Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls |  | Author: Rachel Simmons
Publisher: Harvest Books
List Price: $14.00
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Rating:  103 reviews
Sales Rank: 8777
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Thus.
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0156027348
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.5408342
EAN: 9780156027342
ASIN: 0156027348
Publication Date: April 1, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Outline There is little sugar but lots of spice in journalist Rachel Simmons's brave and brilliant book that skewers the stereotype of girls as the kinder, gentler gender. Odd Girl Out begins with th
Amazon.com Review
There is little sugar but lots of spice in journalist Rachel Simmons's brave and brilliant book that skewers the stereotype of girls as the kinder, gentler gender. Odd Girl Out begins with the premise that girls are socialized to be sweet with a double bind: they must value friendships; but they must not express the anger that might destroy them. Lacking cultural permission to acknowledge conflict, girls develop what Simmons calls "a hidden culture of silent and indirect aggression." The author, who visited 30 schools and talked to 300 girls, catalogues chilling and heartbreaking acts of aggression, including the silent treatment, note-passing, glaring, gossiping, ganging up, fashion police, and being nice in private/mean in public. She decodes the vocabulary of these sneak attacks, explaining, for example, three ways to parse the meaning of "I'm fat." Simmons is a gifted writer who is skilled at describing destructive patterns and prescribing clear-cut strategies for parents, teachers, and girls to resist them. "The heart of resistance is truth telling," advises Simmons. She guides readers to nurture emotional honesty in girls and to discover a language for public discussions of bullying. She offers innovative ideas for changing the dynamics of the classroom, sample dialogues for talking to daughters, and exercises for girls and their friends to explore and resolve messy feelings and conflicts head-on. One intriguing chapter contrasts truth telling in white middle class, African-American, Latino, and working-class communities. Odd Girl Out is that rare book with the power to touch individual lives and transform the culture that constrains girls--and boys--from speaking the truth. --Barbara Mackoff
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 103
 Odd Girl Out November 14, 2009
J. Chesebrough (Raleigh, NC)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was immediately drawn to this book because I am raising a daughter and experiencing the wrath of female aggression again through my daughter's eyes. I never realized it started so young! This book is both enlightening and affirming as it acknowledges the undercurrent of hidden female aggression that lives within our culture. We live in a society where girls are raised to be loving and nice. "Our culture refuses girls open access to open conflict, and forces their aggression into non physical, indirect, and covert forms"(Simmons, 2002,p.3). I believe there are many women in our society that can identify with this statement and find this book helpful. Rachel Simmons provides testimony to this behavior from many perspectives. The girls interviewed are different ages with diverse racial and economic profiles. How many of us remember being excluded, ganged up upon or ridiculed? What is most difficult to understand is that often all we wanted was acceptance.
Rachel Simmons wrote this book to helps girls realize they are not alone. It provides helpful advice for teachers and parents to assist girls through these difficult times. The only part that was lacking in this book for me is that I would have liked to have heard from women that continue to experience this aggression into adulthood. This behavior certainly does not end in adolescence. In fact, I don't think this hidden aggression ever ends. Maybe that is an idea for a sequel. Rachel Simmon's book is well written and certainly held my attention. I highly recommend Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons if you are raising girl in today's society.
Read At Least Twice October 2, 2009
Aaauger (Austin, TX United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I can empathize with another reviewer's position that this book offered no solutions to the victim. There is some of the typical "honor your feelings (while getting abused)" wording. But I encourage you to read the book a second time. There is a lot to digest and a lot of shock. On a second pass, you will probably glean some ideas. The passages on other, i.e. non-white, cultures which don't follow the code of silence are particularly interesting. There are girls who are capable of getting relational conflict into the open and getting over it. There are girls who have a mandate not to "stay hit". Physical confrontation, which is outright offered as a final solution at the end of the book, may be what is needed. Contrary to the author, I do not believe that relational aggressors are good girls who do bad things. We are defined by our actions. So maybe physical confrontation, or the willingness to partake, is what is needed to stop girls who have decided to be bad. Regardless, give this book a chance. It has information that can be applied - even if indirectly.
 Well, it certainly has emotional appeal August 12, 2009
SerenaBlackCat (PA)
Most girls can identify with some aspect of this book, and many at multiple points in their lives. Sadly, this kind of behavior can continue through adulthood, and this is the most painful thing. At age 27 I was shunned by a group of friends--by being angry at one friend, she dug up things from 5 years ago instead of admitting she was wrong, and the others acted in 1984 fashion by pretending I never existed. This made me wonder why all my life I'd been so big on having female friends. I wanted to underline parts of this book and leave it on the doorstep of former friends.
