Odd Girl Out (44 page)

 

AN EXERCISE FOR GIRLS:
THROW THE GEARS OF
OUR CULTURE INTO REVERSE

"I hate the fact that you have to go through all this stuff," Shelley said to me at Starbucks one afternoon. "You can't tell someone you're mad at them, you have no idea what's going on, you're kind of like lost. Or you end up having problems with six people when you're mad at only one person."

It doesn't have to be this way. If we talk openly with our friends about our fears of losing each other, we often discover they share the same feelings. One thing I noticed in my many conversations with groups of girls was the mixture of relief and surprise on their faces when they found their friends felt the same way. Over the three years I researched and wrote this book, I went through some pretty dramatic changes as a person. I suddenly became conscious of how often I avoided being directly angry with people, how much I held things in and acted cold or quiet while my resentment grew. When I had my fight with Jenny, I discovered what can happen when you share hidden feelings of jealousy and competition with a friend. I'm no expert, but for what it's worth, why not try this:

1. Get your closest friends together, or just one friend, and make time to talk. Get comfortable in a quiet space, however you choose to do that.
   
2. Talk about your fears of conflict. Ask each other, "When I make you angry or upset, do you tell me about it?" If not, talk about what you do instead of talking about it.
   
3. Talk about what happens when you hold your feelings inside or hide them. Is the buildup of emotion better than dealing immediately with what's happened? Explore specific situations. They can be resolved or ongoing, but think of a time when you feared speaking up. Was it when Joanna made that comment about your shorts, then said she was joking, but you felt pretty sure she wasn't? Was it when Leigh ignored you in front of the guy she liked? Try talking about it to each other and keeping the promise to respect each other's anger, to own the anger as a part of your friendship.
   
4. Look yourself in the eye and see the face of your own aggression. Talk about times you have felt angry, mean, competitive, or jealous. They can include feelings you've felt in your life or toward each other. Like my roommate Jenny and I, put it out on the table. Show your cards. Stop hiding and start owning your feelings, and see just how little damage they will wreak on your life once you do. See what a relief it is not to be perfect.
   
5. If some or all of your friends say they're afraid of losing each other or being ganged up on, make some promises. Say you won't do that. Say you won't use phones and computers as a substitute for real conversations. Say you'll be there no matter what. Say you'll work it out somehow. Say that you feel that way, too, if you do. This is nothing more than a commitment of friendship, something we're all used to making with each other. It's not that different from promising to keep a secret, or be best friends, or save a seat. We're
   good
   at this.
   If you want to, talk about how girls are socialized to
   not
   be angry and aggressive and to not tell each other the truth. If you're into girl power, this is ground zero. This is taking your voices and your relationships back from the forces that would divide you from each other. When girls shut each other down, they seal the fate of their own socialization. They tell each other that anger is indeed wrong, that they do not deserve to feel it.
   
6. Comfort each other. Reassure your friends that their feelings are important, that conflicts bring you closer together, that you
   want
   each other to talk about stuff, because all of you know just how much it sucks when you have to keep it in and feel resentful and angry.
   

In a healthy immune system, the body can tell the difference between the cells it needs to survive and the foreign ones that threaten it. When our immune systems malfunction, our bodies mistake healthy cells for dangerous ones and start to attack. As a result, we actually weaken ourselves. Sadly, this is how many of us are taught to approach conflict: as a foreign event that threatens our very constitution. But that fear, so absurdly false, ends up breaking us down from the inside. It turns us against each other. It makes our fights much, much worse than they really have to be. To strengthen ourselves, we have to learn to recognize aggression as a healthy part of our relationships and lives, something that makes us stronger and more honest individuals.

After spending weeks talking about fears of confrontation with one group of girls, one student began speaking about anger that had been brewing toward a friend. "I decided to go up to that person and I really had to have a lot of courage to do that, and when I told the person, I was like, 'Oh, what if she's not going to be my friend anymore, and she's going to hate me? I'll lose one of my best friends.' And after I told her, she told me some of the things that I was kind of doing that were mean and annoying her. And we solved our problems and then we're like still best friends. It's not always what you think is going to happen."

