Girls' Social Aggression Can Be Just as Damaging as Hitting

MAUREEN CAVANAUGH (Host): I’m Maureen Cavanaugh. You’re listening to These Days on KPBS. When you think of bullying and aggression in school, you usually think of boys intimidating other boys. After all, culturally it’s assumed that boys and men are naturally aggressive. But now some attention is being paid to girls and the fact that they can also show a tendency to assert dominance over others. Since girls are still socialized to be quieter and less physical than boys, their aggression often takes on a very different quality. They practice what psychologists call social aggression. Last fall, Tom Fudge talked with Rachel Simmons, founding director of the Girls Leadership Institute, and author of “Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls,” and the follow-up book “Odd Girl Speaks Out: Girls Write About Bullies, Cliques, Popularity and Jealousy.” Here’s that interview.

TOM FUDGE (Interviewer): Rachel, how does aggression show up in girls? What do you see when you’re out there?

RACHEL SIMMONS (Founding Director, Girls Leadership Institute): Well, what’s so interesting is how early it shows up. At about two or three years old, girls stop using physicality to express their anger and instead of hitting somebody to get a toy, they might walk up to another child and say, if you don’t give me that toy, I’m not going to be your friend anymore, or, you can’t come to my birthday party. And that’s interesting, too, because a lot of parents like to joke, oh, I’ve been disinvited from my three-year-old’s birthday party five times this week. And we often laugh about that but that’s actually the emergence of a very serious form of aggression called relational aggression, which is the use of friendship as a weapon. It’s if you don’t do what I want, I will withdraw my relationship.

FUDGE: And how do girls generally differ from boys? Does it come down to this difference of physicality, that boys are physical whereas girls are verbal? Is it as simple as that?

SIMMONS: I wish it were but life generally isn’t that simple. First of all, guys increasingly are engaging in more psychological aggression. As we tend to become a much more anxious country about the use of guns, we’ve gotten much more vigilant about boys’ physical aggression and when you tell boys not to be physical, they’re going to find another way to show it.

FUDGE: Umm-hmm.

SIMMONS: So definitely this is something that crosses gender boundaries. That said, girls disproportionately engage in psychological aggression because they’re given much less permission to be physical. It’s perfectly acceptable for guys to roughhouse. At a certain age, you know, girls can kind of – can do some of that but then they come into adolescence and that is just not cool to do so they’ve got to find other ways.

FUDGE: Well, you anticipated my next question, which is where do girls get this? Is it learned? Is it innate?

SIMMONS: Well, I think it’s a combination, as most human behaviors are. From the nature side of things, women have been caregivers for thousands and thousands of years and evolutionary psychologists believe that because women had to ensure the survival of their children, they could not afford to be physically aggressive and had to find other ways to get what they wanted. But from the nurture side of things, we live in a culture that socializes girls away from aggression. We tell girls that to be a good girl, you have to be nice all the time and you have to take care of people and be selfless and generous and not brag about yourself and not be too much. And so when girls live in this, what I call a good girl culture, they don’t have permission to be openly angry but they’re going to get angry because they’re human beings and they’re going to get very angry because they’re girls very deeply involved in their relationships so they’re going to have to find those other ways.

FUDGE: Now I would assume, as with most other behavior, human behavior, race, class, play a role in this?

SIMMONS: Absolutely. One thing – There’s a lot of different variations. Certainly, the lower the socio-economic status of a girl, the more likely she is to be direct and physical with her anger and that’s because when you grow up poor, you don’t really have the luxury of being indirect. You’re probably forced to defend yourself physically and psychologically much more often than if you grow up in a very upper-middle class, affluent environment where you’re protected all the time. Racially, you see a gamut. In very traditional Latino homes, there is a powerful emphasis on girls being very virtuous. Girls are compared to the Virgin Mary, that they should aspire to be that way. That creates pressure to repress how you feel and, therefore, leads to much more indirect aggression. On the other end of the spectrum, African-American girls are shown to be raised in such a way as to promote being more direct, that their mothers say, you know, you need to be prepared to defend yourself so be direct, tell the truth, say what you think, and those girls tend to be much less indirect. So it really runs the gamut.

