Bully for you
It was 1974. We liked the Carpenters and the Bee Gees, wore flared corduroys and striped turtlenecks. I didn't know this, as we skipped at recess together in Grade 7, but my childhood would soon end.
I can flash back in an instant to that moment 34 years ago when a group of schoolgirls waged psychological warfare on me. There was the queen bee, Eileen, whose tousled blond locks and angelic countenance belied a more sinister personality; her aide-de-camp, Jackie; and several guilty bystanders whose fear for their own emotional safety precluded giving a whit about mine. As the new girl in their country school in Smithville, Ont., at first I was granted access to this elite pack that moved as one in the schoolyard. Then one day as I approached them before the morning bell, they literally turned their backs on me in unison, snickering all the while, and refused to speak to me. It was a carefully planned, synchronized form of girlhood torture, the kind that can be meted out only by tightly knit cliques and best-friend dyads.
Psychologists call it "indirect" or "social aggression." I called it hell. My body heated up with shame and I was devastated by the exclusion. Some part of my 12-year-old self still hasn't fully recovered.
Bullied into adulthood
I'm not alone. There are legions of middle-aged women who still secretly suffer the emotional scars of girl-on-girl bullying. The dirty looks, nasty notes, cruel pranks, taunting and shunning they suffered in puberty often carry an imprint into adulthood and beyond. Embarrassed, these women will admit that the calculated nastiness of these Nellie Olesen types has had a profound effect on their grown-up sense of self.
Research shows that women who were bullied as girls have a greater propensity to suffer from low self-esteem, self-doubt, social anxiety, perfectionism, heightened sensitivity and depression, and are even vulnerable to re-victimization.
Much of this resonates with me. I survived the mean girls by chumming up with another girl on the margins; she and I navigated the tribalism of high school arm in arm. But groups of alpha females can still make me nervous. I tend to look for allies on the periphery. Sometimes I wonder if certain women are really true-blue friends. I am easily slighted if I perceive I've been left out, and will agonize if I think I've done the same to someone else. Because I once was one, I identify with the underdog.
