Posted on 03/06/2006 9:51:00 PM PST by tbird5
It happens to the best of women. Here's Rosalind Wiseman, who has spent her entire working life teaching girls to treat each other decently. The script for the movie Mean Girls was based on her 2002 best-selling Queen Bees & Wannabes, a book that helps parents understand the drama and danger in the adolescent girl world. She knows the minefields that lie in gossip, jealousy, disloyalty and cruel judgments, and offers solid prescriptions for changing bad behaviour.
Yet despite her experience, she recently found herself sizing up two mothers who came to see her.
In her view, the women paid too much attention to their appearance, especially their hair. They seemed catty in their conversation, were micromanaging their kids' lives, and were silly.
"All these things came into my head. Why? They are antithetical to what I teach and believe," Wiseman says. "I was still judging these women."
Where does this nastiness come from?
Wiseman thinks it exists because it's supposed to exist. Being nasty to each other is one of the unspoken rules about how girls and women are supposed to behave; one of the rigidly enforced North American standards of what constitutes femininity.
"It's everything you know but haven't been sat down and taught," as Wiseman puts it.
When she judged the two women so harshly, it was as if she was acting out one of the observations she made in her book that girls and women can be their own worst enemies.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestar.com ...
I checked his other posts. Wow. Serious issues.
I'm wearing dark glasses - I can handle the glare.
He's the same one I was arguing with on another thread a few weeks ago.
It's all coming back to me now...
Very bitter, sad human being.
Our room is ready...BTW...
I'll be around all day - let me know if there's something I need to do!
OK - let's go!
I'm here...with bells on!
I started losing my hair early twenties. I spent about 5 years wondering whether I should get transplants, rogain, etc etc.
I started shaving my head and love it. Why spend so much money on that crap?
Women, will pay anything to reach a dumb standard that not only is unattractive, but not reasonable for most.
Give me a woman with hips, boobs, and a little "meat" and I am a happy guy.
And FWIW...foreign women aren't "better" than American; there are good and bad people in every country and in every kind of group you can name.
There is nothing a conservative should be proud of in a blanket statement that is demeaning to women regardless what any individual may have experienced in their own lives.
I have been around my share of difficult people and it cuts pretty even.
>I will say that teenage girls are the most vicious animals on this planet.<
Oh, I don't know, I've seen some 9 year old female children who could hold their own with a wolverine.
Sounds like my story. My father-in-law and I got along great; he thought I hung the moon. He passed away about four years into our marriage. At the holiday gatherings, I'm usually hiding in my nephew's bedroom listening to the latest music he's downloaded. (I'm the "cool" aunt.)
Mebbe we should start a support group. :-)
LOL...wolverines...very funny!
It seems to me that the drop out rate for sororitys is huge. I know a ton of girls who are freshmen and sophomores in sororitys, and I know a ton of juniors and seniors who used to be in sororitys. I don't know hardly any juniors or seniors still in sororitys.
Aww - that's sweet - thanks.
You must be young, because you know nothing of human behavior.
I'm 36. I know enough to see you thumping your chest, Scotsman.
snort! Very funny come back.
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