Bullying, Girl-Style

The code is unwritten, a conspiracy among girls to turn on one of their own. Secret pacts made among middle and high school girls to ruin reputations, to humiliate--whisper campaigns that so-and-so sleeps around; barking like a dog at another girl in the hallway; shifting to exclude someone from her usual lunch spot.

Such behavior goes on behind the backs of parents and teachers or is dismissed as gossip or teasing, said Rachel Simmons, author of the new book “Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls” (Harcourt). Finally, Simmons said, people are beginning to realize that the covert aggression by girls has a name: bullying.

Inspired by Simmons’ book and others, a wrenching and, some say, unprecedented public discussion is underway on the subject of girls and bullying. In public forums, often for the first time, girls--and women--are stepping forward with stories about how they were bullied or were bullies themselves. On national TV and Web sites, women are confessing that they were mean to former schoolmates; some are trying to track down their victims and offer apologies.

The sudden openness is reminiscent of the way that women first began talking publicly about domestic violence 20 years ago, said Holly Nishimura, assistant director of the Ophelia Project. (Simmons is a national trainer for the Pennsylvania-based organization, which works on anti-bullying programs. The group, which started in 1997, came out of local discussions about Mary Pipher’s book, “Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls.”)

Until recently, some women hadn’t even realized that the cruel acts of their girlhood friends--or their own actions--could be considered bullying. “We have a language and a name for it now,” Nishimura said.

Last week, “Odd Girl Out” shot to No. 7 on Amazon.com’s sales rankings. The week before, during a discussion of the book on television’s “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” a 40-ish woman acknowledged that she had bullied childhood friends. The woman said she had paid for her actions all of her life and hoped to track down the girls she had mistreated 30 years ago to make amends. “I have very few friends now,” the woman said.

On a recent National Public Radio program, a young mother from Los Angeles called in to say, with a shaking voice, that she had bullied a friend in summer camp, and, “Jennifer Willard, if you’re out there, I’m sorry.” In early April, on a “Dateline NBC” segment featuring Simmons’ book, a 23-year-old woman confessed that she had been a middle-school bully, saying she wanted other girls to learn from her folly. (After being interviewed for Simmons’ book, the woman decided to contact her former eighth-grade friend and is trying to rebuild their relationship.)

Later that week, on the “Dateline NBC” Web site, hundreds of thousands of people logged on to read or participate in an online chat with Simmons, who, in her book, admitted that she had been both a bully and a victim.

“I think it speaks to a transformation that’s happening in what people feel they can say--that people feel suddenly that certain things are able to be said,” said Simmons, 27, in a telephone interview. “That’s a sign of an issue that has been previously not validated, that’s gaining a kind of public legitimacy.”

The way girls relate to one another--how they exclude, how to be a good friend--is considered important enough to be included in the human-development curriculum at Marlborough School in Los Angeles, said Emily Sears Vaughn, a counselor at the all-girls school. As part of the curriculum, advisors select and train 11th-grade students to lead small discussion groups of seventh-grade girls on topics such as cliques and bullying.

“When I have a problem with friends,” said Vanessa Van Petten, 16, “I can’t focus on my studies. Friends are a big deal. I think it’s so important that our school lets us feel they are a big deal.”

The juniors urge the younger girls to be direct and confront friends who give them the cold shoulder. “If something is bothering you, say it: ‘Is there a reason you didn’t say hi to me?’” Vanessa tells her group.

In middle school, girls are hyper-sensitive to small slights and what such actions mean to their place in the social structure, said Casey Schuur, 16. For instance, said Casey, a seventh-grader might say in the group: “‘Someone didn’t let me have some of her cake for their birthday. What was that about?’ You can’t really go up to your mom, like, ‘Mom, Janie didn’t give me some of her cake.’”

Sixth- and seventh-grade girls are scared to confront, and possibly aggravate, friends who hurt them, Vanessa said. “It’s fear of not having friends or walking down the hallway alone or having your lunch and not having a group to go to.”

Simmons began studying female bullying and the psychology of girls three years ago in graduate school at Oxford University. A Rhodes scholar who lives in Brooklyn, she interviewed more than 300 girls between ages 10 and 14 during prime bullying years.

