Girl’s Biggest Rival, Her Friends

by Kristen L. O’Connell

Recently, women across the nation mourned the loss of modern feminist pioneer and author Betty Friedan. Ms. Friedan, a national Board Member of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., hoped to find a world where women can develop both in strength and mind. With special encouragement from role models such as Ms. Friedan and organizations supporting women, including the Girl Scouts; more and more women are getting advanced degrees and graduating high school. However, they are not without challenges and do face restrictions on their potential. But who is restricting a young girl’s potential? Oddly enough, research shows it may be her peers- and even more disturbingly, her friends.

Girls today battle issues that most people are aware of, such as self esteem, substance abuse and eating disorders. But now, emphasis is being placed on a different issue. It is an issue that has been around for years, but was merely accepted as the normal behavior of growing up. The issue is Relational Aggression and it is a raging social epidemic among young girls.

According to RelationalAggression.com, the work of Laura Martocci, PhD., a national trainer with the Ophelia project since 2001, Relational Aggression (RA) is a form of emotional violence in which “girls manipulate the social scene to hurt or psychologically destroy their peers.” Tactics such as gossiping, whispering, spreading rumors and teasing are used by an aggressor to maintain or achieve a higher level of social status.

With films such as the 2004 blockbuster “Mean Girls” an adaptation of the best seller Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence by Rosalind Wiseman, RA is beginning to receive recognition for its horrendous consequences. Girls are being thrown into a survival of the fittest match where only the mean survive. But unlike Hollywood, the endings aren’t always happy and the victims are usually not vindicated.

In 1997, Susan Wellman, whose daughter committed suicide because of constant teasing and social torture, created The Ophelia Project, named after the character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The Project offers the community, districts and schools training programs. To individuals, teachers, and victims, the group provides a way to identify and handle RA. The website for the Ophelia Project (www.opheliaproject.org ) allows those experiencing RA to share their story as well as subscribe to a monthly newsletter .

In addition to the Ophelia Project, national organizations such as the Girls Scouts of the U.S.A. have responded to the changing social climate promoting this type of behavior. On Long Island, New York, the Girls Scouts of Nassau County Inc. (GSNC) have teamed up with the Ophelia Project to launch a campaign for girls and their parents specializing in how to identify, cope and handle R.A.

`However, this program offers help for a problem that young girls most likely don’t know they are a victim of. “Awareness is our biggest challenge,” says Carole Aksak, Volunteer Coordinator for the GSNC. “They are trying so hard to fit in and they don’t realize that it is not acceptable to be treated this way or to treat others this way.”

But is RA just a fact of life? Most of us enrolled in school do remember feeling left out at one time or another. Not being invited to a party or being excluded from activities with a group of your friends which gave you with feelings of inadequacy, not fitting in, and even loneliness. The paranoia of being a “target” of others is what usually led most to not address the issue and hope for it to go away. We have all heard the rumor of the girl that was promiscuous in high school or the heavy girl that was teased and taunted. But what we don’t hear about is how these girls would cry themselves to sleep at night, afraid to return to school and face the same ridicule over again. We also don’t hear about how they will have difficulty sustaining adult relationships because of trust issues. That is the most damaging consequence of RA, its lingering toxicity.

All of these situations can be tremendously difficult for an adolescent to handle, especially in the formative teen years. Despite the hormonal changes, adolescents are also undergoing esteem building and establishing identity. Submerging themselves in constant negativity during this integral stage can involve inferiority issues that carry on in their adult years as well. The same is also true for the aggressor.

“Ignoring RA in adolescence can affect the way that adults carry on relationships and how they see themselves as well, that’s why we need to address these issues now,” says Carole Aksak, GSNC’s Project Director on the relational Aggression Initiative.

“We aim to encourage young girls to handle the difficult situations they are presented with, so that they may develop to be strong, self-sufficient women and leaders.”

That’s the way Betty Friedan intended.