the year I was quiet, introverted, speaking only to my closest friends, and often only when spoken to.
I’m 30 now; the events that happened above occurred a long ago, and yet I still think about them periodically. I wonder what my life would have been like had K gone into the fourth grade that year. Or if H. and I hadn’t gone through our retaliatory charade. Or if my teacher had done something to stop K’s behavior. Would I have continued to be gregariously outgoing all through my school years? Would I have lived my life differently? Would I still have become the socially anxious oddball that I am now?
When I was little, I was an incredibly outgoing kid. I would talk to just about anybody, anywhere. I didn’t worry about making friends; it was just something that happened as I went along. I was very outspoken, too.
That all changed in the third grade. Even though I’m now 28 years old, my third grade year still ranks as one of the worst in my life. Third grade actually started off quite well. T. and H., girls who had been two of my best friends for several years, were in my class. There were also other girls in my class whom I easily befriended. One of these girls was K.
K was a year older than the rest of us; her mother had requested that she be held back, that she repeat the third grade, because she didn’t feel her daughter was mature enough to enter the fourth grade. If only her mother hadn’t made that decision, I probably would have turned out to be a very different person. At the beginning of the year, K became friends with H., T. and me. My birthday was in September, and that year I had my first ever birthday party. I invited six girls, and K. was one of them. We all had a great time.
One day in early October, during recess, as I was approaching T. and K., I heard them talking; they didn’t notice me behind them. K. was asking T. to play with her that day, and specifically asking her *not* to play with H., and T. agreed. I didn’t say anything to them; instead, I went and found H., and repeated the story to her. We concocted a plan to have T. and K. overhear H. asking me not to play with K. We put our plan into action, and that act of retribution was how one of the worst periods of my life began.
Immediately, K. began turning the rest of the class against us. She made up stories about us, told lies to other students about us, and once even told lies about me to my mother (who was a classroom volunteer). Instead of playing K’s game and trying to turn others against her, we simply defended ourselves; yet her campaign of hate was successful. Within a week, my third grade experience had gone from being great to being hell. Additionally, H. and I were enrolled in our school’s Gifted program. This meant that once a week she and I went to a special Gifted class, instead of to regular class with everyone else. For this, K. denounced us as nerds, and said that because we were “Gifted”, we thought we were better than everybody else. In addition to being nerds, she claimed that we were weird, strange, and not the sort of person one should be friends with. Suddenly no one in my class liked me and H. People whom I had liked now refused to talk to me – or if they did talk to me, it was only to call me names or to threaten me. Then, to make matters worse, I got glasses. I certainly need glasses – and I needed them back then – but nothing gives third graders ammunition like glasses. I was taunted relentlessly, and called Four Eyes more times than I could count. I had my glasses snatched off my face during recess. I had them held over my head, just out of reach (I have always been short).
I don’t know if my third grade teacher knew what was going on or not. One thing was certain: K. was one of my teacher’s favorites. K. had been in that class during her first time through third grade. As I mentioned above, she hadn’t failed the third grade; in fact, her grades had been quite decent. As such, she didn’t need to learn the third grade curriculum. Instead, the teacher drafted her to be somewhat of a teacher’s aide, a classroom watchman, and all about helper. Several times I was lectured by my teacher for various actions (both real and imaginary) reported to my teacher by K. The few attempts I made to convince the teacher that K was the one causing problems were met by disbelief and/or the advice of “Don’t be a tattle-tale.”
I had started the third grade outgoing, friendly, willing to strike up a conversation with anybody, and always willing to speak my mind. By the end of the year I was quiet, introverted, speaking only to my closest friends, and often only when spoken to.
I’m 30 now; the events that happened above occurred a long ago, and yet I still think about them periodically. I wonder what my life would have been like had K gone into the fourth grade that year. Or if H. and I hadn’t gone through our retaliatory charade. Or if my teacher had done something to stop K’s behavior. Would I have continued to be gregariously outgoing all through my school years? Would I have lived my life differently? Would I still have become the socially anxious oddball that I am now?
July 17, 2007
I picked up an audio book at the library the other day; primarily for my wife. On my way to work on Monday, I realized I didn't have anything cued up in my shuffle, so I grabbed Odd Girl Out on my way to the car. As the father of a new baby girl, I thought it might me interesting to find out about female "alternative aggression". Interesting is not the word. I am down right frightened. It isn't popular to say this, but I had a relatively idyllic childhood. I wasn't one of the Popular kids, but I had good friends and I got to do cool things. I had a few run-ins with bullies, but nothing a few brief moments of violence didn't cure (admittedly, after 3 weeks of fear).
The stories of non-violent bullying among girls contained in this book make me very (that is very in italics, underlined, and bolded) worried. I had no idea how traumatic, life altering, and pervasive this alternative aggression is for girls. I tried to listen to it with my wife in the car and she asked me to turn it off because it made her too uncomfortable.
Along with Gift of Fear, I recommend this book to all fathers of daughters.
The stories of non-violent bullying among girls contained in this book make me very (that is very in italics, underlined, and bolded) worried. I had no idea how traumatic, life altering, and pervasive this alternative aggression is for girls. I tried to listen to it with my wife in the car and she asked me to turn it off because it made her too uncomfortable.
Along with Gift of Fear, I recommend this book to all fathers of daughters.
March 7, 2009
Every mother with a pre-teen or teen girl needs to read this book.
This book was disturbing for me, both as a parent and as a former girl. I clearly recognized myself as a victim of bullying throughout the book, but it also made me realize that, as a kid, I was also sometimes a perpetrator, which I had never thought about before.
Unfortunately it does a much better job of outlining the problem of girl bullying than it does at presenting solutions. That said, it is helping me better understand my daughter's interactions with her peers, and validate her feelings when things aren't going well.
This book was disturbing for me, both as a parent and as a former girl. I clearly recognized myself as a victim of bullying throughout the book, but it also made me realize that, as a kid, I was also sometimes a perpetrator, which I had never thought about before.
Unfortunately it does a much better job of outlining the problem of girl bullying than it does at presenting solutions. That said, it is helping me better understand my daughter's interactions with her peers, and validate her feelings when things aren't going well.
April 21, 2011
I consider myself to have been an outcast and a victim of bullying through grade school, but am having trouble relating to the stories in this book. Maybe I'm part of the problem from this author's point of view, because I wouldn't call these scenarios bullying at all. The people she profiles are friends, but there is a lot of emotional blackmail in these relationships.
On page 106, the author says:
"...I'd planned to organize [the girls'] stories according to the qualiites I assumed girls got punished for: the differently abled, the overweight, the poor, the haplessly uncool. I had not expected to find that girls became angry with each other for quite the opposite reason."
The fact is, people including girls, do get picked on for being different and poor (and where was gay/lesbian on that list? They get it for that, too, among the worst.) But the author seems to be writing about something else, the in-fighting among the popular crowd, or within any clique. Everyone she profiles had been popular and then became outcast, usually because of jealousy. They turn on each other and ostracize each other, or they start rumors for revenge.
So the book has a point, that there is pattern of anger and manipulation in girls' lives, within cliques. The author explains that relationships are so important to most girls, that the worst punishment is to be ostracized, so alliances and trying to be popular are very important. She explains because the culture doesn't allow girls to be aggressive or violent, girls manipulate instead. Of course, this tendency is widely known, and "mean girls" is a stereotype. There are some interesting interviews in the book with girls describing what qualities the girls think are ideal (skinny, blond and popular) and who the "anti-girl" is (she is slutty, brainy, and not skinny enough, by the way.) It is disturbing to see how girls pressure each other to act within the traditional cultural norm, punishing each other for being mean or slutty.
But I feel that this pattern co-exists with other patterns, such as 1)girls who openly bully, mock, tease, and even physically fight, and, 2)boys who are manipulative and back-stabbing, like these girls, instead of physically fighting.
This book does NOT address what I would call true bullying, the victimization of students who are different and weak, people who just want to be left alone. The author seems convinced that there are no such people, that all girls engage in bullying sometimes. She admits that she herself sold out friends to be with more "popular" girls, and that the young "bullies" she interviewed are really nice, normal girls like herself. But this is not necessarily true, and these girls are not normal. Personally, I am disgusted with almost every girl in this book, and the author. There is no excuse for behaving like that, and there are some of us who did not.
On page 106, the author says:
"...I'd planned to organize [the girls'] stories according to the qualiites I assumed girls got punished for: the differently abled, the overweight, the poor, the haplessly uncool. I had not expected to find that girls became angry with each other for quite the opposite reason."
