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Sugar and Spice May Not Be So Nice
Examining the new generation of female bullying
by Kara Giannecchini

PARENTGUIDE News April 2006

Lauren, Lori and Jen have been best friends since 2nd grade. The three girls lived on the same street and did everything together. Now the girls are in 8th grade and things are starting to change. One day Lauren and Lori decide to hang out and watch TV. Soon their discussion turns to talk of Jen:

Lori: Don’t you think Jen has been really annoying lately? Whenever she’s around, she just gets under my skin.

Lauren: Yeah, I know what you mean. The other day in gym class, she told this stupid, embarrassing story about the three of us when we were younger and the worst part is that Stacy and Sarah (the popular girls) were right there.

Lori: Oh great. She can be so dumb sometimes. Maybe you and I should just be friends and ditch Jen.

Lauren: Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. She’s so different from us now, I think she’s holding us back from being friends with the popular crowd.

The next morning at school, Lauren and Lori see Jen hanging out by her locker getting her books for her next class. Jen says hello to them, but they just give a quick wave and walk away whispering and giggling. Later that day, Jen hears that Lauren and Lori are spreading rumors about her and gossiping about her with the popular girls. At first, Jen can’t believe that her “best friends” could do something like that. But when she calls them later that night to invite them over for dinner, neither Lori nor Lauren call her back. That night Jen sits alone in her room and cries. She feels so alone and confused. What could she have done that was so wrong?

(Excerpted from a skit in Monmouth Psychological Associates’ Girls Helping Girls program)

Welcome to the world of girl bullying, where the stakes are high, the competition is fierce and the consequences can be deadly.

Whether being snubbed by a “friend,” falling victim to the rumor mill or getting bashed in an online chat room, most kids in today’s society have experienced at least some form of girl bullying. Relational aggression, or girl bullying as it is more commonly known, is a different kind of bullying— a less overt, but just as painful kind.

Dr. Donald Erwin, head of Monmouth Psychological Associates, believes relational aggression is currently at an all-time high in schools.

“Although relational aggression has certainly always existed, it is definitely more prominent and more recognized today than it ever was,” he says. “In the last ten to 12 years, it’s really exploded in schools, and that has a lot to do with the fact that today’s young women are so competitive with each other.”

Competition is what Dr. Erwin believes to be the driving force behind most cases of relational aggression.

“I think the mistake that a lot of authors who cover this topic make is when they say that this type of behavior is automatically programmed into girls because they’re taught to repress their anger and aggression and are therefore forced to have to outlet it in other ways like gossip, rumors, backstabbing,” says Erwin. “While in some cases this may be true, I believe the main problem is that young girls are so busy trying to tear each other down that they don’t realize how much they’re truly hurting one another. It’s like social cannibalism— they feed off the pain and demise of their peers.”

Lauren Catania, a clinical associate at Monmouth Psychological Associates, agrees that competition among women is a major contributor to relational aggression, and, if not recognized, can become an even bigger problem later on in life.

“That kind of fierce competition— women attacking other women— can last all the way through adolescence into adulthood and can even come into the workplace, where many times women become their own worst enemies, putting each other down, just to get themselves to the top,” she says. “What many people don’t realize is that this kind of behavior that starts in adolescence doesn’t just automatically go away, especially if you were the catty one, always being nasty to all the other girls. It will still be something you need to work on, no matter what age you are.”

In the past, school administrators and even parents have always viewed relational aggression as a kind of rite of passage for adolescent girls. According to Catania, this reluctance to validate girl bullying as a real problem is mostly because verbal bullying is much harder to punish than more overt bullying, like a fist fight on the playground. Verbal bullying, however, is just as damaging psychologically and can leave wounds that are deeper and much longer lasting than any physical injury. While boys usually use physical domination to taunt their victims, girls tend to use an emotional kind of weapon such as excluding another girl from the lunch table or trashing a so-called friend just to fit in with the popular crowd.

“With physical bullying, in most cases, you fight or hit the other person, it gets dealt with and you move on,” says Catania. “While with verbal abuse, it might go undetected for a period of time and its impact stays with you a lot longer than a smack or a punch— it’s much more painful, emotionally.”

Relational aggression has been linked to eating disorders, depression, social anxiety, promiscuity and, almost always, declining performance in school. Today, relational aggression has become such a problem in schools that parents and educators are being forced to pay attention to it.

“Before, relational aggression was just kind of a he said/she said sort of thing, with no real guidelines or suggestions on how to punish it,” Catania says. “Now, because it’s become much more of a problem, teachers are better able to recognize it while it’s occurring, instead of when it’s already out of control. Schools can do their part by setting up strict bullying guidelines and parents can start putting pressure on them to implement these guidelines.”

Together, Erwin and Catania have developed what they consider a very promising anti-bullying program called Girls Helping Girls, which is designed to begin cultural change among girls in middle schools. The program focuses on 17 target behaviors, believed to be the most common ways girls bully. One of Erwin and Catania’s main goals is to create a shared language among adolescent girls that labels certain subtle signs and gestures as mean, such as False Fronting, or acting one way in front of someone and then talking about the person behind their back, and Convenient/Conventional Friendships, when a girl is extra nice to a peer just to get something she wants, then drops the peer immediately afterward. Another important goal is to emphasize kindness and compassion by allowing girls to see how it feels to walk in another’s shoes.

According to Dr. Erwin, most girls doing the bullying may realize that they’re being nasty, but they probably don’t understand the consequences of their actions or how much they’re hurting the person being bullied. “In my experience, most girls who are shown exactly how nasty and mean what they’re doing is would most likely stop on their own,” Dr. Erwin says.

Both Erwin and Catania agree that the program is much more effective with parental involvement.

“Parents really need to step up and get themselves involved in this program,” Erwin says. “They need to ask their kids questions about their friends, their attitudes, situations where they’ve felt uncomfortable and where they are in social circles. Parents should also show their child that they understand just how nasty girls may be, and even share any personal experiences.”

Catania agrees and feels that a parent’s first step should be to acknowledge their child’s pain.

Unless relational aggression becomes an absolute emergency, Dr. Erwin feels parents should not get personally involved in trying to fix the problem, such as by calling the other girl’s mother or the school, both of which may actually make things worse. He and Catania believe that letting the girls work things out for themselves often proves most useful.

One very smart solution parents can use, Erwin says, is to offer an alternative activity that won’t put their daughter in an awkward position, like allowing them to participate in a different girl scout group if the one they’re in is hurting them or placing them in a bad situation. Parents can also offer to participate in activities with their children, like taking them shopping or simply just hanging out with them at home— anything to keep kids busy and take their minds off school troubles.

Erwin and Catania hope to implement the Girls Helping Girls program in schools throughout the country, providing an extensive curriculum including skits, guidance sheets, one-on-one counseling sessions and a pledge against girl bullying.

“What’s great about the Girls Helping Girls program is that it makes the transition from middle school to high school go much more smoothly,” says Catania, “because it allows girls to realize that they are not alone and that what they’re going through is not just a personal attack on them.”

Kara Giannecchini is an assistant editor.