Girlology: A Girl's Guide to Stuff that Matters полностью

The weapon of choice among girls—words?!? Well, think about it. Feelings are fragile things, and some words can be like a sword piercing right through your gut! Consider the following verbal attacks:

You help a guy friend with math homework, and another girl tells everybody, “She is so in love with him!” Ouch!

“Those jeans are totally Kmart.” Ouch!

“Idiot!” Double ouch!

When you hear these things, think “Girl Power!” Am I an idiot? No. Am I totally in love with every guy friend I help out? No. Are my jeans Kmart? Well, maybe, but they are the cutest pair in town, so who cares?

Unfortunately, we can’t control physical brain changes and hormones, so gossiping, insults, backstabbing and discouragement will always be around. But remember, just because someone says it about you doesn’t make it true.

Of course, piercing words aren’t just what “other girls” use. Your brain is telling you to fit in; it’s telling you to join a group separate from your family; it’s even telling you to exclude people from your circle of friends. Hey, brain, cut that out!

What Kind of Friend Are You?

Whew! That’s a pretty unpleasant picture we’ve painted. So are middle school and high school nothing but a bunch of mean girls tearing each other to pieces? Heck, no!

While you can’t control the physical things that happen to you, you can control (Girl Power!) how you react to them. Once again, we get to balance the things we can’t control (brain and hormone changes) with things we can control (actions). We can choose to put down that sword, retract those claws and be a good friend to those around us. The Golden Rule is the perfect guide for friendship: Treat others the way you want them to treat you.

Remember that all middle and high school girls’ brains are giving them signals to be more independent and try on new ideas, actions and attitudes. You don’t need to totally drop a friend the first time she is mean to you. People change! Maybe that same girl just tried on a “snobby” personality for a couple days and found it didn’t fit. Remember, you’re all working through this together.

A great way to have true friends is to be a true friend. Remember that you will be insulting and you will gossip about other people. Some girls will do it more than others, but a good friend will apologize (and mean it) when she messes up. And good friends accept apologies graciously.

Now we get to the meat of friendship . . . what kind of friend are you? Do your actions match up to your words? Do you treat other people the way you want to be treated? When you choose friends by asking yourself, “Are they walkin’ or just talkin’?” ask the same about yourself. Remember that list of words you want other people to use to describe you? Do your actions make those things true about you, or is it just talk?What have you done lately that was “just talkin’”?1.2.3.What have you done lately that was really “walkin’”?1.2.3.

Cliques

What do you look for in a friend? Does a girl have to wear the trendiest clothes? Be athletic? Read two novels a week? Wear black all the time? Play in the band? Be a drama queen, a cheerleader or a yearbook staffer?

You’ve seen the groups. They hang out together, eat lunch together, and sometimes even dress and act alike. Lots of groups have names. In most schools there are jocks, cheerleaders, preppies, goths, brainiacs, druggies, gearheads and artsy-fartsies. Your school probably has other groups that don’t have such stereotypical names but are just as well-known. Can you name them?

Preteen and teen girls have a funny way of defining their groups. Clique is one way to describe a group of people who hang together. The word clique is usually used in a sort of negative way. Cliques can give “outsiders” a negative feeling because a lot of cliques don’t let anyone else in, and they can be snobby and mean about it.

Have you ever seen a group make fun of other people who aren’t like them? When groups of people get together, they feel a lot more powerful than any one person would ever feel alone. In a group, people will do things they would never do on their own—sometimes mean things or risky things. At the head of many cliques is a leader who likes control. Some of these leaders win friends by insisting on loyalty and making people scared they will be excluded if they don’t go along with everything the leader says.