The fact is, people including girls, do get picked on for being different and poor (and where was gay/lesbian on that list? They get it for that, too, among the worst.) But the author seems to be writing about something else, the in-fighting among the popular crowd, or within any clique. Everyone she profiles had been popular and then became outcast, usually because of jealousy. They turn on each other and ostracize each other, or they start rumors for revenge.
So the book has a point, that there is pattern of anger and manipulation in girls' lives, within cliques. The author explains that relationships are so important to most girls, that the worst punishment is to be ostracized, so alliances and trying to be popular are very important. She explains because the culture doesn't allow girls to be aggressive or violent, girls manipulate instead. Of course, this tendency is widely known, and "mean girls" is a stereotype. There are some interesting interviews in the book with girls describing what qualities the girls think are ideal (skinny, blond and popular) and who the "anti-girl" is (she is slutty, brainy, and not skinny enough, by the way.) It is disturbing to see how girls pressure each other to act within the traditional cultural norm, punishing each other for being mean or slutty.
But I feel that this pattern co-exists with other patterns, such as 1)girls who openly bully, mock, tease, and even physically fight, and, 2)boys who are manipulative and back-stabbing, like these girls, instead of physically fighting.
This book does NOT address what I would call true bullying, the victimization of students who are different and weak, people who just want to be left alone. The author seems convinced that there are no such people, that all girls engage in bullying sometimes. She admits that she herself sold out friends to be with more "popular" girls, and that the young "bullies" she interviewed are really nice, normal girls like herself. But this is not necessarily true, and these girls are not normal. Personally, I am disgusted with almost every girl in this book, and the author. There is no excuse for behaving like that, and there are some of us who did not.
December 30, 2011
The newly revised and updated edition of Odd Girl Out is a must have for every person who is parenting or educating a girl.
This was the first book I grabbed once my fall classes were over. Why? I think it's because I have a daughter. She's eight and in the 3rd grade and we've already had two incidents involving bullying. The first was in preschool and the second was last year. Both incidents were handled by teachers are administrators in a manner that Simmons suggests in Chapter 12: the road ahead for teachers and administrators. That chapter gives some wonderful suggestions on how to set up a school or even a classroom to be as bully-proof as possible. Obviously no place can be bully-proof, but one thing that Simmons points out is that one way to address bullying is to have a transparent and predictable system of consequences. If a student knows that Sally and Maria are the teacher's favorite and nothing they do gets them in real trouble, that student feels disempowered to act and report bullying she may be experiencing or witnessing. Having a consistent system of consequences also sends a clear message to students who bully that it will not be tolerated.
Simmons doesn't advocate for a zero-tolerance policy that gets 7-year-olds expelled, rather a zero-tolerance policy that is just that, zero-tolerance for bullying a classmate.
Three themes really struck me as key things to remember from this book.
One is that schools have relied on girls to maintain a certain peace for years.
And second is that this peace that we see in girls is really silence. Society teaches girls to silence their feelings in order to "be good."
Bullying is not just how girls are. Not if we decide that it ends today. HERE. NOW. When we teach our girls to get over it, that "that's how life is, wait until your boss is a bully," we are teaching our girls to ignore that voice in their head and heart that says, "This is wrong. Walk away."
The last theme is one that a friend and I were discussing a few weeks ago. Why are women afraid to promote themselves? I know that I can look back at my childhood and know that being "all that" was frowned upon. Pride in one's work could only be taken so far. Simmons really digs into how promoting oneself breaks one of the cardinal rules of being a girl -- fit in. You can't fit in if you let people know how awesome you are.
Simmons updated her book to include a great chapter on cyberbullying. If you don't have time to read the whole book, skip right to chapter four: bff 2.0: cyberbullying and cyberdrama and chapter nine: parents speak. But you really should read the whole thing.
Warning women reading this will experience flashbacks to high school. Men who read this may have a lot of WTF moments
Read the full review at my blog, Viva la Feminista.
This was the first book I grabbed once my fall classes were over. Why? I think it's because I have a daughter. She's eight and in the 3rd grade and we've already had two incidents involving bullying. The first was in preschool and the second was last year. Both incidents were handled by teachers are administrators in a manner that Simmons suggests in Chapter 12: the road ahead for teachers and administrators. That chapter gives some wonderful suggestions on how to set up a school or even a classroom to be as bully-proof as possible. Obviously no place can be bully-proof, but one thing that Simmons points out is that one way to address bullying is to have a transparent and predictable system of consequences. If a student knows that Sally and Maria are the teacher's favorite and nothing they do gets them in real trouble, that student feels disempowered to act and report bullying she may be experiencing or witnessing. Having a consistent system of consequences also sends a clear message to students who bully that it will not be tolerated.
Simmons doesn't advocate for a zero-tolerance policy that gets 7-year-olds expelled, rather a zero-tolerance policy that is just that, zero-tolerance for bullying a classmate.
Three themes really struck me as key things to remember from this book.
One is that schools have relied on girls to maintain a certain peace for years.
And second is that this peace that we see in girls is really silence. Society teaches girls to silence their feelings in order to "be good."
Bullying is not just how girls are. Not if we decide that it ends today. HERE. NOW. When we teach our girls to get over it, that "that's how life is, wait until your boss is a bully," we are teaching our girls to ignore that voice in their head and heart that says, "This is wrong. Walk away."
The last theme is one that a friend and I were discussing a few weeks ago. Why are women afraid to promote themselves? I know that I can look back at my childhood and know that being "all that" was frowned upon. Pride in one's work could only be taken so far. Simmons really digs into how promoting oneself breaks one of the cardinal rules of being a girl -- fit in. You can't fit in if you let people know how awesome you are.
Simmons updated her book to include a great chapter on cyberbullying. If you don't have time to read the whole book, skip right to chapter four: bff 2.0: cyberbullying and cyberdrama and chapter nine: parents speak. But you really should read the whole thing.
Warning women reading this will experience flashbacks to high school. Men who read this may have a lot of WTF moments
Read the full review at my blog, Viva la Feminista.
January 11, 2016
Rosalind Wiseman's book is far better.
Simmons performs a whole bunch of interviews, but fails to develop anything more than a shallow theory of stunted expression-of-aggression that ticks all her ideological boxes. The purple prose and emotive language made the book seem like a tendentious polemic.
Simmonds filters the information through her theories and personal experience; I've tried to keep an open mind but don't trust that she's given all of the information. Furthermore her theories are rooted only in the interviews and her particular feminist theories - as they say "the plural of anecdote is not data", and there is no reference to other psychological, sociological, economic or biological material.
It is as if Simmons has the answers and the book is but repetitions of them. There's nothing to engage in; you can only agree or disagree.
Simmons performs a whole bunch of interviews, but fails to develop anything more than a shallow theory of stunted expression-of-aggression that ticks all her ideological boxes. The purple prose and emotive language made the book seem like a tendentious polemic.
Simmonds filters the information through her theories and personal experience; I've tried to keep an open mind but don't trust that she's given all of the information. Furthermore her theories are rooted only in the interviews and her particular feminist theories - as they say "the plural of anecdote is not data", and there is no reference to other psychological, sociological, economic or biological material.
It is as if Simmons has the answers and the book is but repetitions of them. There's nothing to engage in; you can only agree or disagree.
February 13, 2009
This book was recommended to me by my supervisor at my field placement at the Shaker Heights schools. It suggests that girls in our society -- particularly white, middle class girls -- have been socialized to believe that they must be nice and sweet at all times, and consequently, a culture of hidden, silent aggression has developed, often called relational aggression. The author interviewed hundreds of girls and adult women, and their stories are told throughout the book. It was painful to read at times and definitely reminded me of some of my own experiences in junior high and early high school. Highly recommended for anyone who spends time around preteen or teenage girls.
August 17, 2011
In Rachel Simmons' book, Odd Girl Out, she describes some of the stories that she heard while going from school to school to talk about girls who were "bullied." The entire thing is impossibly melodramatic, including Simmons' account of her own "bullying"--one day, one girl told the other kids not to play with her. Despite the fact that this is what to normal people would be a minor incident and the fact that it happened in the third grade, this is something that apparently haunted Simmons for her entire life.
Throughout the book, I had to keep reminding myself that this book was published in 2002. I don't remember exactly what the situation was like back then, but nothing in this book is anything you probably haven't heard already. It's almost like she's describing, in exact detail, how someone might eat cereal. It's something that's not "hidden," but it's not described in exact detail in a book.
