Teasing, Gossiping and Reputations

Teasing and gossip swirl around your daughter's head every day and they're the lifeblood of cliques and popularity. While your daughter may feel that they provide the forum for bonding with her friends, teasing and gossip can also act as powerful weapons to pit girls against each other. Here's a look:

Teasing: Bad teasing happens both inside and out of the clique, and either way, it's ugly. The teasing is done precisely to put the recipient in her place. First, she's relentlessly teased about something she's insecure about; girls always seem to know exactly what to say to cause the most humiliation. Second, she's dismissed or put down when she defends herself ("Can't you take a joke?" "What are you making such a big deal of this for?"). Often the result is that she ends up apologizing for speaking up in the first place ("I'm sorry, I'm such an idiot") or swallowing it lest she lose her place in the clique.

Gossiping: Along with teasing, gossiping is one of the fundamental weapons that girls use to humiliate each other and reinforce their own social status. Gossip is so humiliating because girls' natural self-focus means that they literally feel like the whole world notices everything they do, and what's said about them and their social status in school often serves as the basis for their self-identity. What do girls gossip about? In middle school: conflicts with friends, rivalries between cliques, boys and crushes; in high school: who had sex at the last party, who got drunk or did drugs, who's getting used.

Reputation and Image: Reputations are a by-product of constant gossiping and, good or bad, they trap girls. There are various ways a girl gets a reputation. Other girls and boys gossip about her, then she's labeled. The social hierarchy and a girl's clique can protect a girl from a bad reputation. For example, a girl in the popular clique can duck a reputation as a slut even if she's frequently having sex. In contrast, if a girl who isn't liked by other girls gets that reputation, it will stick. What are the different reputations? Jock, Tomboy, Loner Morose Girl, Social Climber, Teacher's Pet, Boyfriend Stealer, Perfect Girl, Tease, Square, Slut, to name a few.

What do you think about gossip and teasing among girls?

Teasing and Gossiping: How to Talk to Your Daughter

Choosing when and how to confront teasing and gossiping is always difficult. Many parents are tempted to tell their daughters to ignore the teasing and it will stop or the gossips will move on to someone else. Even though this sounds like a reasonable strategy, it's exactly the kind of parental advice that makes girls feel that their parents don't understand the world they're living in. When girls have problems, they need help right away. If your daughter is a target, have a conversation with her about it. You want to affirm her and confirm that you're a good resources and a nonjudgemental listener. Then help her come up with realistic strategies to confront the problem effectively. Options include:

1. Your daughter can confront the really mean girl
2. She can ask a teacher or counselor for help
3. You can call the really mean girl's parents
4. You can talk to the teacher
5. You can talk to an administrator

There's no easy strategy that guarantees other girls will leave your daughter alone, but that's not the most important goal. The most important goal is that through difficult experiences like these, your daughter creates, maintains, and communicates her personal boundaries to other girls. If she's able to do this, the sting of cruel words will lose their venom and she'll feel stronger and more resilient and proud of herself.

Excerpted from Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman. © 2002 by Rosalind Wiseman. Excerpted by permission of Crown, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.