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Strollerderby
New website Rookiemag.com gives teen girls a voice.
Rookie is a new site for teen girls thought up by 15-year-old fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson when she was a freshman in high school. It’s not a cheesy guide to be a teenager; as Tavi puts it in her editor’s letter: “It is, quite simply, a bunch of writing and art we like and believe in.”
The Rookie staff is a dream team of fabulous writers (not all just teens) and creative types with amazing experience and credentials, including Jane Pratt of xoJane.com (remember Jane magazine when you were a teen?) and be sure to read their memories about their first day of high school. Rookie also features its own readers as writers, with a way to submit content to be published. Continue reading »
Starting now in the quest to instill self-esteem deep within my daughter.
The part I’m dreading most about parenting a daughter doesn’t really involve my daughter at all. It’s about the other girls. The mean girls.
I remember those times all too clearly. Two little girls can play nice, but throw a third one in there and someone is bound to get excluded.
Exclusion.
I can’t bear the thought of someone telling my little sweetheart they don’t want to play with her. But an even worse thought than that: finding out my daughter is a mean girl. I would be devastated. That would mean I didn’t do my job. Continue reading »
We've all had them, but why do we so many of us keep them?
Do you have a toxic friend? If you are a woman, chances are you have had a toxic friend, and surprisingly, you may have kept that friendship for a while, according to a new study.
Self Magazine and Today.com asked 18,000 readers about their experiences with toxic friends. 84 percent of women said they’d had a toxic friend at some point, with 1 in 3 survey said they had a toxic best friend.
The disturbing part is that 83 percent said they had held onto a friendship longer than was healthy simply because it was hard to break up with that friend.
Yet a dysfunctional relationship is still dysfunctional, even if it is between two female friends, so why is it so difficult to end the friendship? Continue reading »
Girls exclude others when they feel threatened
Sometimes it seems like mean girls must be a force of nature.
Just watch two-year-old girls form cliques in a sandbox, lording it over other toddlers like pint-sized prom queens. For some kids, the social dynamics of queen bees and social outcasts start before girls are even out of diapers.
Does being mean just come natural?
It might. It isn’t meanness, though, say social scientists. Rather, girls’ cliquishness represents a difference in how they like to socialize. Girls of any age tend to prefer close, intimate, one-on-one relationships, while guys run in packs. Research suggests these patterns hold true whether you’re three or thirty.
A new study says it's not the kids at the top who are most guilty of picking on their peers
There are few adults I know who look back on their middle and high school years with much more than a grimace on their face. Kids are tough, particularly girls. To the brave men and women who go in the classroom with the tween to teen crown every day and try to get through to their hormone-riddled bodies and minds, my hat is off to you. I wouldn’t do it.
Of course not every teen is a tormentor. There are always leaders and those who happily and compulsively follow them. But according to a new study, it’s not necessarily the kids on top who are always the meanest ones. Researchers from the University of California, Davis, found that kids in the top 98th percentile of a school’s social pecking order are 40% more aggressive than those at the very top (and are 30% worse than the least popular kids).
1. Mean girls have been around since homo erectus moved his family from the cave and someone laughed at his daughter’s hairy back. Still, something’s different about it now. A lot of people think girls are getting even meaner and at younger ages. Is it the influence of reality TV, saucy scripts for kids TV or bad role-modeling from mean girl moms? Naturally, experts blame the latter.
2. American women have long complained about a lack of support for breastfeeding, especially in the workplace. So we were a little baffled this week when new breastfeeding laws in Great Britain, requiring workplaces to provide private clean spaces where moms can pump, provoked outrage by some very prominent women. These economic experts and conservative leaders thought this would drive down the economy in already uncertain times. Continue reading »
Little Mean Girl?
The archetype of the mean little girl has been a staple on children’s television for years, from Little House on the Prairie‘s Nellie Oleson to Peanuts bully Lucy to wealthy brat Muffy Crosswire on Arthur. In keeping with that tradition, comedian Jack Black is developing a new animated series to air on Fox called Tiny Monsters, being billed as “South Park for 12-year-old girls.”
The New York Post recently explored the idea that little girls are getting meaner every day, and a reader poll confirms their theory. 88% of people think today’s kids are getting meaner. According to the Post, “Theories abound as to what’s causing the cattiness, from early onset puberty to anonymous Internet cruelty to societal narcissism to the witty mean banter on Disney shows. But one thing is for sure: It’s happening younger and more viciously — and many parents are left shellshocked by the schoolyard tales.” Continue reading »
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