If Simmons considers the stories in her book to be bullying, then I have some personal stories that would blow her away.
This book was far too simplistic and whiny for my taste.
Throughout the book, I had to keep reminding myself that this book was published in 2002. I don't remember exactly what the situation was like back then, but nothing in this book is anything you probably haven't heard already. It's almost like she's describing, in exact detail, how someone might eat cereal. It's something that's not "hidden," but it's not described in exact detail in a book.
If Simmons considers the stories in her book to be bullying, then I have some personal stories that would blow her away.
This book was far too simplistic and whiny for my taste.
November 15, 2010
this book was pretty awesome! my expectations weren't that high, so i walked away more impressed than i expected to be. it explores the uniquely girl ways that girls are aggressive to one another, contrasting against previous research on aggression & bullying that has been male-dominated & male-focused. at no point does the book devolve into making biological essentialist arguments about female brain chemistry or anything like that. it's all about the way that girls are socialized to be feminine & how that impacts their relationships with aggression & the causes of aggression (jealousy, competitiveness, etc).
the author argues that a key element of female socialization is the way girls are encouraged to be nice. this cuts them off from developing a healthy & straightforward relationship with anger & aggression. rather than throwing down & fighting each other in the streets, they bully each other by spreading rumors, using secrets to enhance their own social currency, isolating other girls socially, etc. pretty much any girl reading this book will recognize behaviors that she has participated in, as either an aggressor or victim (or both).
this book kind of opened my eyes a little bit to the reasons why pretty much every woman i have ever met has felt the need to let me know she finds me intimidating (& some men have told me this as well). even as a child, i had little interest in being "nice" in the way that niceness is traditionally defined. i've always been pretty in touch with my feelings of anger, & i've always been pretty direct about expressing those feelings. this is a departure from traditional feminine gender norms, & it has inspired feelings of intimidation in the women around me. i mean, i already kind of knew this before i read the book, but the information in the book helped me make sense of it more clearly.
the book explores the way that female socialization encourages girls that are victims of girl aggression to internalize their feelings of confusion & self-doubt, setting them on a path to continue to have dysfunctional relationships with people of all genders. the author is vehement about the possibility that girl aggression may cause victims to confuse bullying behavior with love & acceptance, setting them up for abusive adult relationships.
it closes with tips for parents on how to recognize & address female bullying, & ideas for school administrators on how to crack down on it. i had a few quibbles with this section, because it espoused an adult response that is in keeping with parenting strategies that, in my opinion, stunt a child's ability to deal with the fact that life isn't perfect & that they're going to have to learn to fight their own fights at some point. i mean, judgment calls need to be made, & when a child has been so thoroughly victimized that they have fallen into a depression (or at risk for something that serious), someone needs to step in to help. but i have noticed a trend in many adults five to ten years younger than me--they seem unwilling to confront the possibility that unfortunate things that happen to them might be their fault in some way, they seem unwilling to hear that they are ever wrong about anything, they seem to be incapable of hearing criticism without interpreting it as a personal attack. so i don't think parents necessarily do their kids any favors by validating every single emotion their kids express without reservation.
i definitely agree with the author's argument that most studies on bullying, aggression, & anger are excessively male-focused, but it's also true that playground fights are not the only ways that boys express aggression. i have seen many of the same behaviors among men & boys described here as tenets of girl aggression. i was a victim of a lot of these types of aggression when i was a kid, & it was boys who spread the most vicious rumors about me. girls kept them going, but boys came up with them & got the ball rolling.
it's also worth noting (as the author does, to a limited degree) that these types of girl aggression don't disappear once a girl is done with school. i've been out of school for almost sixteen years, & i have still experienced all of these types of aggression in my circles of adult female friends.
i definitely think that girls are socialized to have a uniquely dysfunctional relationship with feelings of aggression, & that we all need to work on re-training ourselves to be more in touch with feelings of anger, resentment, jealousy, etc. if that's the take-away, i agree.
issues i had with the book: it was at times so relentlessly repetitive that i almost fell asleep. it read like a twenty-page final paper for college that had been expanded into a 270-page book. the writing was very mediocre. i don't expect great prose when the author is quoting an eleven-year-old, but the in-between bits where the author explored her conclusions based on interviews were gratingly tedious. & i agree with other reviewers that pointed out that most of the girls profiled in the book were largely trying to fight their way to top of the popularity heap. i think a big reason why i didn't really identify with anyone in the book (victim or bully) is because i never tried to be popular. those rumors i mentioned kids spreading about me? they were rife, & they were vicious, & i never heard about any of them myself until several years after they'd disappeared. i'm sure they affected the way kids interacted with me at the time, but no one ever actually said anything at all to my face--probably because i wasn't really trying to be friends with anyone other than kids that tried to be friends with me. even when the victimized girls described the lowest of their lows, they seemed to mostly involve being ostracized from the clique they wanted to be in, & being forced to eat lunch with social inferiors. it's hard to have sympathy for that kind of situation.
i kind of walked away thinking that most of the girls profiled in the book were just brats. not evil demons...just bratty kids whose parents let them get away with murder, maybe because their parents never really came to terms with their own dysfunctional social desires.
the author argues that a key element of female socialization is the way girls are encouraged to be nice. this cuts them off from developing a healthy & straightforward relationship with anger & aggression. rather than throwing down & fighting each other in the streets, they bully each other by spreading rumors, using secrets to enhance their own social currency, isolating other girls socially, etc. pretty much any girl reading this book will recognize behaviors that she has participated in, as either an aggressor or victim (or both).
this book kind of opened my eyes a little bit to the reasons why pretty much every woman i have ever met has felt the need to let me know she finds me intimidating (& some men have told me this as well). even as a child, i had little interest in being "nice" in the way that niceness is traditionally defined. i've always been pretty in touch with my feelings of anger, & i've always been pretty direct about expressing those feelings. this is a departure from traditional feminine gender norms, & it has inspired feelings of intimidation in the women around me. i mean, i already kind of knew this before i read the book, but the information in the book helped me make sense of it more clearly.
the book explores the way that female socialization encourages girls that are victims of girl aggression to internalize their feelings of confusion & self-doubt, setting them on a path to continue to have dysfunctional relationships with people of all genders. the author is vehement about the possibility that girl aggression may cause victims to confuse bullying behavior with love & acceptance, setting them up for abusive adult relationships.
it closes with tips for parents on how to recognize & address female bullying, & ideas for school administrators on how to crack down on it. i had a few quibbles with this section, because it espoused an adult response that is in keeping with parenting strategies that, in my opinion, stunt a child's ability to deal with the fact that life isn't perfect & that they're going to have to learn to fight their own fights at some point. i mean, judgment calls need to be made, & when a child has been so thoroughly victimized that they have fallen into a depression (or at risk for something that serious), someone needs to step in to help. but i have noticed a trend in many adults five to ten years younger than me--they seem unwilling to confront the possibility that unfortunate things that happen to them might be their fault in some way, they seem unwilling to hear that they are ever wrong about anything, they seem to be incapable of hearing criticism without interpreting it as a personal attack. so i don't think parents necessarily do their kids any favors by validating every single emotion their kids express without reservation.
i definitely agree with the author's argument that most studies on bullying, aggression, & anger are excessively male-focused, but it's also true that playground fights are not the only ways that boys express aggression. i have seen many of the same behaviors among men & boys described here as tenets of girl aggression. i was a victim of a lot of these types of aggression when i was a kid, & it was boys who spread the most vicious rumors about me. girls kept them going, but boys came up with them & got the ball rolling.
it's also worth noting (as the author does, to a limited degree) that these types of girl aggression don't disappear once a girl is done with school. i've been out of school for almost sixteen years, & i have still experienced all of these types of aggression in my circles of adult female friends.
i definitely think that girls are socialized to have a uniquely dysfunctional relationship with feelings of aggression, & that we all need to work on re-training ourselves to be more in touch with feelings of anger, resentment, jealousy, etc. if that's the take-away, i agree.
issues i had with the book: it was at times so relentlessly repetitive that i almost fell asleep. it read like a twenty-page final paper for college that had been expanded into a 270-page book. the writing was very mediocre. i don't expect great prose when the author is quoting an eleven-year-old, but the in-between bits where the author explored her conclusions based on interviews were gratingly tedious. & i agree with other reviewers that pointed out that most of the girls profiled in the book were largely trying to fight their way to top of the popularity heap. i think a big reason why i didn't really identify with anyone in the book (victim or bully) is because i never tried to be popular. those rumors i mentioned kids spreading about me? they were rife, & they were vicious, & i never heard about any of them myself until several years after they'd disappeared. i'm sure they affected the way kids interacted with me at the time, but no one ever actually said anything at all to my face--probably because i wasn't really trying to be friends with anyone other than kids that tried to be friends with me. even when the victimized girls described the lowest of their lows, they seemed to mostly involve being ostracized from the clique they wanted to be in, & being forced to eat lunch with social inferiors. it's hard to have sympathy for that kind of situation.
i kind of walked away thinking that most of the girls profiled in the book were just brats. not evil demons...just bratty kids whose parents let them get away with murder, maybe because their parents never really came to terms with their own dysfunctional social desires.
