Odd Girl Out Read Online Free PDF

times more often than boys, even though the boys were louder. By the time they are of school age, peers solidify the fault lines on the playground, creating social groups that value niceness in girls and toughness in boys.
    The culture derides aggression in girls as unfeminine, a trend explored in chapter four. "Bitch," "lesbian," "frigid," and "manly" are just a few of the names an assertive girl hears. Each epithet points out the violation of her prescribed role as a caregiver: the bitch likes and is liked by no one; the lesbian loves not a man or children but another woman; the frigid woman is cold, unable to respond sexually; and the manly woman is too hard to love or be loved.
    Girls, meanwhile, are acutely aware of the culture's double standard. They are not fooled into believing this is the so-called postfeminist age, the girl power victory lap. The rules are different for boys, and girls know it. Flagrant displays of aggression are punished with social rejection.
    At Sackler Day School, I was eating lunch with sixth graders during recess, talking about how teachers expected them to behave at school. Ashley, silver-rimmed glasses snug on her tiny nose, looked very serious as she raised her hand.
    "They expect us to act like girls back in the 1800s!" she said indignantly. Everyone cracked up.
    "What do you mean?" I asked.
    "Well, sometimes they're like, you have to respect each other, and treat other people how you want to be treated. But that's not how life is. Everyone can be mean sometimes and they're not even realizing it. They expect that you're going to be
so
nice to everyone and you'll be
so
cool. Be nice to everyone!" she mimicked, her suddenly loud voice betraying something more than sarcasm.
    "But it's not true," Nicole said. The room is quiet.
    "Anyone else?" I asked.
    "They expect you to be perfect. You're nice. When boys do bad stuff, they all know they're going to do bad stuff. When girls do it, they yell at them," Dina said.
    "Teachers think that girls should be really nice and sharing and not get in any fights. They think it's worse than it really is," Shira added.
    "They expect you to be perfect angels and then sometimes we don't want to be considered a perfect angel," Laura noted.
    "The teacher says if you do something good, you'll get something good back, and then she makes you feel like you really should be," Ashley continued. "I try not to be mean to my sister or my mom and dad, and I wake up the next day and I just do it naturally. I'm not an angel! I try to be focused on it, but then I wake up the next day and I'm cranky."
    In Ridgewood, I listened to sixth graders muse about what teachers expect from girls. Heather raised her hand.
    "They just don't..." She stopped. No one picked up the slack.
    "Finish the sentence," I urged.
    "They expect you to be nice like them, like they supposedly are, but..."
    "But what?"
    "We're not."
    "I don't go around being like goody-goody," said Tammy.
    "What does goody-goody mean?" I asked.
    "You're supposed to be sitting like this"—Tammy crossed her legs and folded her hands primly over her knees—"the whole time."
    "And be nice—and don't talk during class," said Torie.
    "Do you always feel nice?" I asked.
    "
No!
" several of them exclaimed.
    "So what happens?"
    "It's like you just—the bad part controls over your body," Tammy said. "You want to be nice and you want to be bad at the same time, and the bad part gets to you. You think"—she contorted her face and gritted her teeth—"I
have to be nice.
"
    "You just want to tell them to shut up! You just feel like pushing them out of the way and throwing them on the ground!" said Brittney. "I wanted to do it like five hundred times last year to this girl. If I didn't push her, I just walked off and tried to stay calm."
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    Try as they might, most girls can't erase the natural impulses toward anger that every human being knows. Yet the early research on aggression turned the myth of the