When Meanness is Cool--Talking With Kids About Bullying

Rosalind Wiseman's book, Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence, a great book about the culture of meanness in relation to young girls, (and has served as the background for a new Disney movie, Mean Girls), works at addressing the new wave bullying--psychological bullying-- that girls participate in today, which is not as noticeable as the more physical bullying done by their male counterparts in high school. Being that this type of bullying is less obvious and harder to spot, and harder to prove, is being overlooked by teachers in school.

Take Marie, a 15-year old girl from Surrey, England, for example, who is on the receiving end of this new type of bullying:

Marie's group has rules: on Mondays they have to see how much make-up they can get away with wearing in class, on Wednesdays they scrape their hair back into identical ponytails, and on Fridays they wear short skirts and bring in a gift the group can share.
Last month Marie, a Surrey schoolgirl, broke the Friday rule. Saying she hated the confinement, she refused to wear a skirt. The defiance cost her dear. 'They haven't spoken to me since, even though one in particular has been my best friend since primary school,' said the 15-year-old, sitting close to her mother. 'Now, if I go anywhere near them, they all turn away. They've made up new rules too that I don't know, so I don't think I could fit back in the group even if they let me.'
But they won't leave Marie alone either. 'They send me horrible anonymous text messages during class and copy them to everyone else in the group,' she said. 'Then they all start sniggering at the same time.' Last month they stole a floppy disk containing her homework from her bag; when she put it in her computer later that evening she found it had been overwritten with pornographic rape scenes...these girls seem to know exactly what psychological buttons to press. The worst thing is that it's so insidious that, with the best will in the world, the teachers just can't see it happening.'
(Source:Mean Girls by: Amelia Hill and Edward Helmore,
Sunday March 3, 2002,The Observer)

Books like Wiseman's can be tools for parents to use to help maintain open lines of communication with their children and help keep parents connected with their children, thus forming a social support

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