Mad Women: From Angels in the House to Mean Girls

*This post is based on my Pecha Kucha talk on May 5, 2017 at Greystone Hall in Akron, OH.

Slide 1

It’s the summer before high school. …Late eighties. …New Jersey.

I’m riding my bike to a friend’s house. And my outfit…is on POINT: floral jams …jelly shoes …high bangs….braces.

And you know I NEED to look fly… …my friend is the Queen Bee of the 8th Grade.

Slide 2

But my world’s about to FLIP.

Or at least I am.

One second, I’m humming Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.”

The next, I’m flying over my handlebars …landing….mostly on my face.

Jelly shoes in hand, I walk barefoot the rest of the way.

Slide 3

I see my friend before she sees me …up on her porch, surrounded by middle school girls.

I’m bloodied, barefoot and ashamed.

But we’ve been friends since 1st grade — eating ice cream straight from the carton, singing Bon Jovi’s “Never Say Goodbye” into our spoons.

Now, when she looks at me, I know where I stand: she smirks and turns away, her followers following.

Slide 4

Back home, my mother — a divorced, working mom of three — patches me up, telling me: “Get Back on your bike.”

I’m glad I learned how early.

Because Mean Girls may AGE out of middle school, but they don’t really grow up.

Slide 5

Some become Mean Women who will TRY to threaten your livelihood and your sense of who are you.

I’ve learned first-hand this goes beyond cliques and cold shoulders.

Maybe that’s because I look like a soft target: I have blonde hair. I smile a lot (smile).

Or maybe it’s just what Mean Girls do.

Slide 6

Regardless, I’ve known too many women who’ve endured the same malicious treatment to think I’m alone.

So I want to share three things I wish I’d understood earlier.

First, this problem isn’t new.

Long before LiLo took Mean Girls mainstream, Victorian women perfected the art… posing as “Angels in the House” and throwing shade at women who didn’t play by their rules.

Slide 7

These “Angels”… were real O.G. slut-shamers, calling single women promiscuous or redundant… because they chose to control their bodies, names, and earnings.

Back when BIG Victorian families were a *thing*, these “Angels” condemned women with fewer children as “scarcely mothers.”

And working women? They represented all that “Angels” were not, so they, too, became targets.

Slide 8

Case in point:

When a Victorian columnist called working women “monstrosities,” Elizabeth Cochrane responded by writing a blistering defense that earned her a job at that paper, writing under the pseudonym, Nellie Bly.

Bly is best known for faking madness to get inside Blackwell’s Lunatic Asylum, then writing about the corruption she saw there.

Slide 9

Her work led to real reform. Women in journalism should have celebrated.

Instead, Bly’s female peers dismissed her as a “stunt reporter,” urging her to choose more feminine subjects like flowers and fashion.

Nevertheless, Bly persisted. …and became a pioneer of investigative journalism.

Slide 10

A century ago, Virginia Woolf urged us to “kill the Angel in the House” — to rid ourselves of the infighting she creates.

Yet these Angels still haunt us …vampire like, stoking petty rivalries that drive women out of social circles, communities and careers.

But who wins when women, as a whole, are kept down?

Slide 11

The second thing I’ve learned: It isn’t about you. It’s about them.

Margaret Atwood believes that women hurt other women when they have little power and scarce resources.

This is why we form tribes. To consolidate resources and create power that helps us survive.

Slide 12

Shared power can be amazing. But Mean Girl tribes are built for dominance.

They thrive on complicity from the inner circle and silence from those on the fringe.

That’s why women as well as MEN often “go along to get along.”

They confuse their silence with innocence, telling themselves it’s better than becoming a target, too.

Slide 13

I understand that.

Go against the Queen Bee and expect repercussions.

Expect rumors about you to float down hallways, whispered where they can linger one-sided and unchallenged.

This isn’t because women are destined, as Mencken believed, to be cruel to each other.

Slide 14

It’s because Mean Girls are — at their core — cowards.

They are also quick to play the victim.

Not unlike someone who thinks statements of fact are evidence of bias against him.

Bullying signifies brokenness as much as it seeks to create brokenness.

Slide 15

Which leads me to one last thing: We are far from powerless to stop this.

I know there are people here tonight who have, at some point, been targets, helpers, or onlookers.

Though the Queen Bee wants you to feel you have no choices…

…the truth is, in any of these roles, you can change this culture.

Slide 16

Roxane Gay calls it a “cultural myth” that girls “must be bitchy, toxic or competitive” with each other. But really, we are wired to cooperate and collaborate.

She writes: “This myth is like heels and purses — pretty but designed to SLOW women down.”

This part’s personal for me.

Slide 17

I have a six-year-old daughter and I don’t want anyone slowing her down.

Not that you COULD. She’s strong-willed and … frankly … weird.

But her weirdness is a strength. I want her to understand how to be an individual and still be part of a tribe that builds her up.

Slide 18

I want her to know the difference between “following the crowd” and finding her people.

In HBO’s Big Little Lies, a group of women spend most of the miniseries behaving badly to each other.

But by the closing scene, they stand huddled on a beach, unbreakable, as they watch their kids play.

Slide 19

I want her to know the difference between “following the crowd” and finding her people.

In HBO’s Big Little Lies, a group of women spend most of the miniseries behaving badly to each other.

But by the closing scene, they stand huddled on a beach, unbreakable, as they watch their kids play.

Slide 20

They’ve helped me understand that eventually, we all find ourselves up on the Queen Bee’s porch…..

With someone’s little girl down on the sidewalk, bloodied and embarrassed, looking up at US.

We can stay up there, protected, for a time…

Or …we can go get the damn first-aid kit.

Thank you.