Mean Girls

[auntpolly]

DD and I were just talking about middle school and how mean the girls were -- would have been 10 years ago or so for her but I don't imagine much has changed. I don't remember it being that way, when I was that age. Oh, I know there were some mean girls, but they were the "harder" girls who smoked in the girls's room and threatened to beat you up if you looked at their loser boyfriends that no one but them wanted anyway.

But when DD was in middle school, it seemed so prevalent, and it actually seemed reinforced by teachers and parents. The popular girls were just ruthless in how they made fun people they deemed inferior. My DD was blessed with very strong self esteem and she couldn't have cared less, but for some girls it was very traumatic.The mean girls would target somebody -- and God help you if you were the target of the month.

It all evened out a little in HS, with girls like DD banding together, and finding popularity with their own talents and quirkinesses, but the mean girls stayed mean (they just didn't have the power they once did to hurt people because no one was afraid of them anymore.

Is my memory bad? Have girls always been this mean?

 

[simpilotswife]

Yes they have.

 

[janette]

Yes they have.

 

[auntpolly]

Is this a woman thing? If I were a sociologist I would study it. Why do we women feel like we have to do each other in? Or is it just a people thing -- do guys do the same thing?

I remember in middle school the teachers seemed to like the mean girls and treat them better. What is this? It's just interesting to me.

Like I said, DD was and continues to be very confident, but she and her friends were all sharing horror stories of middle school at a party last night.

 

[azgal81]

All I can think about is the mean girls movie!

Most kids are mean just because they want to fit in and be popular. I have noticed though since I graduated from high school that the so called popular/mean girls are the ones still living at home with their parents in the small town I graduated from and working at the local 7-11. And yes I'm completely serious!

 

[HomeSweetDisney]

Is this a woman thing? If I were a sociologist I would study it. Why do we women feel like we have to do each other in? Or is it just a people thing -- do guys do the same thing?

I think a lot of it has to do with females often feeling threatened by one another and needing to feel superior. Mean guys don't hold a candle to mean girls, IMO. We can be utterly ruthless and that's kind of sad. It's something that's always gone on but it almost seems like it's gotten worse with each generation. I talked to my mom about how things have changed since she was in high school (she graduated in '83) to when I was in high school (I graduated in '04) and to my younger sister who is going to be a sophomore next year. And we all agreed that girls have just gotten meaner and meaner. There are just always going to be those "popular" girls who feel the need to make everyone else feel inferior so that they can feel better about themselves. There's really no rhyme or reason to it...that just seems to be how it is. But that doesn't make it any less difficult to deal with when you're one of the girls who's being tormented.

 

[Hannathy]

They start in Kindergarten! If you didn't run into it till middle school you were extremely luck. At my DD's school the mean girls started like I said in Kindergarten - In fact told my DD she was a baby 'cause she had on a Disney sweatshirt and she was 5 at the time!

 

[MI mom of 3]

I work in a Middle School. Last year we brought some people in to talk to the kids, we separated the boys from the girls. I was with the boys so I don't know exactly what the girls talked about. I do know that they did a survey of what it takes to be popular and the highest rated trait was MEAN!!

 

[auntpolly]

My DD remembered a really funny story about 7th grade. THere was a girl, let's call her Molly, that was a little immature and had trouble making friends all the way from 1st to 12th grade. In 7th grade, she was in one of DD's classes. Molly evidently decided it was time to get bold and try to make friends, so she started asking other girls to go to the movies with her on Saturday. She started, for some reason, with the most popular (mean) girls. They not only turned her down, one after another, but made fun of her for even asking (the nerve!) and made a big joke out of it. All week long it was, "Who will that loser ask next?"

After a couple of dozen rejections, she asked my DD. DD didn't really know her very well and had a swim meet, but she felt a little sorry for her, so she fixed it so she could go to the movies with Molly.

The punch line -- Molly told her at the movies that she hadn't really wanted my DD, but she was "settling" for her. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say, LOL! DD wasn't nearly mean enough for Molly, I guess!

 

[barkley]

they've been around since i was an elementary kid in the mid 60's!

i saw a recent study on this issue, it stated that while boys use their physicality as a means for establishing the soical pecking order (be it sports or downright bullying) girls use emotional tactics. the boys will just exclude someone without going into massive verbal detail or explanation, while the girls use that verbal detail to solidify thier stature as well as diminish the object of their wrath.

i can say from personal experience and observation, many of those "mean girls" found themselves on the receiving end of that negative behaviour once they left highschool and became the small fishes in the bigger ponds. i to be honest, as one who was tormented by them-it was satisfying to see them experience the full brunt of what they had subjected so many others too (the joy of college being that us "not mean" girls find that the majority of the college population fall into that category so the social dynamics are not in place for those years).