May 15, 2016
Anyone who has survived middle and high school years has had some direct experience with how girls negotiate relationship conflict. It's vicious and covert. Simmons does a very comprehensive job laying out all the ways in which this happens and how we set them up with this conflicting message that they must always be "nice". No wonder they take all their aggression underground.
Somewhere along the line girls are taught that conflict will result in relationship loss, which is the worst outcome, so they are set up to have friendships in which there is not to be any conflict. The conflict goes underground and takes root, resulting in the psychological aggression that can devastate someone on the receiving end of it. Simmons gets to this point half way through the book after many lengthy and detailed examples of real life experiences from girls across socio-economic and racial spectra (the racial differences are very interesting).
The rest of the book presents practical solutions for dealing with bullying behaviors--especially cyber bullying--training educators and parents to recognize and deal with the covert behavior effectively so that all parties are treated respectfully and problems can be resolved to reach a better outcome. There are excellent step-by-step tips for parents who are trying to help their daughters through this too. (Oh, if my parents had this resource when I was a kid, then I would(n't).....sigh...)
It would be interesting to read a book that addresses negotiating conflict among kids across the gender spectrum. While boys negotiate their relationships differently from girls, they are also on the receiving end of girls' bewildering behaviors that are meant to be decoded when often no one but the girl(s) knows the code. With two daughters, I am always wanting them to be around boys and connect with them positively and understand how their natures deviate, but mostly to understand that they are all human beings with the same needs to have connection and belonging.
I'll definitely be hanging on to this book as a reference resource. I'd recommend this book for anyone who has children or works with them.
Somewhere along the line girls are taught that conflict will result in relationship loss, which is the worst outcome, so they are set up to have friendships in which there is not to be any conflict. The conflict goes underground and takes root, resulting in the psychological aggression that can devastate someone on the receiving end of it. Simmons gets to this point half way through the book after many lengthy and detailed examples of real life experiences from girls across socio-economic and racial spectra (the racial differences are very interesting).
The rest of the book presents practical solutions for dealing with bullying behaviors--especially cyber bullying--training educators and parents to recognize and deal with the covert behavior effectively so that all parties are treated respectfully and problems can be resolved to reach a better outcome. There are excellent step-by-step tips for parents who are trying to help their daughters through this too. (Oh, if my parents had this resource when I was a kid, then I would(n't).....sigh...)
It would be interesting to read a book that addresses negotiating conflict among kids across the gender spectrum. While boys negotiate their relationships differently from girls, they are also on the receiving end of girls' bewildering behaviors that are meant to be decoded when often no one but the girl(s) knows the code. With two daughters, I am always wanting them to be around boys and connect with them positively and understand how their natures deviate, but mostly to understand that they are all human beings with the same needs to have connection and belonging.
I'll definitely be hanging on to this book as a reference resource. I'd recommend this book for anyone who has children or works with them.
October 14, 2014
This book did open my eyes and not in a positive way. To be honest I was kind of shocked but the author is right about lots of things. Especially how girls use each other and how they do not want to confront others.
Very interesting read.
Update May 20 2014.
Changing this rating from 3 to 4 because I cannot stop thinking of this book (read in 2009!)and last year I even tried to get my bookcrossing released copy to a friend back but never received an answer. (I of course offered payment for shipping)
So I am really wanting to re read this.Really such an interesting read.
Update October 14 2014.
Just received a copy of this book I ordered through abebooks.co.uk and I also bought the sequel.
Finally I have this book again and can re read. Not at the moment cause I have too much going on in my life but will not wait too long cause it was so interesting.
Very interesting read.
Update May 20 2014.
Changing this rating from 3 to 4 because I cannot stop thinking of this book (read in 2009!)and last year I even tried to get my bookcrossing released copy to a friend back but never received an answer. (I of course offered payment for shipping)
So I am really wanting to re read this.Really such an interesting read.
Update October 14 2014.
Just received a copy of this book I ordered through abebooks.co.uk and I also bought the sequel.
Finally I have this book again and can re read. Not at the moment cause I have too much going on in my life but will not wait too long cause it was so interesting.
June 20, 2019
Many books have moved me, provoked thoughts and feelings and provided comfort or unease. This really might be the first book that made me feel heard. I know of people who talk about being validated but I guess I didn't understand what that meant until I read this because it felt so GOOD to be heard.
Rachel Simmons writes about bullying among girls. This type of abuse is usually not physical but relational. That is, they bully by threatening each other's status within the group. Popularity is political capital for girls and they know it. They know if they can control it, they can control their victim, cut her off, ruin her life. Girls spread rumors about each other behind each others' backs, threaten and actively set out to ruin each others' reputations, steal each others' boyfriends and cut each other off from each other through cliques and the silent treatment. To those who have not been party to these types of aggression they may seem like nothing, but to the girls that experience them, they are devastating. They lead to anxiety, mental health issues, low self-esteem, a loss of touch with yourself that follows you into adulthood and makes it difficult to impossible to stop the pattern.
Simmons demystifies relational aggression. It is not just a phase or rite of passage when girls turn on each other and when repeat such tropes, we continue to invalidate what girls are going through. When we invalidate those feelings, we send the message that what they are experiencing is not real or significant and we cause them for further doubt themselves, pushing them further away from themselves and bringing more harm to their self-esteem.
She lays out the cause of relational aggression: Girls do not feel like they can express negative emotions straightforwardly. So they can become two-faced. On the surface they serve you what they think you want--smile, acquiesce, back down. But under the surface this resentment grows. They feed it. They release it through rolled eyes, whisper campaigns and dropped friendships.
She advocates for policies and language that shed light on what relational aggression is and what we as a community can do to stop it. The first thing being to treat it as something as real as when two boys punch each other in the school yard. The very root of the problem probably does not have anything to do with gender: All humans have negative emotions--anger, jealousy, frustration, insecurity, shame, etc.--and it is important to be able to face them. You may not get what you want in the end, but shoving them beneath the surface does not make them go away.
Simmons' own experience with bullying is what prompted her to write this book, but it's not a memoir. She takes a reporter/researcher approach by hitting the road and talking to teen and pre-teen girls, actively listening to them and basing her writing on what she hears and learns. I find this approach to be highly effective. Think Barbara Ehreinreich in Nickel and Dimed and Matthew Desmond in Evicted. Her scope was mostly on middle to upper middle class white girls in America but she did talk to some minority girls and she went to public and private schools. There was an interesting chapter on cultural differences among minorities, specifically black and Latino girls who come from families who are already distrustful of mainstream American culture and encourage their daughters to fight back. If they don't it's considered shameful and they deserve to be beaten.
But the bottom line is that American culture in its current state gives its girls mixed messages. On one hand, they are told to embrace their power, to act like queens, to become leaders and rule the world and speak their mind no matter what anyone says. On the other hand, they are shown that if they speak up, show confidence, embrace sensuality or remain calm or aloof they will be branded loudmouths, conceited bitches, sluts, pushovers, punks and victims. As they try to negotiate between these contradictory ways of being, girls start to doubt their own sanity, their own feelings. There are not enough voices out there validating them. You are not crazy. You are not imagining your experience.
Rachel Simmons writes about bullying among girls. This type of abuse is usually not physical but relational. That is, they bully by threatening each other's status within the group. Popularity is political capital for girls and they know it. They know if they can control it, they can control their victim, cut her off, ruin her life. Girls spread rumors about each other behind each others' backs, threaten and actively set out to ruin each others' reputations, steal each others' boyfriends and cut each other off from each other through cliques and the silent treatment. To those who have not been party to these types of aggression they may seem like nothing, but to the girls that experience them, they are devastating. They lead to anxiety, mental health issues, low self-esteem, a loss of touch with yourself that follows you into adulthood and makes it difficult to impossible to stop the pattern.