She does repeat herself many, many times. Several different points are repeated, but mainly "girls are supposed to always be nice" is said in probably each chapter. Maybe girls are supposed to be nice to their friends, but when someone has been determined as having no status, girls have no problem being explicitly rude to the outcast's face. She also wrote a few sentences about how impossible it is to live as a girl with these demands and it was inevitable to collapse. I didn't feel like it was absolutely impossible to live, and frankly I don't think that many people care too much about what females are "supposed" to be like because they recognize that it is sexism to have uniform expectations of one gender.
My major criticism is in her chapter "Resistance", about how urban girls are missing this "be nice" complex. There are good points to this, but she comes off as idealizing some things that are not much better. There are descriptions of quiet or nonviolent people being disrespected, and bullied kids who come home and then get beat by their parents for "letting themselves" be bullied--which is about like punishing a rape victim for "provoking" it. Also, it's not like theses type of girls only act in self defense. I hated them the most in high school b/c they were openly rude and hostile to people for no good reason, and were always getting into fights and cursing people out for no good reason. She describes the "popular" lifestyle as being devoid of personality b/c the girls inside it were so busy maintaining their status, but the "not nice" girls were equally devoid of personality b/c they were so busy showing that no one could "mess with" them. Basically, they were about the same as male bullies. Whatever she says about alternative aggression, overt bullying certainly isn't better.
There are a few exercises where she describes "nice" characteristics and "not nice" characteristics (for instance in the professional setting), of course treating the former as if they were bad and the latter as admirable. But it is not a terrible thing to be "understanding", "open to other views", etc, and although it's human to be selfish or insecure, it's not something to strive for and often isn't a good quality to have in a supervisor. She complains that women don't get as far in the business world b/c of their "nice" complex, which comes back to wanting to preserve relationships. Well, maybe some women place more value on their relationships than their careers--after all, devotion to a corporation is one of the most unrequited loyalties in the world. There are also men who are not close to their wives and barely know their children and have few friends b/c they are so busy with their careers. It is very difficult to fully excel in career and have rewarding relationships, so usually a person is oriented one way or the other.
She rails against alternative aggression, but doesn't really have a solution. She seems to think that people should talk over every minor point of negativity, but there is such a thing as deciding what is important enough to talk about and what annoyances are part of life, part of the friend's personality, etc, and are more trouble than they're worth to talk about--because perfection in relationships is also damaging. Also, most of the time when females have an honest, talk-it-over session with each other, they usually end up resenting each other for what they say, and even more conflict arises. I still have female friends but I now prefer to simply keep them at a healthy distance.
What is the solution? I think that maybe if alternative aggression goes away, something even more covert will take its place. In the olden days, children and adolescents dealt with war and disease and child labor. In earlier generations, it was just bullying and maybe physical punishment from parents. Now the things that upset people are more related to self-actualization and belonging than to physical needs. I think as the really terrible things disappear, people are traumatized by lesser, more subtle things.
Deep Understanding of Girl Bullying August 8, 2009
Susan Fitzell (Manchester, NH USA)
This book gives the reader a deep understanding of girl bullying. Sometimes I cried, sometimes I read with shock and rage and at one point, I read and realized that something that happened to me in high school fit the description of girl bullying to a T. Wow, I never put my finger on what had happened or why. Now, I understand. I wish I knew then what I know now. My teen years would have been a bit easier to navigate.
found it wanting June 8, 2009
J. Heller (Longmont, CO United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I decided to read this book because I thought it might help me deal with the issues my daughter is starting to face in elementary school. I saw myself in this book -I distinctly recall when my "best friend" in 4th grade cornered me in the girls bathroom and told me I better stop being a brat otherwise she wouldn't be my friend anymore. I was lost and bewildered, like many of the victims in this book, and I couldn't figure out what I did to earn her wrath. Years later I know I did nothing but the pain from that moment is still there and the pain inflicted through middle and high school by various girls is not far from the surface. Reading this book made me realize why I have trouble making friends and why I just don't "put myself out there". I've been shot down way too many times.
BUT while this book did shed some light on what happened to me and put into words what girls do to each other I didn't find what I was hoping for; some type of blueprint, some sort of plan for me to help my daughter through this. The author kept saying that we needed to come up with a new language to explain girl bullying but she never came up it. Nor did I find anything to help explain things to my daughter. She did end the book with some words of advice on how to talk to your daughter about what may be happening to her but all this book did was take her countless interviews with girls and women and prove that girls just aren't that nice.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 103
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