Girlfighting: Betrayal, Teasing and Rejection Among
Girls
Summary
of Project!
Dr. Lyn Mikel Brown is
Associate Professor of Women's Studies, Education and Human Development at
Colby College, Waterville, Maine.She
received her Ed.D. from Harvard University's Graduate School of Education,
and is a founding member of the Harvard Project on Women's Psychology and Girls'
Development. Her book (with Carol Gilligan), Meeting at the Crossroads : Women's
Psychology and Girls' Development (Harvard
University Press) was a 1992 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her
second book, Raising Their Voices: The Politics of Girls' Anger (1998,
Harvard University Press), is a study of Maine girls and their class-related
expressions of anger and resistance to conventions of femininity. Currently
she is writing a book on the dark underside of girls friendships and peer relations
tentatively entitled Girlfighting: Betrayal, Teasing,
and Rejection Among Girls. She
is a 1994-95 recipient of a National Academy of Education Spencer Foundation
Fellowship and a 2000-2001 recipient of the AAUW Scholar-in-Residence award.
Girls
will be Girls? Aggression, Sexuality and Body Image: Conference
Hosted by the Women's Resource Center on October 5th
2002- The
conference brought close t o 400 people to the UM campus
from government agencies, private non-profit programs,
educational institutions, heathcare facilities, low-income
advocacy groups, and others. The audience included
counselors and health care providers, educators from
campuses around Maine, teachers from school systems
throughout the state, state workers and program administrators,
parents, and girls. The conference presenters were
nationally recognized scholars and authors with expertise
in girls' issues. The presentations were based on cutting
edge research, and included practical applications
for those interested in girls' issues. This conference
was the culmination of a two-year research project
funded by the American Association of University Women
Educational Foundation, with Dr. Lyn Mikel Brown at
the University of Maine as a Visiting Scholar to conduct
research on girls' friendships. The conference explored
the intersections of aggression, sexuality, and body
image as factors influencing girls' relationships and
lives. Although most conference participants were from
Maine, there were also people from other states and
from Canada. By including a number of national, state,
and local organizations as co-sponsors, we were able
to offer a number of scholarships so that the conference
registration fee was not a barrier to attendance. The
co-sponsors offered their support to this conference
financially and also by providing publicity about the
event to people in their networks, increasing the diversity
of the audience. Over 150 students were in attendance.
Girls will be Girls-Reference Handbook
This is a packet that was constructed in 2002 as an informative resource that can help parents, educators, and others concerned with girls and the challenge of understanding girls' behavior within a rapidly changing and evolving society.
'Girls Will Be Girls: A Curriculum For Change' Conference, October 22, 2005
A showing of the 'Girls Will Be Girls? Aggression, Sexuality and Body Image' Video documenting the conference of the same name held at University of Maine in October 2002. To view a short clip of this video, click here.
A minimum 56k connection to the internet is required.
If you do not have QuickTime installed you can download a free player from the Apple QuickTime site:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
The video explores the themes of sexuality, body image, and girls' friendships and aggression. Girls from the Diversity Coalition in Camden are featured in this film along with conference speakers: Lyn Mikel Brown, Janie Ward, Mary Madden, Sharon Lamb, Deb Tolman, Lisa Sjostrom, Catherine Steiner-Adair, Tracy Robinson.
You can recieve a copy of the video, for a small donation, DVD ($15) or VHS ($10). For more information contact the Women's Resource Center at 207-581-1508.
Afternoon workshops:
Elementary School Girls, "Allies in Action: Building Healthy Realtionships Between Girls" by Annette Klinefelter, MEd. Relational aggression is behavior that goes largely ignored because it is so normalized in our culture, by girls and adults alike. It is also ignored because it can be so frustrating to curb. With increased public awareness about female aggression and its impact on self-esteem and learning, parents and schools are beginning to ask the critical questions about why girls harm one another to the degree in which they do and what can be done to prevent and or intervene in the behavior.
Allies in Action, the most comprehensive relational aggression prevention program of its kind in the United States, engages girls as change agents, providing them with a vocabulary to describe their relationships, a crictical lens to analyze cultural forces shaping their relationships, and skills to effectively navigate conflict and articulate boundaries.
Through didactic and experiential techniques, this workshop introduces participants to the Allies in Action curriculum, inviting them to share in experience of exploration for youth driven change.
Middle School Girls, "Adversaries to Allies: A Curriculum for Change" by Lyn Mikel Brown, Ed.D & Mary Madden, Ph.D. There has been a great deal of attention paid recently to girlfighting, particularly to relational forms of aggression, bullying, and "mean" behavior. Popular books and teen magazines give the impression that such behavior is natural - just part of who girls are -- and that exclusion, gossip, rumor-spreading, and other forms of betrayal are rites of passage for girls in adolescence, even a condition of being female. Reality TV shows and movies like Mean Girls offer up-dated versions of long-standing stereotypes of women and girls as untrustworthy, catty, manipulative, and shallow, always in competition with other girls over appearance, boys, and social status. This "girls will be girls" notion that females of all ages will naturally betray, reject, and undermine one another divides girls and cuts them off from a source of much needed support and information about the way the world works and what girls share in common.
In Girlfighting: Betrayal and Rejection Among Girls, Lyn argues that such notions can and must be interrupted. From Adversaries to Allies: A Curriculum for Change transforms research findings on girlfighting behavior into concrete strategies for building girl allies and supportive coalitions. This curriculum is designed to offer middle-school girls a different experience and story about girls' relationships--one that stresses the value of sisterhood and the importance of supporting other girls.
At the heart of this project is the view that girls can be loyal and compassionate toward one another, that they can understand and question the societal stereotypes and media messages that divide them, and that, given a chance to really think and do something about it, they will choose to have a girl's back over stabbing her in the back.
Adversaries to Allies: A Curriculum for Change is designed to create a "hardiness zone" for middle school girls, a safe and supportive space for girls to develop ideas, to take action on issues that really matter to them, and to experience the challenge of changing their schools and communities for the better. Women who wish to create this space for girls are invited to attend this half-day workshop using from Adversaries to Allies. This workshop will address the logistics of setting up a group, the theory upon which the curriculum is based, the structure and activities of the curriculum, and facilitation strategies. A copy of the curriculum is included in the registration fee.
'PACKAGING GIRLHOOD Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers' Schemes , November 6, 2006
We welcoming author of Girlfighting LYN MIKEL Brown, Ed.D. Co-Author Monday, November 6, 2006 at the University of Maine for a Presentation followed by a reception and a book signing.
PACKAGING GIRLHOOD exposes the stereotypes that are presented to young girls through the media, while also offering parents advice on how to talk with their daughters about these negative images. Young girls are constantly besieged by the images in the media that encourage accessorizing over academics; sex appeal over sports and fashion over friends. PACKAGING GIRLHOOD focuses not on keeping girls away from the real world, but rather showing parents how they can help their daughters in understanding marketing images, rising above them , detaching from them and critiquing them.