Simmons demystifies relational aggression. It is not just a phase or rite of passage when girls turn on each other and when repeat such tropes, we continue to invalidate what girls are going through. When we invalidate those feelings, we send the message that what they are experiencing is not real or significant and we cause them for further doubt themselves, pushing them further away from themselves and bringing more harm to their self-esteem.
She lays out the cause of relational aggression: Girls do not feel like they can express negative emotions straightforwardly. So they can become two-faced. On the surface they serve you what they think you want--smile, acquiesce, back down. But under the surface this resentment grows. They feed it. They release it through rolled eyes, whisper campaigns and dropped friendships.
She advocates for policies and language that shed light on what relational aggression is and what we as a community can do to stop it. The first thing being to treat it as something as real as when two boys punch each other in the school yard. The very root of the problem probably does not have anything to do with gender: All humans have negative emotions--anger, jealousy, frustration, insecurity, shame, etc.--and it is important to be able to face them. You may not get what you want in the end, but shoving them beneath the surface does not make them go away.
Simmons' own experience with bullying is what prompted her to write this book, but it's not a memoir. She takes a reporter/researcher approach by hitting the road and talking to teen and pre-teen girls, actively listening to them and basing her writing on what she hears and learns. I find this approach to be highly effective. Think Barbara Ehreinreich in Nickel and Dimed and Matthew Desmond in Evicted. Her scope was mostly on middle to upper middle class white girls in America but she did talk to some minority girls and she went to public and private schools. There was an interesting chapter on cultural differences among minorities, specifically black and Latino girls who come from families who are already distrustful of mainstream American culture and encourage their daughters to fight back. If they don't it's considered shameful and they deserve to be beaten.
But the bottom line is that American culture in its current state gives its girls mixed messages. On one hand, they are told to embrace their power, to act like queens, to become leaders and rule the world and speak their mind no matter what anyone says. On the other hand, they are shown that if they speak up, show confidence, embrace sensuality or remain calm or aloof they will be branded loudmouths, conceited bitches, sluts, pushovers, punks and victims. As they try to negotiate between these contradictory ways of being, girls start to doubt their own sanity, their own feelings. There are not enough voices out there validating them. You are not crazy. You are not imagining your experience.
January 21, 2018
In the Odd Girl Out I feel like the author has wrote down what we all know about girls and the conflicts they endure. The idea that girls can never actually resolve issues but instead sweep them under a rug, because aggression can lead to losing friends and girls are taught that relationships are the most important thing in life. This is a book that all moms and daughters should read, because it puts into words the relational struggles that take place in a school and why girls are “mean.”
The book was written in 2002 by Rachel Simmons, the author having went through a time of relational hardships herself wrote the book to make aware that alternative aggression is an issue that affects almost all girls. It leaves them with an identity crisis or low self esteem, tearing away the innocence and confidence of youth. It plays out real life events that took place in the life of both persecutor and persecuted. It’s a work of non-fiction that was overdue for its time and makes sense of why girls fight and are considered mean. Most the girls in the story talk of how no matter how hard they tried to fit in they couldn’t because once a conflict becomes public they become outcasts and so cannot hide away nor fight back, ruining their mentality even after high school is over. It really helps to sum up the true issue to why girls feel like they can not directly consult an issue and talk about their feelings, but instead feel like they need to avoid issues and resort to alternative aggression. It also helps the reader come to terms with their own action and the way they treat the people around them whether that be unintentionally getting jealous or gossiping with the intent to hurt someone. I would recommend this book to all girls and moms, because after reading this a women can come to terms with her internal aggression and understand that anger does not mean ruined relationship. Instead they can learn to be confident in themselves and speak about how they feel and confront conflict straight on, avoiding later pain that can’t be detected.
The book was written in 2002 by Rachel Simmons, the author having went through a time of relational hardships herself wrote the book to make aware that alternative aggression is an issue that affects almost all girls. It leaves them with an identity crisis or low self esteem, tearing away the innocence and confidence of youth. It plays out real life events that took place in the life of both persecutor and persecuted. It’s a work of non-fiction that was overdue for its time and makes sense of why girls fight and are considered mean. Most the girls in the story talk of how no matter how hard they tried to fit in they couldn’t because once a conflict becomes public they become outcasts and so cannot hide away nor fight back, ruining their mentality even after high school is over. It really helps to sum up the true issue to why girls feel like they can not directly consult an issue and talk about their feelings, but instead feel like they need to avoid issues and resort to alternative aggression. It also helps the reader come to terms with their own action and the way they treat the people around them whether that be unintentionally getting jealous or gossiping with the intent to hurt someone. I would recommend this book to all girls and moms, because after reading this a women can come to terms with her internal aggression and understand that anger does not mean ruined relationship. Instead they can learn to be confident in themselves and speak about how they feel and confront conflict straight on, avoiding later pain that can’t be detected.
June 5, 2015
This book provided some really interesting insights into how girls carry a lot of pressure to be "nice" and "likable" (hmm, sound like critiques of fictional heroines anyone has read lately?), and how that pressure has the insidious side effect of crippling girls when it comes to handling conflict. The belief that one is supposed to be loved by everyone, all the time, is of course completely incompatible with the need to address differences or express one's own feelings or wishes. When differences or needs cannot be expressed in a safe or constructive manner, they're often subverted into something that doesn't necessarily look like what society identifies as "aggression," but which sure feels awful when you're on the receiving end of it. The author talks a fair amount about how we don't even have the vocabulary to describe the kind of clear, yet often ignored or unacknowledged (by adults), cruelty to which girls subject each other.
What this book really underscored for me was that we need to be teaching conflict management to everyone from as young an age as possible. Because I haven't run into the problems described in this book only as a child -- I saw a number of them, ugly and close-up, back when I first joined an internet community in 2003. It was a real struggle for me and some of the other female members to get past the clash of "I need to make myself lovable to everyone! But I also need to express myself!", and some chaos and very hard feelings came out of it all in those early days. I've developed a much tougher hide since then, and, I hope, better skills at conflict resolution and disagreeing with people politely. But it sure would have been nice to have been taught those skills in school, instead of having to figure them out in trial-by-fire as an adult.
I recommend this book to anyone who has been a girl or knows any girls.
June 20, 2012
As someone who has bullied and been bullied the book was a fascinating look and visit back to the world of teenage girls. Many factorsand theories have been given as drivers of female bullying and this book goes into depth about how we as a society do not allow girls to adequately and healthily express their anger. And moreover that we perpetuate antiquated notions of how girls should behave despite fighting on a daily basis for women's rights in the workplace. Though well intentioned and well researched I found the writing to be mediocre and the chapters started to mesh together which happens to be a big pet peeved. Certainly a must read for parents and educators but also for adult women who simply believe in the potential of today's young women.
Read
January 10, 2008I grew up reading stories about (and trying very unsuccessfully to emulate) girls sent to live in attics by evil boarding school head mistresses, but who nonetheless made the very best of their circumstances and were steadfastly good and angelic--never bearing a grudge that they lived in a cold attic with rats as their only friends, wore rags, ate gruel, and performed hard labor. So, this study about girlhood aggression was a refreshing change; disturbing because the aggression is more often than not against other girls and can turn vicious, but interesting nonetheless.
Read
May 10, 20233.5 stars - really interesting material but lost steam by the end I feel
January 23, 2023
My 4 star rating is based on the fact that this book was the first to tackle the issue of girls bullying other girls head-on. (Especially bullying by and of WASP-ish girls in suburbia who engage in the subtle cruelty that flies under-the-radar of most authority figures.) If you are the parent of a girl aged roughly 9 to 18, you owe it to her to read this book, especially the chapters at the end of the book that will give you some guidance re how to respond if you find your daughter is being bullied. I would have welcomed this information during my child-rearing years.
That is not to say that this book is without problems. I found many portions of it redundant; it seemed to contain good information but not enough of it to fill a book. I think I would have gained as much from an in-depth article on the topic in, say, The Atlantic or The New York Times Sunday magazine. And I would have welcomed more insight from psychologists and others formally trained in psychological motivation to flesh out the narrative presented by the author, who has ample training in the school of hard knocks but holds formal degrees in only Women's Studies (okay, that's related) and Political Science (and that's not).
