Mean Girls: A way of life?

October 5, 11:20 PMNY Social Awareness ExaminerStephanie Tello

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In the time span of one week, seven of my students have managed to get suspended, all girls and all for fighting.

The days of the demur young lady are long gone...While I'm all for women breaking free of a gender stereotype, I'm concerned that we are moving into a permanent spot in the other end of the spectrum: vicious raging *ithches.

Since the first day of school I have been listening to my 9th and 10th grade girls conspiring  to "jump" some girl who looked at her too hard in the hallway, or even worse, spoke to her man. This nonsense seems to cloud over the actual educational content of my classroom day in and day out. Furthermore, in the 4 years I have been teaching I have never witnessed my male students fighting. There seems to be an overall bond of solidarity present in their lives that woman have rarely been able to cultivate.

I wish I could chalk up this behavior to adolescence or the fact that these particular girls come from a violent neighborhood. But sadly, I'm sure we have all witnessed full blown girl fights (whether overt or covert) in all our neighborhoods, regardless of social class or race.

As a group, women have been raised to be competitors instead of partners. In a world where we have to fight twice as hard as a man for respect, we should be working together for constant improvements in all aspects of our lives. Instead some of us continually show the world that we may indeed be too emotional and unstable to hold any kind of power in our society. If we actually banded together we would be a force to be reckoned with, as has been seen in the small moments in history when women fought on the same side for equality. Those women would look at us and the younger generation with such disappointment because we have become our own worst "frenemies."

If at 26 I can say that women I know are continually finding ways to "break" the woman next to her, how can I expect  anything different from my inexperienced students?

How sad ladies, how sad.