There is little sugar but lots of spice in journalist Rachel Simmons's brave and brilliant book that skewers the stereotype of girls as the kinder, gentler gender.
Odd Girl Out begins with the premise that girls are socialized to be sweet with a double bind: they must value friendships; but they must
not express the anger that might destroy them. Lacking cultural permission to acknowledge conflict, girls develop what Simmons calls "a hidden culture of silent and indirect aggression."
The author, who visited 30 schools and talked to 300 girls, catalogues chilling and heartbreaking acts of aggression, including the silent treatment, note-passing, glaring, gossiping, ganging up, fashion police, and being nice in private/mean in public. She decodes the vocabulary of these sneak attacks, explaining, for example, three ways to parse the meaning of "I'm fat."
Simmons is a gifted writer who is skilled at describing destructive patterns and prescribing clear-cut strategies for parents, teachers, and girls to resist them. "The heart of resistance is truth telling," advises Simmons. She guides readers to nurture emotional honesty in girls and to discover a language for public discussions of bullying. She offers innovative ideas for changing the dynamics of the classroom, sample dialogues for talking to daughters, and exercises for girls and their friends to explore and resolve messy feelings and conflicts head-on.
One intriguing chapter contrasts truth telling in white middle class, African-American, Latino, and working-class communities.
Odd Girl Out is that rare book with the power to touch individual lives and transform the culture that constrains girls--and boys--from speaking the truth.
--Barbara Mackoff
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
This book is long over due! It has to be one of the most important books on female social behavior I've ever read. Author Rachel Simmon's explains in graphic detail how boys tend to bully acquaintances or strangers but girls attack within tightly knit friendship networks, making aggression harder to identify and intensifying the damage to the victims so the impact can be felt well into adulthood. Females fight with what is called "relational aggression": the silent treatment, exclusion, mean looks, rumor spreading, ganging up on a girl, manipulating relationships. In a girl's world, friendship is a weapon. A fist is weak when compared to the humiliation of a day of silence and rejection. There is no gesture more devastating than the back turning coldly away. Simmon offers advice on how to help young girls deal with this huge problem in our society. My only real disappointment with this book is it assumes this vicious behavior stops when girls grow up and become women. This simply is not true. I know too many grown women who behave this way. My neighbor's behavior fits the definition of "relational aggression" to a `T' from the silent treatment and exclusion of her victims to the way she is overly concerned with her façade as a likable neighbor, wife, and mother. She is a wolf in lambs clothing. While the naïve decry school age girls as ruthless, I beg to differ, in adulthood, women are even worse, they are only more sophisticated at disguising their ruthless maneuvers.