BULLYING: WHEN YOU'RE IN REAL TROUBLE

"If you could go back in time and talk to yourself at the moment when you were most upset, what would you say?" This was the question I asked every woman and girl I spoke with who was bullied. I wouldn't have written this book if a small piece of me wasn't still eight years old, standing in the darkened community center theater listening to the fading giggles and footsteps running away from me. I guess I wanted to know what I could have done, what someone might have told me. So I asked.

 

1. get help.

Try not to do this alone. Find someone who can support you. Eleven-year-old Dina advised, "If something goes wrong and you can't stand up for yourself, then you should make friends with someone you can trust [who can] be on your side. If you don't have a friend, then go to your parent because parents should know what's going on. Maybe they've been through it so they'll know. They can call the school and say what's going on. You shouldn't just stand in the corner and try to deal with it by yourself."

Susie Johnston, also eleven, said she regrets not telling her parents how bad it was for her. "I was afraid to tell my parents because I was afraid they'd call the kids' parents and that would make things worse. I didn't tell them everything," she said. "And I just wish I had sometimes, because if I had maybe I could have gotten out of the school earlier." Once she switched to her new school, she made more friends than she'd ever thought possible.

Talk to a teacher. There may be someone who gets it, who understands how bad this is. Perhaps she'll talk with you after school or at lunchtime. Can she arrange for you to go to the art room or the library at lunch?

Haley said, "You should talk to friends who've either been through this or who are your very true friends, and that's very helpful." One of the worst things about getting bullied is that you feel so alone. Sometimes you feel like you're the only person in the world who's been through it. If you've read any part of this book, you know that's not true. But it does help to see someone in the flesh who gets it, who
knows,
and that, according to many girls, can make you feel a lot better.

 

2. lose them.

If you're miserable because you're trying to get popular, or it's your friend who's doing this to you, give it up. If you think being popular is going to make you happy, you're wrong. "The only way to get through it," said Stephanie from chapter five, "is to find the people you like because you like them, not because of their position at school, not because they're the prettiest or the most popular or all the boys want to date [them]. Find someone that you have fun with, that you share interests with." If the other girls are ignoring you, aren't inviting you out, are giving you the worst seat, aren't telling you the secrets—if they're using you as a tool to make themselves feel cooler—take the hint. You are putting yourself in emotional danger every minute you spend with them.

 

3. get it out.

Get a diary or journal and write about your feelings. Paint, dance, kickbox, run in the rain, punch a bag, write a song, bang on drums. Don't keep it inside. Don't kick the dog. The culture raises us to swallow our pain until we choke. The way to fight back is to release.

"It helps a lot to get your problems out," eleven-year-old Jill said. "Most of the time it's good to write down who's being mean to you or how they're being mean to you. And write down an equals sign next to it [and] what you can do to solve the problem." Remember: Whatever you write should remain private. Don't use social media to tell the world how you're feeling about other people.

 

4. do something.

Join the newspaper, take a workshop, join a team, take an art class, volunteer, get a job. Join an online group. Try not to curl into a ball under your blanket, or at least not all day, every day. Finding a different community of people can make the difference. Find what you love to do.

It doesn't necessarily have to be with others. When you find what you love, you come closer to finding yourself. You start putting out a vibe to others, an energy of sorts. It happened to Alizah, and it had a profound impact on her life in high school. She said, "Explore what you like to do by yourself because I really think that's where your strength lies, within yourself. People will come to you because of who you are, and I think we all have gifts."

 

5. it
will
end.

Ever try to tell a screaming three-year-old that her mother will be back in five minutes? She could sooner tell you who the forty-three presidents are than what five minutes from now is. We can get like that when someone's making it her goal in life to ruin ours. But—and you can trust me on this—one day you won't have to wake up and go to school with these people.