Still, if you are at all responsible for the rearing of a young girl (my granddaughter just turned 9 and my great niece is 15), you really should read this book. (And any others that have succeeded it. This is a 2002 copyright. I can only imagine that things have gotten exponentially worse with the rise of social media.)
That is not to say that this book is without problems. I found many portions of it redundant; it seemed to contain good information but not enough of it to fill a book. I think I would have gained as much from an in-depth article on the topic in, say, The Atlantic or The New York Times Sunday magazine. And I would have welcomed more insight from psychologists and others formally trained in psychological motivation to flesh out the narrative presented by the author, who has ample training in the school of hard knocks but holds formal degrees in only Women's Studies (okay, that's related) and Political Science (and that's not).
Still, if you are at all responsible for the rearing of a young girl (my granddaughter just turned 9 and my great niece is 15), you really should read this book. (And any others that have succeeded it. This is a 2002 copyright. I can only imagine that things have gotten exponentially worse with the rise of social media.)
September 20, 2012
I had mixed feelings about this book; but it shed so much light on how I felt in 4th and 5th grade, and to a lesser extent later times in my school years. So much else has happened in my life that dissecting what it is that is still under my skin to be dealt with and heal is often a tall order to sift through. Often the greater issues come up first - such as the loss of my father to cancer. But all of this, being a social outcast, the alternative aggressions I experienced - that all got swept under the rug as grief, health and family issues took center stage. But even as those are addressed, these hurts lie dormant and pushed to the side.
As I myself work towards being a happier and stronger person, I realize that as a teacher it's also important to uncover these truths to help my students as well. It's so hard, with everything that goes on at school - and that I currently teach in a culture that is so vastly different from America. But for me, personally as a teacher it's important to at least be there for students to talk to if they need someone to listen.
Another thing I realized through this book, these alternative aggressions - is that it is something that has occurred and continues to occur between my mother and my sisters and I. Far from only being between a peer group at school; these same tactics are utilized in other relationships in our lives. I really connected with the idea of being unable to sort an unhealthy relationship from a healthy one - because in some cases, reading about the girl bullies I thought to myself - that wasn't just a girl in my class that was also my mother. My mother stood up for me in 4th and 5th grade. But she was an emotional abuser and bully herself. It's no wonder I haven't gotten it sorted out, and struggle with many of the issues presented in this book as the consequences of unaddressed alternative aggressions. As I said, my history is an alphabet soup of many things. But it's up to me to address them to move forward in my adult life.
I'm trying not to collect physical books as I'm nomadic, but this is one I would seriously consider purchasing in e-book format at some point to keep highlighted text for reference. Returning the library book (quite late) soon.
Another unexplored connection that came to mind was the notion of alternative aggressions for expatriates living in a foreign culture; specifically in an article I read by Debito Aruduo about life as an expatriate in Japan. Yes, his work is sometimes considered over the top but the connection on alternative aggressions is there. As an American expatriate in Thailand I felt that there was definitely merit to it; although slightly different depending on which cultures are clashing I think it's probably a wide phenomenon that hasn't much been explored, either.
Quote from page 265-266:
"Unfortunately, this is not a passing phase. In 'Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman,' CNN Executive Vice President Gail Evans explores why women struggle for equality in the corporate world. After decades of watching women hit the glass ceiling, Evans concludes that a misguided focus on personal relationships is partly to blame.
Evans argues that women struggle when hearing the word no from colleagues or superiors, construing it as a sign of interpersonal conflict. Because of this, women will avoid asking questions they anticipate will end in no, hearing it as "a sign the relationship between us and our superiors has failed." Many women also avoid risk taking because they fear situations in which they may need to act like they know more than they really do, or bluff. Like the girls who fear being seen as "all that," women workers fear coming off as a person who thinks she's better than everyone else.
Evans notes that girls who wait to be asked "to go out on a date, to get called on in class," turn into women who wait to be asked to do projects rather than get out there and do them. Girls who, like Lily Carter in chapter three, communicate with friends through "hints" turn into women who "assume the boss knows their work is excellent.
Because women have not been taught to see fighting as a sport or acceptable event, Evans explains that "the concept of a fair fight is an oxymoron. A fight shouldn't take place. If it does, the rules go out the window." Where Evans has watched men buy each other a beer after a conflict at work, a woman often takes it personally. She may storm away angry, reflecting a lifetime association of conflict with relational loss. Women who, as girls, never learned to be comfortable with conflict now as adults have trouble distinguishing normal, day-to-day disagreements from personal attacks."
September 19, 2008
In this book, Rachel Simmons argues that girls are socialized to be conflict-avoiders and have limited outlets for expressing their anger or aggression. Instead, they work at appearing "nice" and "sweet" and express their aggression in subtler ways that float beneath the radar of those around them -- rumor-spreading, alliance-building, using body language to exclude others, etc. Girls form large cliques and will often choose one of their own to scapegoat for no apparent reason -- a little like "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. It seems to be a means of increasing their security in their bond if they can gang up on someone else. Of course, this security is an illusion because you may well be the next scapegoat. But hey -- it beats being (gasp!) alone.
I thought Simmons' thesis was interesting, her research thorough, and her writing tight and focused. I found the book provocative and reminiscent of many of my experiences. There were some differences for me, which might be attributable to my having attended an all-girls' high school. Certainly, competition over boys was irrelevant. I believe there was competition over friendship with particular girls, but I think the stakes were lower and the behaviors less intense. Maybe that's why I don't remember suffering the way the girls in Simmons' book did, even though (or maybe because) I surely was not one of the popular girls.
I did wonder about some of the examples she cited -- they seemed extreme and dramatic, and I wondered whether there were other factors to which we were not privy. For example, many of the girls she described became depressed and near-suicidal upon being ostracized from their group of friends. While I wouldn't minimize the pain of this experience, I wondered what other factors might have contributed to both the ostracization and the extreme reaction. Did these girls have other emotional or family problems? I also thought Simmons' observation that confident, attractive girls are often both the perpetrators and the targets of relational aggression was interesting. However, it was hard for me to believe that a confident, attractive girl would be so undone by relational aggression from her friends, as opposed to simply approaching another group and merging with them.
Simmons also includes an interesting chapter with suggestions for how parents and teachers can help. Although I liked her suggestions for parents, I felt that her suggestions for teachers were a little unrealistic. As she acknowledges, relational aggression is subtle and very difficult to spot, much less to intervene with. How can teachers make rules targeting relational aggression when the behaviors are so subtle?
Overall, I definitely think the book is worth reading. If this topic interests you, it's probably one of the better books out there.
I thought Simmons' thesis was interesting, her research thorough, and her writing tight and focused. I found the book provocative and reminiscent of many of my experiences. There were some differences for me, which might be attributable to my having attended an all-girls' high school. Certainly, competition over boys was irrelevant. I believe there was competition over friendship with particular girls, but I think the stakes were lower and the behaviors less intense. Maybe that's why I don't remember suffering the way the girls in Simmons' book did, even though (or maybe because) I surely was not one of the popular girls.
I did wonder about some of the examples she cited -- they seemed extreme and dramatic, and I wondered whether there were other factors to which we were not privy. For example, many of the girls she described became depressed and near-suicidal upon being ostracized from their group of friends. While I wouldn't minimize the pain of this experience, I wondered what other factors might have contributed to both the ostracization and the extreme reaction. Did these girls have other emotional or family problems? I also thought Simmons' observation that confident, attractive girls are often both the perpetrators and the targets of relational aggression was interesting. However, it was hard for me to believe that a confident, attractive girl would be so undone by relational aggression from her friends, as opposed to simply approaching another group and merging with them.
Simmons also includes an interesting chapter with suggestions for how parents and teachers can help. Although I liked her suggestions for parents, I felt that her suggestions for teachers were a little unrealistic. As she acknowledges, relational aggression is subtle and very difficult to spot, much less to intervene with. How can teachers make rules targeting relational aggression when the behaviors are so subtle?
Overall, I definitely think the book is worth reading. If this topic interests you, it's probably one of the better books out there.
December 6, 2007
As anyone who has been anywhere near me recently is undoubtably sick of hearing, I just read this really great book. It's called Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls. Basically, a writer took the time to talk to a bunch of groups of elementary-to-high school aged girls about how and why they are mean to each other. Teaching girls not to be aggressive, the author postulates (and I think she's right), backfires into girls putting their aggressions into all of this underhanded, backbiting meanness. Rather than just getting in an argument or a even a fight and getting it over with, girls spread rumors, exclude, keep secrets, use particular kinds of body language, "kill with kindness," etc. And it causes psychological damage that haunts us for the rest of our lives, sometimes sutble ways, sometimes in clear-cut ones, like abusive romantic relationships, self injury, and eating disorders.
