You know how we women always talk about supporting other women? Whether in work, social, or life in general, we gals realize sticking together makes everything a bit easier. Now, wouldn’t it be great if this started when we were younger?

There seems to be an inherent rivalry amongst females. Fighting over a guy, a job, or a parking spot can bring out the claws. While time seems to bring more zen between us, none of us would debate tween and teen girls are at the height of girl trouble. What starts as simple disputes and sassiness on elementary school playgrounds can get pretty ugly once they get to middle school. Spats and sneers happen. And sometimes it’s good to get our daughters ready for life by letting them handle disputes on their own. But too often things go much further than kids know how to handle. Name calling, spreading rumors, or verbal and physical abuse can lead to depression, anxiety, self harm, and even suicide.

Why are girls so hard on each other and what can we do to change this?

Two women, and real life BFFs, are working very hard to figure this dilemma out and inspire positive change. Lauren Paul and Molly Thompson are co-founders of Kind Campaign, an organization directed at bringing attention to “girl on girl crime.” This can be anywhere on the map from not letting someone sit at a lunch table to serious cruelty.

Information on bullying is nothing new to parents and school administration. But what makes Kind Campaign different is a focus on bringing awareness of this type of cruelty to those who are most affected: our girls. It not only helps girls to realize they are not the only ones being mistreated, but shows real life consequences to those doing the bullying.

Lauren and Molly share stories of girl on girl cruelty (including their own) via assemblies and social media influencers. What started out as a documentary on female bullying, turned into a non-profit that is helping girls across America tell their stories and bring to light the damage done by these acts.

They’ve also developed a curriculum that can be used with Kind Clubs. These clubs are established through schools, youth organizations or even groups of friends as a way to build a mini community where girls can feel safe and build trusting friendships. There are currently hundreds of Kind Clubs across the country.

Mean girl type behavior is so prevalent that it is almost accepted as a rite of passage. How insane that we feel, and sometimes even advise, this bullying is just a phase, a stepping stone in life that will eventually get better. The sad truth is, some girls don’t make it through this “phase” to get to the better.

Middle school years are tough enough. Self discovery, adjusting to changing bodies, dealing with pressure from sports and academics. We women need to teach young girls to band together and stand up for each other, not keep their heads down and grit it out. Kudos to Lauren and Molly for getting the conversation started. It is up to us to keep it going.

If you are interested in setting up an assembly or organizing a Kind Club, go to KindCampaign.com. You can also follow along on Instagram to keep up with the campaign.

Related on EcoSalon

Bully: A New Documentary To Empower the Underdog

Acceptable Cyber Bullying: Why Are Anonymous Commenters So Vicious?

8 Ways Introverts Can Avoid Social Awkwardness (Without Being a Recluse)

Image of happy girl via Shutterstock

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ColumnWhat’s the best way to fight back against body-shaming bullies? Put your ass into it!

The fastest way to make a girl feel bad is to make fun of her body.

Forty-seven percent of girls in 5th-12th grade say they want to lose weight because of magazine pictures, according to The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Related Disorders.

You can veto women’s magazines from your home, but short of forcing your daughter to live under a rock, it’s impossible to keep girls from absorbing societal messages about what they are “supposed to look like.” And, with added pressure from classmates, it’s easy to understand why so many people (20 million women and 10 million men) have eating disorders.

Carleigh O’Connell, an awesome 14-year-old from New Jersey, found that some of her classmates spray-painted a rock with: “Carleigh’s ass.”

The message Carleigh was supposed to receive, internalize and—possibly—struggle with for decades to come is that her butt is too big. Instead, she posed with the graffiti wearing a bikini, showing off her tush and smiling.

Then, she posted the photo of herself on Instagram and asked her mom to put it on Facebook. Her mom posted it with this note (you can read her whole post here): “My daughter heard that her “rear end” “figure” “body shape” ….you can see the description for yourself in the photo ….was made fun of on a big rock at the beach. Well….it was true. She found it and knew it was hers since her name has a very distinct spelling. Many kids at school told her about it. We talked about it. And while she was upset, she told me she was going to make something good out of it.”

Cheers to Carleigh and her mom for taking control of the situation and turning it into something positive. With mean girls firmly entrenched in most schools, #thinspiration everywhere and oh-so coveted thigh gaps being photoshopped in so often that it’s easy to forget that not everyone has one, it’s hard out there for a girl.

Carleigh’s reaction and willingness to share her photo shows that one person can shift the conversation.

“I wanted to show whoever decided to write that that I was stronger than that,” she told TODAY.com. “It didn’t impact me at all. I didn’t put my head down, I didn’t cry about it. I didn’t give the kids the power they wanted.”

“It felt very empowering,” she added.

