Mean Girls

Last night I read an article about “mean girls,” establishing and re-establishing pecking orders in the miserable struggle known as junior high. It sparked an email conversation with a friend this morning, in which we tossed memories back and forth of our roles and the groups we were in or out of. Neither one of us had ever been a “queen bee,” as we remember it, but I have some unpleasant “bystander” memories, and my friend remembers being a “sidekick” and a “floater.” Both of us have victim stories, though mine seemed pretty trivial next to the stuff I read in the article.

In a sidebar, the writer told how she sat her soon-to-be sixth-grade daughter down and explained that she shouldn’t be surprised if her friends started to act strangely and to say and do things inconsistent with the friendship up till now. It made me wonder whether you can really get a girl ready for that, and if it’s a good idea to do so. And how do you help her through it, if it does happen? The article had some suggestions I appreciated, like the mom having the girl practice responding to the situation. And what you practice aren’t zingy, stinging comebacks, just simple statements like “It’s not OK for you to treat me like that.” I confess to imagining with some horror, however, the meanie response that would rain down on the girl if anyone ever found out that she had “practiced” behavior with the help of her mommy.

Besides the obvious implications for my own navel gazing and a few drops in the parental psychic and emotional over-planning bucket, one thing that jumped out at me was an interesting statement- that these situations subtly teach the youngsters involved that the people with the power can behave more or less as they wish. And if you speak up, you put yourself in danger of being destroyed. So in a country that claims to be all about freedom and the voice of the individual, so many of these individuals are seeing and hearing sheer madness from their elected leaders, and responding, in effect, by keeping their heads down. My head’s down, most of the time. But I hope I can start modeling a little fearlessness for my tiny future junior-high girl and member of the voting public. I’ll work on it.