Book notes: Odd Girl Out

Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls by Rachel Simmons

• Girls perceive danger in their lives as isolation, especially the fear that by standing out they will be abandoned. Boys fear entrapment or smothering.
• Painful attacks are usually fashioned from deep inside a close friendship and are fualed by secrets and once-shared weaknesses.
• Many girls are unprepared to negotiate conflict. As a result, a minor disagreement can call an entire relationship into question.
• Because these girls lack the tools to deal with everyday feelings of anger, hurt, betrayal, and jealousy, their feeling stew and fester before boiling to the surface and leashing torrent of rage. [In regard to closeted or ghettoized gays, they cannot deal with everyday feelings for fear of being suspected or discovered]
• There are rules and the girl who thinks she's all that breaks them. They are the rules of feminimity: girls must be modest, self-abnegating, and demore; girls must be nice and put others before themselves; girls get power by who likes them, who approves, who they know, but not by their won hand. Break these rules and "all that" looms on the horizon.
• The girl who thinks she is "all that" is the girl who expresses or projects an aura of assertiveness or self-confidence. . .Her speech and body, even her clothes, suggest others are not foremost on her mind.
• Women have long relied upon their affiliations with others to increase social status, and popularity is a mean and merciless competition for relationships.