FUDGE: And let’s get it started with Valerie, who’s calling us from San Diego. Valerie, go ahead.

VALERIE (Caller, San Diego): Yeah, I experience this kind of aggression first, my earliest memory, in junior high with a group of my peers. We were actually kind of the top-dog girls, you know, the popular girls at school.

FUDGE: Umm-hmm.

VALERIE: And we ousted one another at different times, so that was our way of – it was kind of a clan mentality. And – But I’m seeing it with my four-year-old now at a much younger age. She’s in pre-school and she’s already getting this type of aggression happening to her. She’s the victim. She does not retaliate but she’s constantly told by her closest friends, you’re not my friend today.

SIMMONS: Yeah, I think – Well, first of all, I think that as a parent to watch your child go through this is agonizing no matter what but if you’ve been the victim and you’re a parent and you’re watching your child go through it, I think it’s really traumatic. You’re reliving, in many ways, an experience that was so powerful for you. When you say that your daughter doesn’t retaliate, Valerie, I wonder if it might be better to do a little role playing with your daughter so that she doesn’t necessarily learn to retaliate but that she learns to respond.

VALERIE: Right, and I have. I have done role playing with her where I’ve said, well, you need to say, don’t treat me like that, and then go and play with somebody else if she, you know, continues with the behavior. But you have to defend yourself but to not be mean back. You know, so we do do some role playing and I – you know, that’s kind of her mantra. I always test her, well, what did you say to her? Did you tell her don’t treat me like that? And she’s learning, she’s practicing. But I find it interesting, your last comment about socio-economic status because I definitely went through this in a all-white school, no, you know, there was no diversity. And my daughter goes to a very diverse school, and her closest friends happen to be, you know, Hispanic. So it’s interesting.

FUDGE: Well, humans being such – being as they are, we all seem to find some way to, you know, create status in a group of people. Sometimes it’s due to economics, sometimes due to race, and sometimes it’s just due to whatever we can come up with. It was interesting, Valerie, you were talking about when you were young. When you were a girl, you were kind of a member of a clique that – and you may have been, you know, kind of the queen bees at the school, is that what you were saying?

VALERIE: Yes, exactly, and I think we – we almost took turns trying to own that, you know, the alpha, the alpha, you know, stigma…

FUDGE: Umm-hmm.

VALERIE: …of the group because there were about seven of us and we were on top of the whole school of our junior high school so we ousted one another to try to hold onto that alpha, you know, title. That’s the way I look at it now in retrospect.

FUDGE: Okay, so you were friends but it sounds like you had this competitive thing going on.

VALERIE: Definintely. Definitely. Yeah.

FUDGE: And do you want to comment on that, Rachel, that, you know, the nature of these cliques and the way they work?

SIMMONS: Sure. Definitely. I mean, I think a lot of this is how girls think about and learn to practice what it means to have power. And power, for girls, is negotiated through their relationships. So the more relationships you have and the more high status relationships you have, the more power you have in a school. And so by definition then in order to assert your power, your power lies in your ability to exclude somebody and to oust somebody so that’s a lot of what’s happening. And some of that is healthy to a degree in the sense that it’s how girls are thinking about themselves, how they’re developing interpersonally, individually, but then it can cross a line. And there’s an enormous amount of aggression that can occur within a friendship group, which, I think, is what Valerie’s describing.

FUDGE: Umm-hmm.

SIMMONS: And I think part of what our task to do with girls and with schools, is to decide where does the line lie between what might be developmental behavior in children and what might become aggressive and dangerous.

FUDGE: And, well, let’s take another call from Teresa but first let me remind folks my guest is Rachel Simmons. She’s founding director of the Girls Leadership Institute and author of the book “Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls.” And Teresa is calling from Carlsbad. Teresa, go ahead.

