Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls

Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls by journalist Rachel Simmons is a 2002 work of nonfiction that explores the ways in which girls express their anger in a culture that tends to accept the obvious aggressive acts of boys such as physical confrontations, but tends to encourage a more subtle handling of such feelings in girls. Simmons points to the writing of derogatory notes, exclusion from social groups, and other such actions as the ways indirect aggression enters into the friendships of girls. In a culture where girls are forced to express their anger in more suppressed ways, the resulting acts of bullying become a pattern of destruction. Because of the hidden nature of the expression of aggression in girls compared with boys, Simmons argues that society must find ways to allow females to express their aggression in ways that teach them that conflict is part of relationships.

In Odd Girl Out​, Simmons calls for girls to be given the opportunity to access open conflict rather than the prevailing societal norms that encourage girls to be nice above all else. These prevailing norms, she says, has girls directing their aggression into nonphysical hidden methods of expression. She refers to the backstabbing, spreading of rumors, and manipulations that are used to create psychological pain in others. Nonverbal methods of attack like body language and facial expressions are used, as opposed to males who use their fists and weapons. An ultimate weapon for females is friendship and the potential withholding of it. This subtle form of manipulation and control is frequently not noticed by parents and teachers. The result is serious psychological damage to the victims.

In doing her research for Odd Girl Out, Simmons interviewed three hundred girls. The girls were from ten different schools in various areas of the United States. Some were made up of middle class white populations while others had different races and different socioeconomic backgrounds. The ages of the girls Simmons spoke with ranged from nine to fifteen. As an interviewer, Simmons tried to put the emphasis on the voices of the girls with whom she engaged and not her own. She avoided talking to the girls in a way that lectured them about bullying. She accepted that many of them had the capacity to be bullies and mean, and in so doing, she was able to get inside the heads of those who did the bullying and not just the victims. Also included among her interview subjects were fifty women who had experienced being victims of aggression when they were younger.



One story that Simmons relates comes from a bully named Michelle and a friendship that went wrong. Michelle meets a popular girl named Erin. Erin is outgoing and attractive and by connecting with her, Michelle finds herself accepted into a popular and powerful clique. Michelle eventually gets angry when Erin tells her that she likes the same boy that Michelle had already told her she was interested in. Erin starts dating the boy and Michelle grows angrier. Michelle cannot express herself to Erin because she knows that Erin will find a way to manipulate the situation and make it seem like Michelle is at fault. The tension between them builds as Erin begins to compete with Michelle academically. In time, Michelle finds out that other girls have had similar problems with Erin, and she starts a group attack against her including negative e-mail messages and ignoring her. This goes on for two years, eventually landing the girl in psychiatric care.

The author presents this as an example of the type of bullying that occurs because girls are not permitted to acknowledge their aggression publically. If they were able to do so, she believes, they would feel empowered to navigate their conflicts and to develop more appropriate ways to define relationships. They would learn that no relationships are without conflicts, and that conflicts do not need to end relationships and are not what should control relationships.

Publishers Weekly summed up the major tenets of Odd Girl Out, saying, “Although more than 16 years have passed, Rhodes Scholar Simmons hasn't forgotten how she felt when Abby told the other girls in third grade not to play with her, nor has she stopped thinking about her own role in giving Noa the silent treatment. Simmons examines how such ‘alternative aggression’-where girls use their relationship with the victim as a weapon-flourishes and its harmful effects …Simmons offers a detailed portrait of girls' bullying. Citing the work of Carol Gilligan and Lyn Mikel Brown, she shows the toll that alternative aggression can take on girls' self-esteem. For Simmons, the restraints that society imposes to prevent girls from venting feelings of competition, jealousy and anger is largely to blame for this type of bullying. It forces girls to turn their lives into ‘a perverse game of Twister,’ where their only outlets for expressing negative feelings are covert looks, turned backs and whispers. Since the events at Columbine, some schools have taken steps to curb relational aggression. For those that haven't, Simmons makes an impassioned plea that no form of bullying be permitted.”