The idea that children and
adolescents are frequently horrible to each other is hardly new, but it has
received a great deal of attention in recent years.  In Surviving Ophelia,
Mary Pipher argued that young women suffer terrible pressures as they enter
their teens and some of those were from their peers.  It is not just boys
calling girls names like "slut" and "bitch," and in fact
girls can be even more hateful than boys.  The phenomenon of "mean
girls" is so well known that a Hollywood comedy has been made about it. 
Many students are bullied, and many of the bullies are girls.  Not
surprisingly, both parents and students who have suffered from such behavior
are starting to speak out about it.  Rachel Simmons’ book Odd Girl Out focused
especially on how adolescents, especially girls, would punish other girls by
excluding them from their social groups.  In this new book, she collects
together accounts by girls of the kind of treatment she was talking about.

Odd Girl Speaks Out is a
short book, with 200 pages of fairly large print.  The book is divided into six
chapters, but they are all rather similar.  Simmons writes a short introduction
to each, followed by short account or poems by girls of how they have suffered
or caused others to suffer.  For example, Jane (14) explains how she used to be
popular until the sixth grade when she was diagnosed with dyslexia.  Then other
children started calling her "sped" (for special ed student) or
"retard" and she lost her old friends.  She says that her mother made
her watch an Oprah show on aggressive girls, which helped, but things are still
quite difficult for her in the eighth grade.  Story after story recounts how
girls who were best friends suddenly transform into bitter enemies, and how the
one who loses out spends a great deal of time crying at home, feeling outcast
and lonely.

The uniformity of the stories
becomes rather boring.  It would be much more interesting to get more detail
about a fewer number of girls, because the details really give individuality
and richness to an account of a difficult experience.  Furthermore, the writers
are all young and are not particularly eloquent writers.  Personally, I found
the poetry excruciating.  But then, I’m not the intended audience for a book
like this.  Teen girls who are going through a hard time because of social
exclusion may well find Odd Girl Speaks Out a comfort.  It could assure
them that many other girls have been in similar positions and that life will
get better.  It might also help parents better understand the difficulties
their daughters are experiencing at school. 

© 2005 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved. 

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts &
Humanities Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also
editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: ChildhoodDisorders, Memoirs