TERESA (Caller, Carlsbad): Yes, my – I have a daughter that’s a freshman this year in high school, and for most of her elementary school years – She’s a pretty outgoing girl, and, you know, fun-loving, attractive, and a good student, and for most of her elementary school years, she was given a real hard time by a lot of the girls, I think, because of just – I don’t know why. In any event, she’s in high school now and I’m looking for tools for her to deal with that if that persists in high school because girls can be so mean.

SIMMONS: Well, I would have to say something that’s really important, Teresa, is making sure that your daughter has distractions available to her so that she doesn’t become overly invested in her social status. And a great way to do that is to help her find something that she feels passionate about, whether it’s a sport or working for the school newspaper or a youth group so that – and not only does that provide a distraction but it also usually provides a different friend group. And so I’m really talking about two things. One is actually finding something to immerse yourself in that takes you away from the drama, but also keeping – having more than one group of friends so that if something…

TERESA: Ah.

SIMMONS: …difficult does happen, she has other refuges to seek. And I’m not suggesting that you need a million friends in order to be safe. Actually, research says if you’ve got one really good friend that you can trust, your child is likely to be just fine. But I do think that distractions for teenagers are really important. I would also suggest making sure you monitor how much she’s online and using her cell phone because…

TERESA: Oh, I do.

SIMMONS: …I think – Yeah, because I think that, like for example, having a cell phone in your bedroom at night, late at night, can be one of those things that makes a kid very vulnerable to getting involved in drama. The technology has become overwhelmingly dangerous…

TERESA: Sure.

SIMMONS: …and I think that’s a thing that you can do.

FUDGE: You’re talking about sending mean text messages.

SIMMONS: Yeah, and just like the day-to-day information cycle that happens online. I always compare it to like the stock exchange. You know, it used to close at four o’clock before we had things like e-trade, and now you can trade 24 hours a day. The same is true for gossip and the gossip mill.

FUDGE: Uh-huh.

SIMMONS: You used to go home from school and that was it and maybe you got a couple of phone calls but now it’s churning 24 hours a day and, of course, late night is where a lot of stuff happens. So I think it’s really important to regulate.

FUDGE: Our first caller, Valerie, I think was her name, was talking about her background and in this clique she was involved with, and I think that she was describing things that happened in junior high, in middle school, and I have read that middle school tends to be the peak time for this kind of behavior.

SIMMONS: Yeah, for sure. It peaks – This behavior peaks between 10 and 14 but that’s not to say that it goes away in high school as, certainly, the television show “Gossip Girl” would attest.

FUDGE: My guest is Rachel Simmons, founding director of the Girls Leadership Institute and author of the book “Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls.” You’re listening to These Days. Let’s go to Greg in San Diego. Greg, go ahead.

GREG (Caller, San Diego): Yeah, good morning, Tom. It seems that carrying into adulthood and using power or force or aggression in a controlled environment where, say, there’s a difference, it seems to me, between the way a female boss and a male boss will exert that controlled aggression called discipline. It’s been my experience that male supervisors, bosses, will be more prone to become angry and express it much more quickly and directly. With female supervisors, it’s – there isn’t the kind of explosion of anger, it’s more – it has seemed to be more subtle in either being assigned something unpleasant or being made to feel, oh, inferior in some way. It’s, you know, I mean, bosses, that’s their job, is to discipline but the means of discipline seem to be different in male and female bosses. And I’m just wondering if that rings true at all.

FUDGE: Okay, thanks very much, Greg.

GREG: Thank you.

FUDGE: So I guess he’s talking about this continuing in adulthood. Any comment on that?

