![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wiseman, Rosalind - Queen Bees and Wannabes
Thu, Mar. 17th, 2005 11:14 pm(subtitle: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence)
I got this after watching Mean Girls with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fannishly, which is a really fun movie, as well as a teen comedy that is actually smart. Who woulda thunk? Apparently Mean Girls was based on this book, despite the book being a parenting guide and not, you know, linear.
The book was actually a very interesting read, especially with its insights on the horrors of middle school and high school. It's funny -- teen movies focus more on the high school years, probably because of the demographics or something, but it does seem that middle school is the most traumatic. It was for me, at least. By high school, I had sort of learned how to adapt.
From what I remember of that period, it does seem like Wiseman is giving pretty good advice to parents. She emphasizes that they have to listen to their kids, not give them advice under the pretense of listening, but actually listening without judging. And she emphasizes the importance of rules and boudaries, how parents are the eternal fall-back excuse (if your kid doesn't want to do something her peers want her to do, she can always fall back and say "my parents will kill me." I did this so much as a kid!). It just seemed very common-sensical from my POV, and despite the fact that it's targeted toward the parents of adolescent girls, I really wanted to circle a few pointers and give it to my mom. Especially the bits about listening and not projecting your own desires on to your kid.
I especially like her emphasis on how destructive some of the rules adolescent girls impose on themselves are. The whole culture of calling other girls 'bitches" and "whores" and "sluts," the desire to show off the body while being afraid of sexuality, the emphasis on being seen as more sexually mature than you actually may be, or ostracizing the more physically mature, all of it adds up. And of course it makes sense, given that this is when all those pesky secondary sex characteristics are coming out and you start noticing the opposite sex. But she just makes some very good points about pressure and the use of alcohol and drugs to loosen inhibitions and the notion that if a girl has been "coming on" to a guy, she's really asking to be date raped, just so that other girls can put a sort of mental boundary around themselves and tell themselves that it won't happen to them. I know it is for adolescent girls, but given that my school in Taiwan was much more conservative about the sex and alcohol thing, a lot of the talk of sex and alcohol really resonated with my college experience.
The book also dragged up a lot of semi-painful memories of middle school, of feeling abandoned by my more popular friends for guys and the more popular crowd, for being determined to be weird and different and not like the popular crowd.
theferrett also has a post going on with talk of this sort of emotional trauma.
I got this after watching Mean Girls with
fannishly, which is a really fun movie, as well as a teen comedy that is actually smart. Who woulda thunk? Apparently Mean Girls was based on this book, despite the book being a parenting guide and not, you know, linear. The book was actually a very interesting read, especially with its insights on the horrors of middle school and high school. It's funny -- teen movies focus more on the high school years, probably because of the demographics or something, but it does seem that middle school is the most traumatic. It was for me, at least. By high school, I had sort of learned how to adapt.
From what I remember of that period, it does seem like Wiseman is giving pretty good advice to parents. She emphasizes that they have to listen to their kids, not give them advice under the pretense of listening, but actually listening without judging. And she emphasizes the importance of rules and boudaries, how parents are the eternal fall-back excuse (if your kid doesn't want to do something her peers want her to do, she can always fall back and say "my parents will kill me." I did this so much as a kid!). It just seemed very common-sensical from my POV, and despite the fact that it's targeted toward the parents of adolescent girls, I really wanted to circle a few pointers and give it to my mom. Especially the bits about listening and not projecting your own desires on to your kid.
I especially like her emphasis on how destructive some of the rules adolescent girls impose on themselves are. The whole culture of calling other girls 'bitches" and "whores" and "sluts," the desire to show off the body while being afraid of sexuality, the emphasis on being seen as more sexually mature than you actually may be, or ostracizing the more physically mature, all of it adds up. And of course it makes sense, given that this is when all those pesky secondary sex characteristics are coming out and you start noticing the opposite sex. But she just makes some very good points about pressure and the use of alcohol and drugs to loosen inhibitions and the notion that if a girl has been "coming on" to a guy, she's really asking to be date raped, just so that other girls can put a sort of mental boundary around themselves and tell themselves that it won't happen to them. I know it is for adolescent girls, but given that my school in Taiwan was much more conservative about the sex and alcohol thing, a lot of the talk of sex and alcohol really resonated with my college experience.
The book also dragged up a lot of semi-painful memories of middle school, of feeling abandoned by my more popular friends for guys and the more popular crowd, for being determined to be weird and different and not like the popular crowd.
theferrett also has a post going on with talk of this sort of emotional trauma.