The traditional bully is a boy, bigger and meaner than the others, who beats up on other boys to gain dominance. Psychologists politely call this “physical aggression,” as opposed to social or relational aggression, which includes teasing, spreading rumors, excluding, and name-calling. Bullying can be either—or both. Boys use relational aggression, too, but it’s the mean girls who have gotten all the press lately. We’re not just talking about Martha Stewart and Hillary headlines; three best-selling books—Odd Girl Out, by Rachel Simmons; Queen Bees & Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman; and Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman, by feminist Phyllis Chesler—address the topic. A February cover of the New York Times Magazine featured a mean-girls story focusing on Wiseman’s nonprofit Empower Program in Brooklyn. Then, four months later, Newsweek’s cover came out in defense of teenage girls. It’s all boiled down to a front-page debate about bitchiness. And, according to several local experts, it’s a phenomenon in Dallas, too.
Dr. Mary Ann Little, one of Dallas’ top child psychologists, says she sees more and more girls who suffer from an emotional crisis arising from the anxiety over social aggression. “I hear more concerns about fitting in and being accepted, more complaints about things that appear minor,” Little says. She regards it as the “most underrated and enduring problem” in schools today.
“The studies are far from conclusive,” Underwood says, “but this kind of social aggression seems to be most common among white, higher-income girls.” In Odd Girl Out, Simmons says, “Our culture refuses girls access to open conflict, and it forces their aggression into nonphysical, indirect, and covert forms.” Add to that the increased competition in schools, and you’ve got a breeding ground for bullying. Boys and girls are more competitive because their parents are more competitive for them. And, Simmons points out, “Confidence and competition are critical tools for success, but they break the rules of femininity.” Competition, she says, suggests a desire to be better than others, but to be openly competitive is by definition not “nice” because “competition and winning are about denying others what you wish to take for yourself.”
Dallas is a competitive city. Kids feel a lot of pressure to succeed—in the classroom, on the playing field, and in society. Popularity is paramount—it’s a kind of victory. Some theorize that Boomers taught their kids that they’re entitled to have it all; top colleges seem to demand kids that are the best at everything. “It takes more to succeed now,” Little says, “and success is about achievement, not character.”
But girls, Underwood says, especially Dallas girls who inherit Southern gentility along with frontier ambition, are expected to be nice before all else. So girls feel cornered between succeeding and being sweet. Does the mandate to be nice backfire into meanness as young women try to stand out, to excel? Underwood cites one study that compared kids in Headstart to kids in university preschools and found that the professors’ children were more often the aggressors.
Underwood suggests that some social aggression occurs as a passing developmental stage. That’s why frustrated parents hear from school counselors, “It’s always been this way, and it will always be this way. There’s nothing we can do.” But regarding social aggression as a rite of passage suggests it’s formatively necessary for girls to go through a bullying phase. Instead, as Simmons says, “Aggression is biological, but the face of anger is learned.” So while some girls do not avoid conflict, others may learn to show anger as love. This is why the worst thing one girl can say about another is that “she’s fake.”
The degree of social aggression varies from group to group. Some groups of girls value exclusivity more. “If girls want to feel ’in,’ like they belong, the easiest way to do it is to shut someone else out,” says Cathie Looney, children and family life director at Saint Michael and All Angels Church and a certified “reality therapist.” Boys tend to bully kids who are outside their group; girls often turn on one of their own because that’s the safest person to turn on. The exclusion forms a bond between the bullies. “Girls perceive danger in their lives as isolation, especially that by standing out they will be abandoned,” Looney adds. “The girls most often bullied are not those that don’t fit in—it’s the popular girls with lots of friends that are isolated from the group.” One girl wins when she gets other people not to like the other one.
Some believe that bullying has increased as a result of our fiercely competitive society, but the data shows that the number of kids involved in bullying has remained stable at about 15 percent. Underwood says what has changed is our vocabulary. “We now have a language to talk about this.”
Underwood has based her career on helping to develop that language by studying how kids, especially girls, behave in groups. She has been director of The Friendship Project for years, trying to find answers to questions such as, is meanness a stable trait? Physical aggression in boys has been studied for a long time—we know it’s a stable trait. Boys who are bullies will be bullies as men. Is this true of social aggression, the kind of bullying being identified as most typical of girls? Studies are too young to know. “We don’t know if social aggression is a personality trait or if it only happens in certain situations,” Underwood says. “It’s a quality of groups, instead of individuals.” Relational aggression doesn’t occur between pairs of kids. It’s only a valuable tool when there’s a third person. Courtney’s “friend” blows hot and cold. “On our field trip, she was nice to me in the room but mad at me when we were out with the others. She was only mad when people could see her.”
The Friendship Project observes pairs of best friends, ages 10, 12, and 14, as they interact with an unfamiliar kid during a game of Pictionary. The third person, who behaves obnoxiously by messing up the cards, overtly cheating, and goofing on the game, is an actor, but the kids don’t know that. Observers record how the best friends respond to this and also how they act when the actor leaves the room. “We’ve observed several hundred boys and girls, and the response is all over the map,” Underwood says. “Some pairs are amazingly tolerant; others make negative comments only behind the third person’s back.” The experiment is coded for facial expressions as well as what people say. Girls and boys are equally likely to express social aggression verbally. The gender difference shows up in the girls’ more subtle expressions—those rolling eyes, sneers, and turned backs.
“One of the things I worry about is the perception that this is the province of girls exclusively,” Underwood says. That’s why she emphasizes the necessity of focusing on the scientific evidence—she’s done 10 studies on this topic and her book relies on 546 sources. Still, girls can be diabolically clever with cruelty, like calling a friend and leaving a message on the family voice mail, “Did you get the results of your pregnancy test yet?” Rumor-spreading is a common weapon.
There’s always been something perversely titillating about a catfight, and Underwood is suspect of the current media spotlight on social aggression. “I study girls’ nastiness and that’s not the whole picture. But I do hope this attention will encourage us to find ways to teach kids to treat each other better.”
Better start early. Underwood remembers an argument with her daughter, now age 6. “She looked up at me and said, ’If you don’t let me have Cheetos for breakfast, I won’t be your best friend.’”