SIMMONS: Oh, absolutely. I’m glad you brought it up, Greg. I think that it’s true that you do see a lot of this behavior manifesting in the workplace. I also think that if you think about how boys grow up, there’s much more permission for them to express their anger directly and that’s going to translate in how you manage a workplace. One of the things that’s been observed about men is that they tend to engage in what’s called like play fighting. In other words, in a boardroom, there seems to be this kind of ritual fighting that goes on that doesn’t really mean anything personal but that is experienced by female colleagues often as something that’s very uncomfortable. Now you’re, of course, talking about discipline and how discipline occurs and I think, again, we need to talk about what’s the difference between discipline and aggression. And I think if we’re talking about it as – I think one of the things that happens here is that this behavior gets called by different names so that we’re not actually calling it aggression. Because there are a lot of people who would say that having an indirect form of discipline such as being left out of a meeting or being reassigned as a way to discipline someone is actually a form of harassment. And it’s in that gray area that I think a lot of people find themselves, particularly when they are victims in the workplace of this behavior and just as schools have not really defined this behavior, the psychological aggression, and are holding perpetrators accountable, we’re seeing the same exact thing in the workplace. That workplace harassment is not defined in ways that include some of these kinds of behaviors.

FUDGE: Valerie is on the I-15. Valerie, go ahead. You’re on These Days.

VALERIE (Caller, I-15): Hi. My daughter’s now 20 years old but she – when she was started middle school in University City, you know, it’s middle class, relatively affluent, white predominantly…

FUDGE: Uh-huh.

VALERIE: …she was just bullied terribly and I took time off work to go talk to the counselors and the vice principal at the time to try to set up a meeting because they said if your child is having problems at school, we can set up a meeting with teachers.

FUDGE: Well, Valerie…

VALERIE: And they…

FUDGE: …what kind of bullying was it? Was it physical or was it – they were just like…

VALERIE: It was sharing…

FUDGE: …using words, making fun of her?

VALERIE: It was the social.

FUDGE: It was social.

VALERIE: You know, exclusion and the mean, you know…

FUDGE: Umm-hmm.

VALERIE: …comments and not allowing her to sit with them at the, you know, lunchtime and – But it was just painful and I had that, too. And as your writer, your guest, is saying that sometimes if a parent has experienced it, you’re really thankful. So – but…

FUDGE: Well, Valerie, obviously I’m going to ask Rachel to respond to this but given what you describe, how would you suggest the school deal with that? What…

VALERIE: Well…

FUDGE: …was the school supposed to do?

VALERIE: Well, I – At the time, I was shocked. I thought they would do something about it but they said they could not put together any group like that unless my child was at risk of – you know, was doing bad academically. And I think what they need to do, and I’m hoping they’re doing this now after all the school shootings and everything, to deal with a parent who comes in with a problem like that and take them much more seriously and put together a group of teacher-parents, you know, and really try to address it right away.

FUDGE: Okay, well, Valerie, thank you very much. And let me throw that to you, Rachel. You’ve got a daughter who’s going to school and she’s being excluded, she’s, you know, the kids that she likes aren’t letting her sit with them. What’s a school to do? Is there anything you can do about that?

SIMMONS: Well, I think what a school needs to decide, first and foremost, is how does this school define aggression and how does this school define injury? And if the school says aggression is only when you get pushed up against the wall, then it’s obviously going to say when someone gets excluded, well, I guess you just don’t have a lot of friends. But if a school says that aggression can be defined in multiple ways, then it’s going to have a different approach to what happens when a child gets excluded. What I’m talking here about is the kind of climate that a school creates. And here’s what actually happens in a school. When kids are excluded in the way that Valerie is describing, and when adults look the other way, it sends a very powerful message to the students in the school. It essentially says this is a place where adults really don’t take this seriously, where we don’t care and we’re not going to intervene. And that’s all conveyed by adults not taking a stand. You also have it happening at the administrative level. I’ll tell you what really happens in schools, particularly in the more affluent ones, the children who are perpetrators have parents who are very fast-talking and often aggressive themselves. And when they get called in, if they get called in, they’re saying, I don’t know what you’re saying is wrong with my child. She’s just assertive, or, she’s allowed to be friends with whoever she wants to be. When a school fails to stand up to a parent like that, it sends a message to the other parents.

FUDGE: But I’m trying to imagine myself the principal and this person says to me exactly what you said. Well, my daughter can be friends with whoever she wants to be, she’s assertive and there’s nothing wrong with that. As a principal, what do I say to that?