Related On EcoSalon

Target’s Thigh Gap Fail: That Happened

Navigating Girl World

Dove’s Real Beauty Ad Celebrates Outer Beauty

Image: Daryl Lynn O’Connell on Facebook

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In this week’s Link Love edition we check in with Amber Valletta on the new, healthier face of fashion. And speaking of faces, a NYC beauty guru launches a new skin care line worth checking out. Turn tea leftovers into dye. Sit down, because “Mean Girls” is now 10. And in other film news, French designer Agnes B has directed her first film.

Everyone’s favorite supermodel turned spokesperson for an industry that can do better, Amber Valletta is “Driving Fashion Forward” in a new short film series. [via Ecouterre]

A New York beauty guru’s plant-powered skin-care line is born of 10,000 facials. [via Well+Good]

Make tea dye from leftover tea? Yes, please. [via Eat Drink Better]

OMG. “Mean Girls” is ten years old. That makes the rest of us….really, really old. [via Vanity Fair]

French fashion designer Agnes B makes her directorial debut with the unexpected ‘Je m’appelle hmmm…” [via W Magazine]

Related on EcoSalon

Link Love: Stella McCartney Goes All Out for Animals  + Yoga Dates + How to Shop Vintage Like a Pro

Link Love: Diane von Furstenberg’s Morning Routine  + Vegan Cinnabon + Snails are Basically the Cutest Ever

Link Love: Fast Fashion Gets Called Out + Cleaning Your Yoga Mat + The Veep Gets Naked

Image via W

The post Link Love: Turn Tea Into Dye + ‘Mean Girls’ Turns 10 + Designer Agnes B Makes Her Directorial Debut appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnReading my 2nd grade diary, I was confronted with myself navigating girl world—and I have some words for Libby, Age 7.

I write a lot about the world today’s American girls are growing up in and how they are navigating girl world. The Disney princess-ification of girls’ toys, what advertising like Dove’s Real Beauty campaign tells them about femininity, what the dangers are of being a woman, slut-shaming and rape, to name a few. I usually don’t think about my own feminist views in terms of who I was as a girl.

However, on a recent trip to my parents’ house, I unearthed my 2nd grade diary, The Ramona Quimby diary. Based on the popular series of books by Beverly Cleary,  the diary was designed for young kids. It featured bits of the Ramonastories and fill-in-the-blank Q+As along with blank pages. 

Thankfully, my spelling has improved since I was a kid (or maybe it’s that spell check was invented), but, reading my own words, I can see that the core of who I am is kind of the same even though girl world is now, more or less, a woman’s world. I liked my friends, reading, writing, tumbling and drawing. I hated math and mentioned that a food I never even wanted to try was mayonnaise. All still true.

In the All About Me section, I reported that I had brown hair, green eyes, was 4’1” and weighed 48 lbs. Half of those things are still true. I said that if I could have a pet it would be a dog—and that I would name it Today. I can’t be sure if I meant that I would hustle to give the pooch a name quickly, or if I thought Today would be a good name for a dog. Given that I named our current dog Bucket, I feel it may be the latter.

When asked what I like about myself, I wrote that I am nice to people (piple) and that in the coming year I would like to be even nicer—and meet Cyndi Lauper (spelled correctly and the first of MANY Cyndi references).

A month later, I report that I get mad when my friends don’t do what I say, and that I spit in someone’s face after she spit in mine. I answered the question: Sometimes I feel sad because: Jess starts a fight. And responded to the prompt: When that happens, I cheer myself up by: Killing her. Yes. I really wrote that about Jess, a girl in my class who, in modern day times, I’d describe as a frenemy.

I see the mean girl version of myself emerging in these pages, replacing the nice kid I was at seven. I see myself being bossy and starting to rank friendships. I can also see how others were mean to me—and, thankfully, that on many days I was actually nice to people. My friendships were essential and ruled my emotions every single day. And 29 years later, my friendships with women are still central to my world.

I also found my favorite shirt. Thanks to the fact that we all wore giant clothes in the ’80s, it still fits—and goes well with the Dancin’ hat I often paired it with.

If I could talk to the second grade girl that I used to be, I’d tell her to take the bitchiness down a notch because if she doesn’t, others will do it for her in junior high and she’ll find herself friendless and lonely. I’d tell her that putting people down doesn’t bring her up. I would tell her to be more confident and do things even when she sucks at them—and to start yoga sooner rather than later. I would tell her that supporting other women is an important part of being the feminist she will become.

I would also mention that in 1993 she touches Cyndi Lauper’s hand, and though she just misses the chance to interview Cyndi in 2006, she hasn’t given up hope for a true meeting someday.

