Queen Bees, Mean Girls and Wait, What?

Our PTO meetings are held at a local yacht club at 7:30 pm with a full bar. We used to get like 2 people when we held meetings in the gym at 8 am, but now, it's all mascara and sunsets and boats out the window and did I mention a cocktail and lo and freakin' behold, the seats are filled. But besides the hooch in the million dollar setting, it's the fact that we added a speaker series to the agenda, instead of just the usual finance and volunteer opportunity reports, that has really upped the attendance. And I mean that, I swear. Because, honestly, everyone's old enough to drink at home (and we know you are), but to drink while also listening to something that might actually make an impact on how you parent? Hell yeah.

So, anyhoo, last night featured a discussion on "relational aggression" which pretty much means: boys act physically, girls talk. And little girls talk not so nice sometimes. In fact, girls talk very, very nasty-like, about all kinds of nasty girl topics -- body type, clothes, friends -- and it seems like some of 'em are talking that talk pretty much right out of the womb. Or at least in Kindergarten. And surely in Third Grade. If the wonderful teacher speaking hadn't mentioned that this kind of aggression was more sophisticated than what boys typically do, I might have been all down on chicks, all down on having been born one and down on having to raise two. But at least, I thought, at least we are sophisticated in the ways we damage each other. And we're pacifists. Kinda.

I am familiar with this kind of girl talk. In fact, I might have been at the bullied end of it from time to time, and I might have sometimes been the bullyer. And maybe all of this happened when I was 9 and maybe it happened six months ago. What's the diff, really? It all hurts -- the having been done to and even the doing -- whether you are 8 or 38. Sometimes, for only reasons those with ovaries will know, it gets very confusing to be a girl.

Take for instance this exchange between my 8 year old and two of her friends that I heard desperately strained to hear when they were playing in the backyard.

G1: "She's just mean!"
G2: "I know, she told me I was fat!"
G3 and G1: "That is just mean, meany meany mean."
G1: "And she shows off with her cartwheels which is mean --
G2: "Especially when says you are fat."
G2: "I know. She is mean. I don't like her."
G3 and G4: "Me neither!"
G3: "And she's also kinda weird anyway."
G2: "She is?"
G1: "She must be. She's mean."
G2: "Yeah. I don't think I like her."
G1 and G3: "Me neither!"
G1, G2, and G3: "Let's jump her after school tomorrow, take her backpack and kick her ass!"

(Alright, so the last comment WAS NOT REAL which should also serve to remind you that I am paraphrasing a conversation that happened a few days ago, and doing so to the best of my flimsy memory, but you get the gist.)

The girls barged inside looking for juice boxes and I busted them (which is seriously the. best. thing. ever. about being a Mom) on the chat they were having, and they all stood there, cheeks flushing as I spoke and freaking the fuck out and acting all WTF mom? and I didn't care. I got a lot of "but she is mean" and "we weren't being mean" and so I reminded them that their badmouthing of the bitch classmate was um, yeah, kinda mean too.

Which they pondered.

"How does a right make a wrong?" they thought, and so I reminded them that life is bitterly unfair and skinny, pretty girls will always win and just forget about it anyway and study, study, study, because someday you might invent some amazing new drug or device or Oprah show to change this phenomena.

Which in fact is NOT what I said at all.

What I said was kindness begets kindness. What I said was two wrongs do not make a right. What I said was be the best friend that you can be. What I said was "girl-up", and by that I meant never talk negatively about another girl's body or clothes or hair or anything. What I said... Well, it probably went in one ear and right out the other. Because basically right now they are in childhood survival mode and there is only a small part of them that can understand compassion for another person, and I get that.

But I said it and I said it again to B the next day, alone, and I'll probably say some version of it a thousand times between now and when she and her sister and yeah, even her brother are all grown up and gone. And I'll say it to myself, like the PTO speaker advised, so that I can live up to that better example she wants us to be.

That I want to be.