Every single fucking thing in the book rang true to me, both from the perspective of the aggressor and from the perspective of the victim. The thing is, it didn't just ring true to my childhood memories, but to my interactions with women now. The fear of exclusion and of being talked trash about, the cliquishness, the jealousy, and the searing, barely hidden anger that underlies it all--it's all still here, and I am not at all sure that I am reacting to it any differently at 25 than I did at 15, or even at 5.
If it's here for me, is it here for other women? Is it poisoning our relationships with each other? Most importantly, how can we get past it? Can we talk about it without falling too deep down a well of recrimination? Can we lay our feelings at each other's feet, bare ourselves, and still live to tell about it? Can we learn to trust each other?
I'm caught up in trying to figure out what the first step could possibly be. The truth is that I am terrified of women. The truth is that I want more than anything else in the world to be able to love and cherish and trust other women, to be a part of a sisterhood, but I don't. And every time I think I am getting close, I get burned worse than the time before. And I don't know how to stop it, I don't know how to fight my way through the layers of bullshit that lie between me and my sisters. I keep trying, because really, what else can I do, but frankly I'm losing hope. We were taught from birth to fear each other, to hate each other, and to keep all of our rage to ourselves until we could find a suitably "feminine" outlet for it. We were doing it in kindergarten, and in middle school, and we're doing it now. How do we unlearn that? Individually and collectively, how do we get past what we've become?
Every single fucking thing in the book rang true to me, both from the perspective of the aggressor and from the perspective of the victim. The thing is, it didn't just ring true to my childhood memories, but to my interactions with women now. The fear of exclusion and of being talked trash about, the cliquishness, the jealousy, and the searing, barely hidden anger that underlies it all--it's all still here, and I am not at all sure that I am reacting to it any differently at 25 than I did at 15, or even at 5.
If it's here for me, is it here for other women? Is it poisoning our relationships with each other? Most importantly, how can we get past it? Can we talk about it without falling too deep down a well of recrimination? Can we lay our feelings at each other's feet, bare ourselves, and still live to tell about it? Can we learn to trust each other?
I'm caught up in trying to figure out what the first step could possibly be. The truth is that I am terrified of women. The truth is that I want more than anything else in the world to be able to love and cherish and trust other women, to be a part of a sisterhood, but I don't. And every time I think I am getting close, I get burned worse than the time before. And I don't know how to stop it, I don't know how to fight my way through the layers of bullshit that lie between me and my sisters. I keep trying, because really, what else can I do, but frankly I'm losing hope. We were taught from birth to fear each other, to hate each other, and to keep all of our rage to ourselves until we could find a suitably "feminine" outlet for it. We were doing it in kindergarten, and in middle school, and we're doing it now. How do we unlearn that? Individually and collectively, how do we get past what we've become?
August 21, 2012
A must-read book for anyone with daughters, nieces, sisters, friends, girlfriends and also for any teachers in any capacity, basically anyone who'll every come in contact with a girl/woman. My aunt recommended this book to me after my daughter had a girl from school texting her really mean things. This book deals with regular everyday face-to-face and other social interactions girls have with each other, as well as the technology interactions, and how they impact their relationships and the form of bullying that girls' actions take. Most of the book was just examples and explanations and research on girls' behavior, which I appreciated because I could see things that had happened to me in my own life (as a young girl and as an adult) and now in my daughters' lives. There is some great information for parents and also educators on how to deal with girls' aggression (which the author refers to it as because she dislikes the term bullying, as it implies more physicality), good conversation starters and other approaches to dealing with your daughter as the aggressor and as the target. The book reinforced to me why I chose to have more guy friends than girls in junior high and high school (and the book even mentions that the middle school years are the hardest and worst for the bullying, but I do think it starts even younger, as I've witnessed with my own daughters and from being at my kids' school). The book even brings race into it and how different racial backgrounds approach the aggression differently (again as both the aggressors and the targets). I was a bit bothered that the author seemed to heavily favor all-girl private schools to visit with the girls she interviewed and would have liked more examples from mainstream public schools (even the public school situations brought up I couldn't totally relate to). She did also include her own experiences in hindsight and also interviewed a few "older" girls (20s mainly) and their recollections of the experiences and how they still may or may not be affecting them. For some of my issues with the book, maybe a 4.5, but because I learned so much from this book and it has helped me even just in observing other girls with their moms or other girls' interactions with each other to see how valid and relevant a lot of what is presented in this book is still today (this book has been updated since the original version came out), so I went with the 5. Definitely make sure you get the most recent edition of the book, as the BFF 2.0 (technology) info is especially interesting and relevant.
September 8, 2010
It was painful to read this book. I have been a victim of bully for 20 years. For me it started in first grade and went up through my junior year in college. many of the situations in this book I have also experienced. My tormentors weren't just girls but guys as well. I wasn't just getting kicked or hit by boys and the girl aggression from just girls. It was a good mix of both. I got quite a few kicks and spit at from girls as well. For a long time, I didn't know what to do about it. Teachers couldn't or didn't help. My parents couldn't help me either. I finally learned to stand up for myself even if that meant a confrontation with a student, student's parent or teacher. I have been bullied my freshman year of college by my room mate.
The author gives suggestions on how to help the child who is being bullied. One of the things she talks about is teacher involvement. Some teachers don't think it is their job but it is. It is much their job as reading, writing and math. I am not suggesting to do anything I wouldn't do myself. I teach children with special needs. Special Education kids get bullied too and not just by regular kids but other special education kids. I think that is truly wrong.
I have been talked about behind my back in my adult life by other adults in my workplace, people who work at a school who should know better. I am pleased that there are cyberbullying laws now. That helps but we still need to do more. I think it is all our responsibilities as a parent, teacher, friend, etc to keep children(not just girls) safe. Yes, boys get bullied too. Just put an end to bullying all together. I have been bully free for three years but the wounds are still there. They don't just magically go away.
The author gives suggestions on how to help the child who is being bullied. One of the things she talks about is teacher involvement. Some teachers don't think it is their job but it is. It is much their job as reading, writing and math. I am not suggesting to do anything I wouldn't do myself. I teach children with special needs. Special Education kids get bullied too and not just by regular kids but other special education kids. I think that is truly wrong.
I have been talked about behind my back in my adult life by other adults in my workplace, people who work at a school who should know better. I am pleased that there are cyberbullying laws now. That helps but we still need to do more. I think it is all our responsibilities as a parent, teacher, friend, etc to keep children(not just girls) safe. Yes, boys get bullied too. Just put an end to bullying all together. I have been bully free for three years but the wounds are still there. They don't just magically go away.
April 16, 2015
My daughter has been through the depths of hell because of another girl, so when I came across this book in the Library I checked it out and couldn't put it down. I wanted to know why they do what they do, and how I can protect my younger daughter from the same fate.
I think the author, in sharing real life experiences, helped answer that question for me and also helped me better handle future problems. However I disagree with her on a few points. She makes the case for girl aggression being due to society's view that girls must be "nice", and that anger is then managed by subtle and cruel treatment that is undetected by adults. My real life experience destroys that theory. My daughter's bully fit the white, middle-class profile, but she hunted my daughter down on the playground, led her to a place that no one could see, and beat her up on an almost daily basis for 2 years. It was sadistic torture. The girls were 8 - 10 years old and had begun as friends. Her solution is that girls must be encouraged to have conflict, to voice their differences, and then girls will be able to get along and resolve their problems. That may work in some cases, but my daughter asked the girl why and all she said was that she woke up one day and decided to hate her. It was probably jealousy, but how could my daughter change that?
Then I felt she kind of contradicted herself when at the end she said that some kids will just be the odd kid out for social awkwardness and kids shouldn't be forced to be friends with everyone.
For me the problem is that no one teaches their kids the golden rule any more- to treat others as you would like to be treated. This is how I am raising my kids, but I should have also taught them how to throw a good punch.