It’s an odd feeling to a glimpse into my own tiny head and realize that what I wanted then was pretty simple and matches up with what I still want: time with the people I care about, cookies and for people to be nice.

At the end of one month, the diary asks: What do you want next month? I wrote: A good month. At the close of another, the question is: What do you want to do next month? I wrote: I hope I do good. Still sounds about right.

Images: Libby Lowe

The post Navigating Girl World: Advice to My 2nd Grade Self appeared first on EcoSalon.

Have we all been mean girls at one time or another?

When Rachel Simmons penned  Odd Girl Out in 2002, she opened the door to the treacherous world of tween and teen girl relationships. What was behind it shocked many and gave rise to new research and changed society’s perception of girls, their personalities and the way they really interact.

What I am taking away from the revised 2011 version is new insight not only into girls’ relationships today, but insight into myself, other women I know, our relationships and the way we interact with each other personally and with others professionally.

Simmons spent three years talking to girls in several schools in different parts of the country, as well as adult women who looked back on their experiences. Listening to these girls tell their stories was like being transported back in time. It also illuminated the roots of such female behaviors as ganging up, rumor spreading, exclusion, silent treatment, and nice-in-private and mean-in-public friends. Some were bullied mercilessly, while others were the aggressors, yet all were “nice” girls who say they were never out to hurt anyone. They were just angry. Really, really angry. I think most women can recognize these behaviors to varying degrees in themselves or others at some point in their lives, not just during teenage years.

Sowing the Seeds of the Good Girl

From a young age, girls are conditioned to be “good.” Girls who talked to Simmons described “ideal” girls as being pretty, popular, smiling, happy, helpless, dependent, perfect, and having superficial conflicts (solved easily), while “anti-girls” are athletic, brainy, opinionated, pushy, professional, strong, independent, and hard to get along with. Society’s version of the good girl stresses perfection where there is no room for expressing anger and learning about conflict. This forces girls into a stifling silence that can manifest itself in these destructive behaviors. “Our culture has made truth telling and anger, indeed, everything that is ‘not nice,’ feel wrong to girls.”

Relationships Are Critical

For girls, relationships are crucial, but therein lies the minefield. Much of girls’ identities are wrapped up in their social lives. Friends play a huge role and isolation is punishing. Girls act out against each other by threatening to withhold or terminate friendships (relational aggression). Many times, along with torpedoing the friendship comes a crowd effect where others turn against the target as well, isolating her from her peers. Girls learn to wield this relationship power and fear its consequences at an early age.

“In fact, it is the deep knowledge girls have of relationship, and the passion they lavish on their closest friends, that characterizes much of their aggression. The most painful attacks are usually fashioned from deep inside a close friendship and are fueled by secrets and once-shared weaknesses.”

Simmons believes that betrayal in a close friendship at a young age is extremely damaging. It shatters children’s beliefs that friends are nice and that love given will be returned. Some of the stories Simmons tells are tough to read. A vicious campaign against a girl that seemed too confident (“thinks she’s all that”), girls who left others behind in the empty pursuit of popularity, and the constant shift of power within circles of “friendship” had devastating and long-lasting effects on those involved.

Other women Simmons talked to described developing a mistrust of other women and drastic personality changes due to early aggression. Other girls remaining in toxic friendships, were unable to break away, and over time internalized the idea that not only their feelings were expendable but that they are disposable. These same women were also seen to quash their own feelings, needs and wants in order to please the domineering friend. This sets the stage for other unhealthy relationships later in life, including ones with domestic violence.

Does this mean that all girls are irredeemably spiteful and vicious? No. Simmons says these behaviors are a result of girls not learning to deal with anger and face-to-face confrontations, and most girls experience them in one form or another. Are all girls involved in such malicious instances of bullying? No. But bullying comes in varying degrees. Some emerge relatively unscathed, while others carry deep scars into adulthood.

Code Phrase: “I’m Sorry”

“I’m sorry” has many meanings in Girlspeak. During a silent girl vs. girl struggle, it signals surrender. Whomever says it first, loses. On the flip side, “I’m sorry” heads off confrontation altogether and short-circuits discussion. When a girl does try to express her feelings to a friend, a dismissive “I’m sorry,” ends the conversation. Any attempt to continue looks like an emotional overreaction, which is another taboo. In addition to being “good,” girls are not to be emotional (remember that “ideal” girls are always happy). Emotion is used against them. “I’m sorry” is also a knee-jerk reaction, the phrase that springs easily to the lips in many situations to seem courteous and appear good, but ends up making women and girls seem submissive, unsure, and smaller than they are.