SIMMONS: Well, I think partly you say your child has been observed engaging in x-y-and-z behaviors and while she doesn’t have to be friends with everyone, she does have to respect everyone. And this is also partly about a principal but it’s also partly about a teacher’s responsibility. Let’s take that girl that we’re talking about who’s being, you know, intrusive, sort of in trouble at the principal’s office and the principal’s talking to her parents. I’ll guarantee that that girl sits in class with her victim and every time the victim raises her hand or makes a comment, that perpetrator may roll her eyes or make a little noise. Now if the teacher doesn’t feel empowered to say stop that, and to say your body language is aggressive, which most teachers don’t feel empowered to do, then that child continues to aggress against her victim and part of what I’m talking, again here, about is how do we define aggression? How do we define bullying? The fact is, girls perpetrate tons of aggression nonverbally by rolling their eyes, by shooting nasty looks, and that creates an unsafe environment for other kids.

FUDGE: Well, we do have Coe back. Coe, in San Diego, and I think he wants to talk about this very point. Coe, go ahead. You’re on the show.

COE (Caller, San Diego): Good morning. I’m a parent of three, seven, five, and almost a two. Granted, I agree, physical violence should not be used by children to show aggression but the fact of how they deal with each other, verbally or nonverbally, as long as it’s not physically violent, I have a hard time calling that child a perpetrator or an aggressive child or an aggressor or the other child a victim. These are the terminologies that I hate to associate with children when they’re trying to find their ways in society and their place in society. And children have to grow up to learn to find that place in society on their own without adults interfering because, as adults, we do the same things when we get in our professions. In the real world, we try to find our positions in life. So you can’t tell the child not to do what adults need to to advance in society. Those go to – Some go to Harvard, some go to junior colleges. There’s a class differential in adult society that children need to get used to and learn to find their place.

FUDGE: And so, Coe, you’re kind of saying that this is the world, get used to it. Is that kind of the message that we – I mean, it’s not a very nice message but it sounds like you’re saying that that is kind of the message that kids need to get.

COE: Well, what I’m saying is, we might want to name it a different name and use different terminology but not aggression, not victims, not terminology that associate with criminals. These kids are not criminals if they’re trying to ignore another child or make friends with certain children or not make friends with a certain child. I, myself, should have been ostracized because of my background but I learned my place in society and I did really well in school and I’m doing well as a professional today.

FUDGE: Okay, well, Coe, thank you very much for calling in and I’d like to get Rachel Simmons to respond to that. And, Rachel.

SIMMONS: Well, I think Coe’s opinion is – actually has been the prevailing opinion in thinking about psychological aggression but, unfortunately, I think it’s a very Darwinistic approach, sort of like if you can survive, you’ll be okay; if you can’t, too bad for you. And I find it interesting that you have three young children and I wonder if any – what they would say about this because actually when you ask children, as I often do, to make a choice, I say to them, would you rather be punched in the face or would you rather lose a friend, any friend? And they’ll all choose I’d rather be punched in the face. And what kids are telling us is that the loss of a friend, if a friend is taken from them, if a friend suddenly goes away, that that is what causes them pain. And when we talk about pain, we’re talking about interfering with academic performance, we’re talking about depression, we’re talking about feeling suicidal, we’re talking about a plummeting loss of self-esteem. And these are the costs of some of these psychological behaviors. Now we may not think that they’re that bad but when you actually look at the results of the depression, of the inability to concentrate, the desire not to come to school, it seems to me that we are required, as adults, to keep our children safe and to set them up for success. And this is what the kids tell us is what’s most painful for them. Even boys name psychological aggression as more powerful and more painful than being physically attacked. And so I think we’ve got to listen to the kids.

FUDGE: Rachel, tell us a little bit about your organization, Girls Leadership Institute, and have you created programs that try to deal with these issues?

