The Lifeboat

 

"I say that we abandon this ship! We take the shuttle and just get the hell out of here!"

― Lambert

"We can't just run away, that would be wrong!

Could we hide...?"

-- Willow Rosenberg

TREACHEROUS WATERS

  OK, now you know the different roles girls play in cliques. The next questions are: How were these roles created in the first place? Who and what determine these positions and power plays? Why are girls able to get away with treating each other so badly?

  Imagine you and your daughter are on a cruise ship. The Cruise Director’s job is to make sure your daughter is reasonably happy and entertained. There are scheduled activities, and if by chance she hurts herself, someone will be there to get her back on her feet. 

She knows most of the people on the ship and everything is familiar. But all of the sudden, girls start telling each other the ship is stupid and boring and it’s time to get off. 

As you watch helplessly, she leaves behind everything that is safe and secure, gets into a life raft with people who have little in common with her except their age, and drifts away.

  Once in the raft she may ask herself how she got there or why she even left in the first place, but when she looks around, she sees that the ship is impossibly far away, the waves are too big, and there are a limited number of supplies; she quickly realizes that her survival depends on bonding with the other girls in that life raft. But your daughter isn’t stupid. This realization is quickly followed by another one: she’s trapped.

  I know this is a dramatic metaphor to demonstrate girls’ fear, but it shows how trapped many girls feel, forced to be a certain way in order to be accepted by their peers. They perceive their only choices as being stuck in the life raft or thrown into the water. To girls, the life raft of the clique can truly feel like a matter of life and death.

  When I’m teaching girls in a class, I get them to talk about these feelings by giving them the following exercise: I ask them to describe what a girl or woman who has high social status is like. This is a person everyone “knows.” If she has an opinion, everyone listens and agrees. What does she look like, and how does she act? Then I ask them to describe what a girl or woman who doesn’t have high social status is like. This is someone who is likely to be teased, ridiculed, and/or dismissed. What does she look like, and how does she act?

  Next, we put the characteristics of high social status within a box and place the characteristics of low social status outside the box (off the raft), as demonstrated in the following “Act Like a Woman” box.

  The box shows what girls think they need in order to stay in the life raft and what characteristics will get them thrown out. 

I visualise most of the girls I teach as squeezing into this raft and hanging on for dear life. 

They’ll tolerate almost anything to stay in—and there’s always the threat of being cast out.

Are there some girls who are comfortable swimming in the waters? 

Are there girls who would rather drown than be in the raft? 

Sure, and sometimes these girls are stronger because of the struggle. 

But in many ways, every girl has to deal with the life raft, because her society’s social pecking order is based on this metaphor. 

Even if she doesn’t care, her peers do, 

and they’re judging her accordingly. 

So no matter where your daughter is—sitting securely, teetering on the rails, bobbing in the waters with a life preserver, swimming strongly, treading water, or drowning—it is imperative to understand and accept the reasons why she bonds so tightly with her friends and why the idea of being cast out can be so frightening and paralyzing. Her fear also makes it more difficult to ask for help. From her perspective, that cruise ship is very far away, and you probably couldn’t get her back on board even if you tried.

  But how do people get thrown out of the life raft? Look at the words outside the box. These are weapons. For example, imagine your daughter is in the popular group. One of the girls in her group teases another girl for being overweight. Your daughter may feel bad, but what would happen if she stood up to the teaser? Any challenge to the powers that be is seen as an act of disloyalty and, in turn, she might be thrown out. Just the threat of being thrown out is powerful enough to silence most girls.

  Cliques are self-reinforcing. As soon as you define your role and group, you perceive others as outsiders. It becomes harder to put yourself in their shoes, and therefore it is easier to be cruel to them or watch and do nothing. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about social hierarchies, racism, sexism, homophobia, or any “ism;” this is the way people assert their power, which really translates into discrimination and bigotry. You’ve probably raised your daughter to stand up to and for people. But you’re a long way away on the cruise ship, and heeding your advice—and perhaps her conscience—won’t put her back on board with you. She’s the one who has to stay on the raft with the girls. See why your daughter is so tempted to “do the wrong thing” even when she knows better?

  If you want to really understand what your daughter’s world looks like, ask her to draw a map of her school that shows who hangs out where. I asked two sixteen-year-old girls to do this exercise, an Indian-American girl from the East Coast and a junior from the Southwest. I flinched when I saw their artwork. Their worlds are harsh, judgmental places—but they’re typical of what many girls tell me their school experience is like.