By Marilyn C. Lewis

Queen Bees and Wannabes, Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence, may be the best of the year's spate of books about aggression in young females. It certainly is the least pretentious. Rosalind Wiseman, whose career it has been to run in-school workshops for adolescents on how to cope with peer aggression in middle and high schools, avoids grandiose theories about whether and why girls are nastier today than they ever have been - the reasons are perfectly plain to her: power and politics. Instead of theorizing, Wiseman has written a sensible handbook - taking the anthropologist's perspective on girl tribal culture - for adults who would help young women negotiate this crucial and nearly impossible passage.

Pragmatic

She is tough and pragmatic:

"Slut" and "bitch" are words your daughter hears every day. This means she constantly says or hears words that describe women either as sexual objects (sluts) or as aggressors who need to be put in their place (bitches). These words have the power to silence your daughter, to deny her a voice.

Wiseman addresses her book to parents, but it is equally valuable for those working with teenagers - female and male, since boys, too, want desperately to know how "Girl World" works. Queen Bees also contains plenty of compassionate wisdom about "Boy World," insight Wiseman believes girls and their adults should have.

Unlike proponents of the current wave of girls-as-aggressors, girls-as-victims discussion, Wiseman tries to guide parents, not only of children who are victims but of those who are victimizers. And she lays responsibility for their bad behavior on girls themselves.

Ably as an anthropologist who has watched a particular tribe for a decade, Wiseman lays out the difficult pressures, rewards and punishments of contemporary adolescent culture:

"I see them as a platoon of soldiers who have banded together to navigate the perils and insecurities of adolescence. There's a chain of command and they operate as one in their interactions with their environment. Group cohesion is based on unquestioned loyalty to the leaders and an us-versus-the-world mentality."

She acknowledges the benefits of cliques (bonding with friends, identity, socialization and a safe haven in the storm) as well as the harm (overlooking one's own boundaries and ethics to do things under pressure of the group that a well-reared kid would not do on her own).

Among her sensible pieces of advice:

o Become friendly with the parents of your daughters' friends.

o Keep a copy of the school directory in a secret place. (Girls hide their school directories and school lists so it'll be harder for you to contact other parents or school personnel.) Make a copy … "label a folder 'Taxes 1998' and keep it there."

o Whenever possible, get her friends' 411. And don't be fooled by letting a kid give you a cell phone number as a ruse for contacting her instead of the land line at the friend's home where she is supposed to be. Wiseman advises families to disconnect call waiting and conference call features, given all the trouble and misunderstanding they can cause among kids who are technologically sophisticated but socially callow.

Laying Bare the Roles

Compassion is the operative principle, though Wiseman seldom uses the word. She doesn't waste much time judging the values of these kid cultures. Not that she is afraid to call egregious behavior bad, but there is so much to abhor in these vicious little teenage tribal societies. The hallmark of her book is that Wiseman tries to help teens and adults learn how to identify for themselves what each player gets from the adolescent power struggle and guides readers to understand how power plays may be transformed into civilized - albeit realistic - outcomes. She lays bare the roles (queen bee, sidekick, banker, floater, torn bystander, pleaser/wannabe/messenger, target), the group dynamics and the rites of passage (crushes, parties, being dumped by friends, dumping a friend, reconciliations, dances, balancing friendships), giving adults and kids a means to understand the baffling and sometimes frightening theater of adolescence being played out around them.

Bill of Rights

Wiseman is co-founder of Empower, a nonprofit that has developed a program meant to empower adolescents and stop violence (www.empowerprogram.org). She is big on providing a structure for thinking through the tough ethical and social issues in a kid's life, and she offers a guide for helping kids devise their own simple bill of rights for friendships - what they expect from friends and what they will give. She breaks down adolescent interactions to identify what each player stands to gain. She offers realistic strategies for girls to counter the pressures arrayed against them.

Wiseman cautions adults to resist the temptation to dismiss young girls' tussles about birthday party invitations, sleepovers and crushes and instead see them as the training ground for coping skills that will serve them in more serious situations down the road. If girls let other girls walk all over them in the quest for social acceptance, they'll be vulnerable in later adolescence to the often demanding and critical boy culture and to the pressure to use drugs, alcohol and sex as means of hiding or gaining acceptance, she says.

(back to book review index)

(back to navigation screen)

(back to top)