Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons is about the "hidden culture of aggression in girls." The main theory that the author is exploring is how girls use isolation, manipulation, and backstabbing as a means of bullying each other because overt hostility and physical aggression are socially denied for women.
While reading this book, I've had a lot of different thoughts. Some of them are about the book itself and its contents and others are more personal. One immediate thought that I couldn't help but have was that the type of bullying that girls engage in according to her book is exactly the type of bullying that is pandemic in Japanese schools. That is, the worst thing one can do to a member of a group is ignore and isolate him or her.
if (preg_match('/Unfortunately, a lot of Ms. Simmon’s work is flawed in the same manner that many books written by those studying psychological issues are flawed. She starts with a theory and only focuses on the experiences of girls who help reinforce the validity of her theory. While one might expect that any study of bullying among girls would focus on the socially ostracized ones who are most often isolated, her analysis is zeroed in on first and second string popular girls and how they feel and act. In fact, unpopular girls and how they bully or feel about being bullied are in almost completely absent from consideration in her book except as temporary friends for the popular girls who have been cast out of their cliques. She doesn’t provide any information on the “unpopular girls” and they seem to be inconsequential extras milling about in the background while the popular girls play center stage.
Since the basis of her theory is that girls channel their negative feelings such as jealousy and anger into acts of cruel manipulation, gossip, and selective isolation, she focuses on the group most likely to behave in this way and ignores the ones that may refute her theory. Popular girls are often jockeying amongst themselves for alpha female status, so their cliques represent the most fertile ground in which to plant her theory. She doesn’t even explore the possibility that unpopular girls may value their friendships with each other more because they can’t risk losing what little they have and choose not to turn on one another at the drop of a hat. We cannot even ponder know this may be true or not since this group is woefully neglected in Ms. Simmons's talks with schoolgirls.
Article Author: Shari
Shari has been disrupting the placid waters of Japanese life with her western ideas for the last 17 years. She's written textbooks and been a teacher and remains ever vigilant for her own tendency to view the world through the eyes of ethnocentrism.
Article comments
1 - teonna
this book is a good book that they should read in high school because it is true that high school girls are this way and if they read this maybe they will get an idea of not being the way they are now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!