Mean girls: an overhyped stereotype

Adolescence has always been a slippery slope, best navigated by keeping your head down and putting one foot in front of the other. My time in middle school was no picnic. I'm sure yours wasn't a walk in the park either. If you had friends you worried about losing them; if you didn't, you thought you'd never have them. Classes were too hard or way too easy. Nothing made sense and everything was unfair. Have I gotten it right so far?

To make matters worse in my case, I transferred midyear from a sweet little private school to a large public one where all the kids (and I mean all the kids) took an instant dislike to me. I was teased, ostracized, even beaten up - for three years. So when I hear that today's girls are meaner than in my day, all I can say is "no way."

For me, the dark night ended as nights always do - gradually. I made friends in the older grades, found out it was OK - even good - to be alone. And eventually, in high school, all the kids that didn't like me suddenly did. Go figure.

So how is my daughter's generation different? Are the Gen-Ys any worse than the Boomers? How's my daughter doing, compared with me? The answer is, better than expected, despite all the current claims that girls are just plain mean. But though it's never been easy to be 13, I believe these days it's even harder.

For one thing, positive role models are few and far between. I don't know what to call Britney Spears, but role model isn't at the top of my list. For another, our American culture's gone overboard into the ocean of mean. Reality shows are really all about cruelty. You're fired, you're dumped, you're tricked, or sometimes you're coerced into swallowing bugs. What's a teenager to do? The media's serving up nasty on a roll and we're eating it up.

It's not easy being mean; it takes a lot of energy - energy that could be used to study, or help others, or read a book. But there's got to be a better way to ferry our kids around the shoals of adolescence than to simply shrug and say they'll get through it. The kids that were mean to me weren't all bad. But they were galvanized by a mob mentality. It can happen to kids. It can happen to adults. (See "Lord of the Flies" and "Triumph of the Will.")

Just think about all the nasty things that used to be considered acceptable - segregated buses; book burnings; the Spanish Inquisition; cow tipping. (OK, some people still think cow tipping is all right, but a growing number of us don't, and our voices will be heard.) My point is: We get what we put up with.

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