 

[SillyMe]

Oh, they've always been that mean, but I know in my own experience that it wasn't the "popular" girls who tormented me. It was, as you mentioned, the "tough girls" who thought they could kick everyone's ****. I was the smallest in my class, therefore I was a target.

I am soooo thankful that my dd14 isn't afraid to stand up for herself AND for other kids. The "mean girls" were brutal in middle school, but the most my dd had to deal with was the "he said" "she said" crap. It has settled down alot since they started high school, but of course now they're spreading rumors that dd is pregnant.

 

[christineann]

Two weeks from today, my daughter graduates from a small high school and will never have to see those awful girls again. The "cool group" is terrified of being without each other, and rightfully so. They spent so much time doing anything and everything with boys, drinking, and being ugly to the regular kids that they are having trouble getting into college, too. The dorks like my daughter (she laughs and calls herself that) are at the top of their class and will move on to good schools and honors programs. I told her that what goes around, comes around. I've seen their "MySpace" pages, and their parents would be SHOCKED if they knew what their precious little girls are up to!

 

[Disney Ella]

My memories are the same as yours, Aunt Polly. The mean girls in my school were the tough smoker/stoner girls that no one wanted to be around anyway. The popular girls, while they certainly weren't about to include any uncool people in their circle, were not mean to anyone.

My kids are in the 4th grade and there are some mean girls already. But then, we had a birthday party for them in the first grade, I remember being surprised at how mean some of those kids were.

 

[auntpolly]

t has settled down alot since they started high school, but of course now they're spreading rumors that dd is pregnant.

Lovely! Such sweet girls! At my age, if someone started a rumor about me, it would be so easy to brush off, but at that age and in that closed environment of a school, I would think it would be very traumatic. Bravo to your daughter for not letting it get to her!

 

[auntpolly]

My memories are the same as yours, Aunt Polly. The mean girls in my school were the tough smoker/stoner girls that no one wanted to be around anyway. The popular girls, while they certainly weren't about to include any uncool people in their circle, were not mean to anyone.

.

Yeah, LOL, it's not like the popular girls were begging me to sit at their lunch table or anything, but they weren't making fun of my friends and I -- we were more of a non-entity to them.

 

[Kimberly]

Always happens in middle school...

Some VERY rare cases where it doesn't.

 

[dizagain]

It has definitely been this way since my middle school days of the early 80's at least!

DD, 12, is just now starting to call a certain group the "popular" kids. It's like they're anointed or something! She is just like I was in that she's settled into a really nice group of girls that are not targets of the "mean girls" - not now at least! I asked her once how the kids are "popular" if noone else likes them ...of course she just rolled her eyes at me and said "because." I guess things don't change.

I also remember that in college all things changed and the "nice" girls finished first!!!

 

[sushinut]

I believe that society implants in women these insecurities that cause them to be competitive with each other. Even the mean girls have their insecurities, they just handle it by trying to squash others. Media images continually shows these images of women that are unrealistic or difficult to achieve, but they show that in order to be "popular", you must fit a certain mode. This automatically is the image that girls are trying to fit into and those that feel like they fit into these qualifications, are somehow superior to their peers.

Human nature to some extent is like this..."haves vs. have nots", "skinny vs fat", etc...

 

[auntpolly]

OK, so why aren't the teachers and parents doing more to discourage this? Why were the teachers always fawning over them. Not all of them, but I swear some of those teachers were afraid they wouldn't be cool if they weren't nice to the mean girls. They never stuck up for the kids getting picked on -- I remember one of them saying "they have to learn how to defend themselves!" (from a crowd of girls laughing and yelling things -- great lesson to have to learn!)

 

[Dznypal]

our DS was in 5th grade in a private school this was his first year.

well one of the trouble makers boys kept picking on DS cause we refused to buy him $200 athletic shoes eveyone was wearing (well almost everyone!!)

fastforward 14 years both boys are well out of school--

There was an article about an police officer that had flashed his gun at a bouncer and called him some "not so nice names!!)

I turns out this was the same kid that made fun of DS about shoes!!

I hope he enjoyed his 3 months in the house of correction

and "met" some nice new friends named "bubba"!!!!

DS is also a police officer