How Talking About It Can Help Them and Help Heal Us

Although Simmons’ lengthy research focused primarily on situations involving girls between ten and seventeen, she concedes that these behaviors don’t go away when girls grow up. Simmons said, “The cultural constraints on anger and aggression don’t disappear when a girl grows older, she doesn’t enter womanhood suddenly being able to speak her mind, so these behaviors continue.” Simmons believes that the best way to change is for women to encourage girls to talk, to learn how to deal with conflict in a healthy way and to develop an outlet for their frustration and anger. Both women and girls can benefit.

After writing Odd Girl Out, Simmons traded journalism for a teaching certificate and co-founded the Girls Leadership Institute (GLI), a nonprofit organization focused on teaching girls (K-12), educators and parents about healthy relationships, assertiveness and self-expression. During these workshops, girls learn leadership skills and how to recognize and deal with aggressive behavior.

Simmons is proud to see the progress the girls make during the workshops. When I asked her how the girls applied their newfound skills and awareness once they returned to their original environment, she reported that when the girls looked at their old environment through their new, empowered lens, their friends either accepted and embraced their assertiveness, or the girls realized their old relationships were unhealthy and had the strength to move on.

Perhaps the more girls who learn these skills, and the more girls who witness their use will create a ripple effect in changing attitudes. While Simmons is teaching girls to flex their assertiveness muscles early, she admits that society is very uncomfortable with these displays of power. Personally and professionally, women and girls can only be so empowered. Society has to change its perception of how women and girls should act for there to be any real change.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Almost all girls have been on both sides of the fence – the bully and the bullied. The talker and the talked about. The one left behind in a friendship, and the one who moved onto a new set of friends, perhaps leaving out a former confidant. Childhood is tough to navigate, especially within the societal constraints of the “good” girl. After reading Odd Girl Out, I looked back at my own childhood experiences and could see many parallels. However, I could also identify toxic friendships in college and into adulthood, as well as personal and professional situations handled badly.

The first step to acknowledging a problem: talk about it. Considered just a part of childhood by many, after a rash of suicides attributed to bullying, it is now being recognized as the poisonous behavior it is. In Odd Girl Out, Simmons devotes time to defining normal friendship-growing-pain behavior as opposed to actual bullying. Bullying is also being called out in other settings and people are being encouraged to open up about their experiences. Bullying in the workplace has become an issue in recent years, with much of it perpetuated by women. Ecosalon editor Sara Ost talks about her own brush with bullying as an adult and her advice for dealing with it, and walking away. A new YA book, Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories features tales from the bullied, and those who were bullies.

Has girl bullying improved over the last decade since Odd Girl Out’s original publication date and the formation of GLI? Simmons calls it a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that since it has come to light, more research is being done, there are more interventions and more states are holding schools accountable with anti-bullying legislation.

The bad news is that cyberbullying is a particularly virulent strain of bullying and is only getting worse. Additionally, Simmons laments, reality TV has glorified bad female behavior, turning aggression into a form of entertainment and highlighting confrontation in exactly the wrong way. This works against all efforts to promote healthy emotional interaction, and, sadly, many girls are watching and emulating.

It’s time for women to feel more comfortable expressing themselves in a healthy way – and for society to encourage us. We need a world with less repression and more genuine friendships, young and old.

image: Monica Arellano-Ongpin, Ava Weintraub

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A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Places & Spaces: Canvas Hotel is a visual vacation, never mind a cyclist’s dream hideaway. Based in Southern Norway, the adventure starts the moment you arrive.

Lady Gaga on EcoSalon? In Shade Grown Hollywood: The Conscious Mind Of Lady Gaga, writer Kathie Butler says “Lady Gaga is on the way to becoming an icon of post-feminist sexuality. But is she a confident cultural attaché to our own fantastical fantasies? Or she is more of a mouthpiece of modern times, a voice raging against homophobia and discrimination?” We explore Lady Gaga, aka Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta’s level of consciousness.

With Japan still reeling in the wake of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake that sent a 30-foot wall of ocean water onto the Fukushima-Daiichi plant on the coast of Japan, we find ourselves asking if there are more viable options than nuclear as we watch radiation leaking from core reactors. In The Nuclear Option, writer Stephanie Rogers reviews the pros and cons.

In her weekly Green Plate, writer Vanessa Barrington’s column Is Urban Farming The Next Green Cottage Industry? asks if urban farming is a viable career for our younger generation and a dependable source of food for city dwellers.

This week, our editor’s column The Insider’s Guide To Life: Bite Me dives into female bullying, giving important tools to empower one to bite back. Ost writes: “Who on earth are these people? Tina Fey called them Mean Girls, and they are everywhere, no matter how grown up we get. Naively, I had approached my very first bully with the plucky optimism of a community fundraiser. Soon, she needed me and my reliable niceness, and when you get to that point it’s a short trip to toast. I was but the earnest wheat germ, she, the flaring toaster.”

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