Simmons got an early hint of how “Odd Girl Out” would resonate with women while she was writing it. “Everywhere I went, there was an immediate outpouring of support, of personal storytelling, of ‘It’s about time. You go, girl!’” she said. “[At] grocery stores, hair salons, there was just this, ‘Oh, yes, yes’ connection. It hit a nerve and since the book has come out [last month], pretty amazing things have happened.”

“Odd Girl Out” is one of a slew of books out this year on the intricate social circles of girls and the ways in which they can manipulate and scheme to wield power or seek revenge. In “Fast Girls” (Scribner), journalist Emily White wrote about girls who were labeled “sluts” in high school and how rumors about their sex lives forced them into intense isolation or worse. And in “Queen Bees & Wannabes” (Crown Publishers), author Rosalind Wiseman addressed the structure of cliques and the ringleaders who reign supreme over the other girls.

The books build on research focusing on girls and aggression that began only 10 years ago. In one study, a University of Minnesota research team concluded that girls can be just as aggressive as boys, but in different ways. Boys tend to lash out physically; girls--who are socialized to avoid direct confrontation--strike via “relational aggression,” such as ending a friendship by badmouthing the person behind her back, according to the study.

The subtle ways that girls bully are hard to detect, Simmons said. But the body language is unmistakable: eye rolling, finger pointing, a turned back.

As a result, female victims, as well as the bullies themselves, can suffer from enduring low self-esteem, depression and may even commit suicide, Simmons noted. But the behavior of girls has been largely overlooked in the public discourse on bullies that took off three years ago after two teenage boys opened fire at Columbine High School in Colorado.

Wiseman, the 33-year-old author of “Queen Bees,” is invited to speak to classrooms and to groups of adults that include fathers, male CEOs and women who have kept their girlhood pain to themselves for decades. “Seventy-year-old women can recount for me the mean things that happened in seventh-grade like it was yesterday, just like a 12-year-old--and it’s the same stuff,” said Wiseman, co-founder of the Empower Program in Washington, D.C.

As president of the nonprofit group, which works with youth on programs against physical and verbal violence, Wiseman has been speaking about the behavior of girls for 10 years. But until recently, she found it hard to persuade schools to let her talk to students. Last year, Wiseman had about 100 speaking requests; in the last three months, the number jumped to 500. Still, she sometimes has to explain why the gossip of girls deserves attention.

“The thing I would say to people who say this is no big deal is, ‘Yeah but, if your kid is sitting in math class, and if she’s being called a slut, she’s not thinking about math,’” Wiseman said. “‘She’s thinking about where she’s going to sit at lunch today.’ So it really contributes to cultures in schools.”

Rumors are spreading faster than ever these days via means like online bulletin boards, Simmons pointed out. In March, for instance, www.schoolrumors.com was shut down by its service provider after gaining notoriety as a Web site where students--particularly in the San Fernando Valley--posted messages calling girls “sluts” or “whores” or accusing their peers of engaging in sexual acts.

Across the country, school administrators are beginning to expand their definitions of bullying to include nonphysical aggression. In the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, for instance, students are not allowed to spread rumors, glare or take other actions meant to intimidate or harass, according to an anti-bullying policy that took effect this school year. Administrators will look at patterns of behavior to see whether an incident of eye rolling, for instance, could be part of a bullying campaign against someone, said Asst. Supt. Jaime Castellanos.

A redefinition of bullying would let girls know that it’s wrong when a peer stares her down or purposely elbows her in the hallway, Simmons said. “Girls often don’t report it,” she said. “They don’t feel like anyone will believe them. They know there are no rules against it.”

Simmons never reported the time when she was bullied at age 8. A friend, Abby, persuaded Simmons’ best friend to dump her and the rest of her gang to run when they saw her. In her books, Simmons also wrote about how she took part in a bullying campaign in the ninth-grade against her close friend, with whom she recently met for drinks and hashed out what happened.

“I have indulged in the knowledge of a shared secret, in eyes locking exclusively with someone else’s, or rolling in furtive annoyance,” Simmons wrote. “I have gossiped. I have relished that rush of inclusion at the expense of an odd girl out. Have you?”