"You have no reason to believe me," said Naomi, "but take a leap and trust that this is not the real world. This is school. This structure will never exist again, it will never be possible again.... Things are going to get better because I'll never be defined by just one group of people's opinion of who I am."

The world may feel like it's ending. It isn't. Roma said, "It gets better. These people are the people you're with now and whose opinion matters the most now, but it's not going to be the opinion that lasts. Try and listen to what is most important to you. Try and isolate the fact that you have a whole world of possibilities and things you're going to be interested in and that you'll want to do for you. Try really hard to get in touch with those things. And when you do, hold on to those things that are most important because nobody outside of you is more important."

I once met a woman who slept with her teenage daughter's laptop under her pillow. "It's the only way I know she won't steal it in the middle of the night," she told me, rolling her eyes. We laughed, but she was dead serious. Parenting girls in the digital age is, all at once, mysterious, confusing, frustrating, overwhelming, and terrifying. A girl with a gadget seems to disappear like Alice down the rabbit hole, into a world that feels utterly foreign to her parents. Where kids go online, what they do, and who they do it with are questions that can become moving targets as girls click and switch from computer to phone to iPod.

As ever more gadgetry accessorizes youth, setting limits can feel impossible. This chapter is about how to parent effectively through BFF 2.0, or the virtual world girls and their friends inhabit. As confusing as social media may seem, unplugging is not an option. Your daughter needs your active involvement in her online life. She is vulnerable to saying and doing things online that she would never do in real life—and many girls will take any chance they can to avoid difficult real-life situations with friends. Social media exacerbates her normal adolescent states, like insecurity, self-consciousness, and jealousy, as well as anxiety and competitiveness. She is also likely addicted to social media because she is addicted to relationship and connection; therefore, she cannot moderate her own use.

The intensity of your daughter's demand for social media is often related to how susceptible she is to its dangers. A girl who is insistent that she must have as much access as you can give her is likely hooked on the endless, unfulfilling race to be constantly connected, in the know, and—worst of all—part of the drama. This world can make a girl volatile, self-conscious, and unhealthily invested in what others think of her.

But here's the good news. Many girls feel downright fatigued by the relentless onslaught of social media. Your child may
look
like she would prefer to sit, concave and quiet, with a laptop cracked and cell phone cocked, for hours on end. And she may do it. Yet she may also feel utterly overwhelmed by the constant stream of information she feels pressured to respond to and make sense of. Many girls go through their days with the pervasive anxiety that they must know, at all times, what is being texted and posted, lest they fall out of favor or lose status. They begin to equate the quality of a relationship with the frequency of contact. They also become hamsters on a wheel, caught in an unsatisfying, endless cycle of information consumption. A surprising number of girls have told me their friendships would be better off without social media at all. As one middle-school student told a blogger in 2010, "If everyone else stopped using it, I would, too." Said another: "I just don't want to be left out."

There are three guiding principles you can use to parent through this time. First, you are the parent. You are entitled to say no and set limits. Your daughter is not an equal partner in this conversation, and you can negotiate as much or as little as you want. Nor is her access to technology some kind of twenty-first-century entitlement. Just because your child lives in your home does not automatically qualify her for a free smart phone or Facebook account.

Second, your job as a parent is to not only protect her from others, but also to guide and monitor her behavior. Do you remember when your parents would rationalize rules you hated by saying, "It's not that I don't trust you. I just don't trust other people"? I am recommending something different here: that you don't entirely trust your daughter. That doesn't mean you approach her as some kind of criminal, just that you are realistic enough to know that the temptations of social media can bring out the worst in all of us, adults included. With frontal lobes still developing, young people are simply less reflective and more impulsive. They are also coming of age in a celebrity and media-obsessed culture where little is considered private and "anything goes." We are doing girls a favor when we assume they will make a few mistakes. As I showed in chapter four, they are far from the "digital natives" they are made out to be.