Women's Interests
Mean Women Must Deal With Anger
By Aisha Sultan STLtoday.com
Feb 15, 2010 - 12:22:53 AM

No one forgets a mean girl.

The one who excluded you, taunted you, gossiped about you or betrayed you.

Those wounds cut deep and can be long-lasting.

And it doesn't always end in middle school. Women commonly oppress other women from boardrooms to PTA meetings.

But why can women be so cruel to one another?

Joan I. Rosenberg, co-author of "Mean Girls, Meaner Women: Understanding Why Women Backstab, Betray and Trash-talk Each Other and How to Heal," says all these weapons — backstabbing, betraying and trash-talking — are used as destructive ways of coping.

Women don't know how to deal with anger. We don't want to be viewed as uptight or bitchy. Our socialization and culture, which loves a good catfight, trivializes our anger into petty warfare over boys and appearance.

"The challenge that women and girls have is to be comfortable with being angry and being able  to express that in a way that treats yourself and the other person with dignity. We tend, unfortunately, to play games when we are angry," says Rosalind Wiseman, author of "Queen Bees & Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and the New Realities of Girl World," a best-seller newly revised in October.

We are raised not to complain about what we don't like. We are raised to avoid conflict. We don't want our feelings dismissed. We don't tend to talk about what makes us angry or we gunnysack it for so long that we blow up about something small, then get angry at ourselves.

Rosenberg adds that beyond just anger, women have trouble handling difficult feelings of competition, envy, jealousy and aggression. We are more likely to turn these emotions inward and beat up ourselves or turn them outward and lash out our hostility to undercut other women.

Women should take a cue from boys and men in this arena, who can compete and get over it the moment they step off the court.

"Initially, women were in competition for a man. ... Then it shifted, women were also competing against men (as they entered the workforce). Now, women also compete against other women for the same things: power, prestige, employment, you name it," Rosenberg said.

And no parent ever believes their daughter is the mean one. They justify their behavior, Wiseman said. They are unable or unwilling to view their behavior as wrong or mean.

She offers parents advice on how to disrupt this pattern of meanness.

Accept that girls have the right to get angry. Don't push it away. But hold your daughter accountable, even if she rationalizes her own behavior and dismisses the feelings of the girl who was hurt. When someone else defines her behavior as mean, she needs to apologize. If she won't, you should apologize on her behalf. Offer your cell phone number to the hurt party and asked to be called if your daughter repeats the behavior.

If your daughter is on the receiving end of bad treatment, teach her to say "thank you" when an apology is offered. These are the building blocks of being able to communicate anger, which is like learning any skill. Children have to see what it looks like to have a conversation with somebody while being angry yet also articulate. The goal is to raise socially competent children.

One of the biggest roadblocks is that women don't trust each other's apologies, Wiseman said. She offers the young women she works with a quick way to test the strength of a female friendship: If she apologizes, do you believe it? If you apologize to her, would she believe you?

If you are still holding a grudge, then "We're not honest with ourselves," she said. It's much harder to heal or be more authentic with one another when we can't face our own emotions.

And we indulge our own double standard for men in this area.

"We often allow men to treat us in ways that are totally unacceptable, and a lot of times we don't hold them accountable for the unkind behavior." We rationalize insensitive or unemotional behavior from boys and men because we expect it.

"Then we hold women to this gold standard of friendship," Wiseman said. "Yes, these friendships can enrich our lives in profound ways. But to think there is not going to be conflict in a close relationship is naive."

She often tells young girls: "You don't know if you have a strong friendship until you have gone through a conflict and emerged on the other side."