I think the author, in sharing real life experiences, helped answer that question for me and also helped me better handle future problems. However I disagree with her on a few points. She makes the case for girl aggression being due to society's view that girls must be "nice", and that anger is then managed by subtle and cruel treatment that is undetected by adults. My real life experience destroys that theory. My daughter's bully fit the white, middle-class profile, but she hunted my daughter down on the playground, led her to a place that no one could see, and beat her up on an almost daily basis for 2 years. It was sadistic torture. The girls were 8 - 10 years old and had begun as friends. Her solution is that girls must be encouraged to have conflict, to voice their differences, and then girls will be able to get along and resolve their problems. That may work in some cases, but my daughter asked the girl why and all she said was that she woke up one day and decided to hate her. It was probably jealousy, but how could my daughter change that?
Then I felt she kind of contradicted herself when at the end she said that some kids will just be the odd kid out for social awkwardness and kids shouldn't be forced to be friends with everyone.
For me the problem is that no one teaches their kids the golden rule any more- to treat others as you would like to be treated. This is how I am raising my kids, but I should have also taught them how to throw a good punch.
April 10, 2012
I had mixed emotions about the novel "Odd Girl Out" written by Rachel Simmons. I enjoyed how the book went into depth about such a unique and overlooked topic of aggression in girls. Rarely do we get the chance to learn about bullying or aggression in girls because it is more of a mental game compared to the more physical bullying amongst boys. I enjoyed being able to relate to a lot of the stories told about young girls in school, such as how girls can mask their cruelty under a "good girl" image and get away with ganging up on other girls without teachers or parents noticing. As well as understand why or where these certain instincts or behaviors come from. There were so many fascinating facts and examples throughout that showed me a new perspective on the overall idea. I also liked how Simmons gave it a personal touch by discussing her own troubles with bullying as a young girl and how it led her to her research and writing this piece. However, there were times when I found the book a bit repetitive and certain stories seemed to drag on longer than necessary. I think if it talked more about teenagers I would have found the piece a little more intriguing, because at times I was confused why Simmons seemed to remain so affected by tormentors from her youth, when she herself explains how it happens to everyone and does not have to affect your whole life. All in all I recommend this book to anyone studying aggression involving youth, although it can seem a bit dull and more of a collection of research than a particular focused story.
September 18, 2015
This was pretty bad. Like her other book, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence, Ms. Simmons goes to great lengths to describe the problem, but fails to offer any real solutions.
In this book, the first 90% is dedicated to looking at examples of what she calls alternative aggression between girls, including the silent treatment, using the threat of withholding friendship as a weapon, rumor spreading, etc. The final 10% is used to offer suggestions on how to address the problem. However, these solutions are almost solely focused on things the victim can do to be less of a victim.
Like her other book, she focuses on characterizing the problem rather than offering solutions. The solutions offered, such as they are, are really just coping mechanisms and fail to address the root cause of the problem.
The other frustrating thing about this book is the complete lack of data. She made a statement at the outset that her book was going to be light on scientific rigor, and in that regard, she certainly lived up to the expectation she set. The language of the book is full of passive-voice generalizations that add volume and prose to the book but add little meaning to the narrative.
Overall this book can probably be skipped without missing out on any insights to the problem or what can be done to address it.
In this book, the first 90% is dedicated to looking at examples of what she calls alternative aggression between girls, including the silent treatment, using the threat of withholding friendship as a weapon, rumor spreading, etc. The final 10% is used to offer suggestions on how to address the problem. However, these solutions are almost solely focused on things the victim can do to be less of a victim.
Like her other book, she focuses on characterizing the problem rather than offering solutions. The solutions offered, such as they are, are really just coping mechanisms and fail to address the root cause of the problem.
The other frustrating thing about this book is the complete lack of data. She made a statement at the outset that her book was going to be light on scientific rigor, and in that regard, she certainly lived up to the expectation she set. The language of the book is full of passive-voice generalizations that add volume and prose to the book but add little meaning to the narrative.
Overall this book can probably be skipped without missing out on any insights to the problem or what can be done to address it.
July 11, 2015
An enlightening read. Simmons traveled all over the country doing in-depth work with girls of different races and social classes and religions. She says that girls are sometimes sneaky and gossipy and cruel not because that's how females are hardwired but because our culture punishes girls who are openly aggressive (verbally or physically) or who seem confident. Because most girls don't learn to work things out when they have a conflict with someone, they tend to rely on subtle forms of aggression . . . and conflicts can go on for years, boil over suddenly, or both.
Simmons doesn't take a "blame society" approach. She provides practical strategies for girls, their parents, and their teachers and administrators.
Punishments are often subtle, as when a new girl was singled out. A popular girl nicknamed her Harriet the Hore (sic) and founded the Hate Harriet the Hore Club. Members of the club said "Hhhhi" whenever they walked past her. Not surprisingly, teachers and other adults didn't recognize the greeting as a taunt.
Often the picked-on girl is socially awkward or shy or poor or unattractive. But to me the most interesting example in the book was that of "Erin," a beautiful and popular girl whose competitive and flirty behavior caused so much jealousy that dozens of her peers shunned and persecuted her.
Apparently there's a newer version of this book that covers cyberbullying, so I'll have to look for that.
Simmons doesn't take a "blame society" approach. She provides practical strategies for girls, their parents, and their teachers and administrators.
Punishments are often subtle, as when a new girl was singled out. A popular girl nicknamed her Harriet the Hore (sic) and founded the Hate Harriet the Hore Club. Members of the club said "Hhhhi" whenever they walked past her. Not surprisingly, teachers and other adults didn't recognize the greeting as a taunt.
Often the picked-on girl is socially awkward or shy or poor or unattractive. But to me the most interesting example in the book was that of "Erin," a beautiful and popular girl whose competitive and flirty behavior caused so much jealousy that dozens of her peers shunned and persecuted her.
Apparently there's a newer version of this book that covers cyberbullying, so I'll have to look for that.
April 5, 2014
I loved this book! It is a must read for any parent with daughters, teachers, or anyone who will be working with girls. Rachel researched this for 3 years, interviewing girls and women who had experiences with "alternative aggression" (her term for non-violent aggression that girls use). It was a little frustrating, because I just kept thinking, "What is the solution?" Sadly, there is no easy solution. As with many complex issues, there is a lot of work we need to do in society about ideas of femininity before this will get any better. What I walked away from this book realizing, is that it's OK for girls to get mad and confront someone, but we need to teach them how to handle this anger. Girls (and women) need to learn to talk about their feelings, in a respectful way, instead of using other methods (silent treatment, alliance building, rumor spreading, talking badly about someone, etc). The best way to teach this to our children is through good modeling, I believe, and I know I have a lot of work to do myself. If we all modeled good behavior regarding anger, imagine what a different world it would be for our daughters! There is also a great website that addresses these issues if you are dealing with alternative aggression currently, opheliaproject.org.
February 24, 2014
I really wanted to like this book. One of my 10th grade students recommended it to me earlier in the school year saying "All teachers need to read this book!" I can appreciate the idea of it, bullying between girls and alternative aggression is often overlooked.
I did not like the layout of the book, basically the author interviewed girls and women and reported back to us, the readers. Many stories had repetitive themes and did not seem necessary to advance the book or to promote the author's message about girl bullying.
I found myself skimming more and more frequently, hoping that something better was on the horizon, but I was left feeling rather disappointed.
The idea of this book is important, but it needs to be done in a more thoughtful and engaging way. It certainly did not provide me with anything I didn't already know, and I truly believe that there is better information out there.
I did not like the layout of the book, basically the author interviewed girls and women and reported back to us, the readers. Many stories had repetitive themes and did not seem necessary to advance the book or to promote the author's message about girl bullying.
I found myself skimming more and more frequently, hoping that something better was on the horizon, but I was left feeling rather disappointed.
The idea of this book is important, but it needs to be done in a more thoughtful and engaging way. It certainly did not provide me with anything I didn't already know, and I truly believe that there is better information out there.
December 31, 2011
Definitely an interesting book. I haven't had to deal with this too much with my two girls but I do know that this book is right on. My one daughter does things to make herself different and is a protector of kids that are bullied. This does help me accept that she is fine not being in "the group". She sees they are fake already and does not want to be part of them. She is definitely more confident than I was at 14. My other daughter probably dealt with this more but karate helped lift her self esteem so much that she carried on and knows now that some friends just are not worth keeping.
What is real sad it so much of it does carry over into adulthood and it does explain why so many of us are more comfortable hanging with men/boys. I am not sure who will get this yet but will definitely be sharing.
What is real sad it so much of it does carry over into adulthood and it does explain why so many of us are more comfortable hanging with men/boys. I am not sure who will get this yet but will definitely be sharing.
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