Competition:
The Feat That Makes Girls Feud?
by Jennifer Wolcott, The Christian Science Monitor, Book
Review, January 27, 2004
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Why girls fight. It's a topic that many
find uncomfortable. But Lyn Mikel Brown refuses to shrug it off.
The professor at Maine's Colby College has long been fascinated
with how popular culture influences girls. Of particular
fascination: what she calls "girlfighting."
Name-calling,
gossiping, and cruel competition, she asserts, are not behaviors
inherent to girls. Instead, in her latest book, "Girlfighting:
Betrayal and Rejection Among Girls," the college professor shows
- with help from more than 400 interviews - how this behavior is
culturally learned.
From an early age,
Ms. Brown says, girls are subjected to strong messages from the
media and society in general. They hear that they must conform
to certain ideals of femininity, beauty, and romance to be
popular and successful - and that in doing so, they shouldn't
trust other girls with whom they are in competition.
Mean, aggressive
behavior is the natural result, says Brown.
Fifteen-year-old
Bahtya summed it up for the author: "Fighting's the popular
thing to do. TV, media, newspapers, it's like they teach girls
you're supposed to fight. It's a constant competition or race
for attention."
But Brown didn't
write "Girlfighting," her third book about girls, simply to
grouse about the media. She challenges the popular notion that
"girls will be girls," gives readers a sense of hope that this
trend can be reversed, and suggests practical ways to support
girls and bring about social change.
"I was concerned that
we as a society were blaming girls for something that we needed
to be accountable for," Brown said in a telephone interview. "We
have this notion that girls are naturally jealous and nasty, but
we didn't think about cultural messages that make girls feel
powerless unless they can denigrate other girls."
Engaging with girls
in ways that make them feel more confident and powerful on their
own, so they are less inclined to put down others, is the goal.
Brown devotes a chapter to concrete steps for doing this,
including encouraging girls to enter the sports arena and honing
their sense of fairness and justice.
At the same time,
says Brown, a little feistiness at the right moment isn't such a
bad thing.
"We had heightened
attention in the '90s about girls' loss of a voice," she says.
"Now they are speaking out more, often because they don't want
to put up with unfairness or just because they are trying to
figure out what it means to be a girl. A lot of positive social
change has come about as a result of anger."
Some of Brown's
favorite interviews in "Girlfighting" are with girls who can
differentiate between constructive feistiness and purely
negative squabbling - and recognize how the latter robs them of
valuable energy. Eleven-year-old Lily, for example, recognizes
the price of divisiveness. "If we could put all our talents
together," she told Brown, "we can't, but if we could, we'd
like, you know, it'd just be no holding back."
Another girl who
particularly impressed Brown is Maritza, an eighth-grader who
wrote a telling story about a princess who isn't beautiful and,
as a result, has only a peasant as her suitor.
As the princess grows
older, Maritza wrote, she learns to be content with her life and
less ashamed of her looks, but still feels a nagging jealousy
for a beautiful duchess who "had everything she wanted."
Maritza's story,
Brown writes, reminds us of the rewards and disappointments
girls face in the present culture and how cultural ideals of
beauty, romance, and femininity nurture jealousies between women
that can choke out possibilities for real social change.
Brown deliberately
chose to end each chapter with anecdotes from insightful girls
like Lily and Maritza.
"These are the girls
who see the world differently," Brown says, "the ones who see
the need for girls to work together and not pursue dead ends. We
don't hear from them often enough."
Girlfighting:
betrayal and rejection among girls
Lyn Mikel Brown
NYU Press259 pp, $27.95
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