SIMMONS: I have. The Girls Leadership Institute is a summer program for middle- and high-school girls. We teach assertive self-expression, we teach emotional intelligence, and we teach healthy conflict resolution skills. And we do this because many, many girls engage in psychological aggression or are victims of it because they don’t know how to negotiate their relationships. We tend to assume that because girls have lots of feelings and lots of relationships, they must be great at managing them and that’s actually a real myth. A lot of girls don’t know what they’re feeling, don’t know how to say it, and they don’t, therefore, know how to manage their relationships. That’s a big part of what we teach. And we work with teachers, we work with girls, we do parent-daughter weekends. We’ve got one coming up in October in Washington, D.C.

FUDGE: And let’s take another call. We’ve got Katy on the line from Ocean Beach. Katy, go ahead, you’re on with Rachel Simmons.

KATY (Caller, Ocean Beach): Hi. I think this is a really interesting topic. I have two daughters, 10 and 12, and I started really early with them, when they were three and four, to teach them to reject kids who didn’t treat them well, to tell them you’re being rude with me and I don’t like it and I’m not going to play with ‘you’ if you treat me that way. And I also think that as they get older and they have to develop a sense of self that they need to be coached by us as parents to learn to value themselves and to have a sense of independence and that they rate higher than allowing people who are – don’t treat them well to affect them negatively. So – And then as far as the school working with kids, I think that looking at the other side of it would be to have the school help the kids who are on the bullying side. Obviously, you can’t separate them out but to work with kids to develop their sense of empathy and to try to get a sense of what it feels like when you’re treated badly for those kids who have not had that opportunity. So…

FUDGE: Okay, well, thank you very much.

KATY: Okay.

FUDGE: And, Rachel?

SIMMONS: I think, Katy, you’re talking about preventative approaches. You’re talking about how do we teach kids to cope and what kinds of skills do they need in order to prevent this behavior from happening. So to begin with your second point about empathy, what you’re also talking about is social emotional learning, which is increasingly being attended to by schools but that’s been sort of late in coming, and that’s about incorporating into the curriculum what it means to be a good person along with what it means to learn calculus. And I think schools are recognizing that if kids don’t feel comfortable socially at a school, they will not succeed, and teaching empathy is certainly part of that. When it comes to what you’ve taught your daughters, what essentially you’re teaching them is how to identify a relational violation. And when girls grow up being told to be nice all the time, what they’re also being told is to be friends with everyone. And in many situations, adult women included, you – a female meets another girl, another woman, and you want to be liked by that person before you even know if you like that person. You just find yourself automatically trying to be liked. And it’s that kind of behavior that often makes a girl vulnerable to being bullied because there’s so much bullying that happens between friends. And I think that’s a critical point to make because the stereotypical bully is that bruiser in the schoolyard who’s taking your lunch money. But with girls, it might be your best friend.

FUDGE: Okay, now you lost me just a little bit. So it’s not the right thing to tell kids, to tell girls that they should be nice to everybody?

SIMMONS: It – it’s – No, because you’re basically – are you – Can you, Tom, be friends with everybody you meet?

FUDGE: Probably not.

SIMMONS: Probably not. I think we need to look at – I mean, can we do that? And if we can’t do that, are we asking kids to follow rules that we, ourselves, are not actually going to fairly follow. And I think, again, as I said earlier, you don’t have to like everyone, you don’t have to be nice to everyone but you do have to respect everyone. And many, many girls think either I have to be friends with everyone or I have to ignore them and roll my eyes at them. And there needs to be a middle ground where you don’t have to be friends with everyone but you can find a way to respect them.

FUDGE: Very briefly, you did talk about some of the things that can result from this kind of social bullying and I think you were talking about depression, eating disorders, I mean, is there a number one problem that you see all the time?

SIMMONS: Well, I mean, I think it can range from anything from, you know, school absence to suicidality. There’s a huge range. There have been some correlations made between this behavior and, you know, being a victim of psychological aggression and developing an eating disorder. There’s some correlations that have been found that there’s a whole range, and I think this is the kind of thing that stays with people their entire lives. But I think, in particular, you see an enormous loss of concentration at school even if – let’s say, Tom, you and I are both girls at school and I walk down the hall and I’m like, hey, what’s up? And you don’t say anything back to me and you look the other way and I think you’re mad at me. I got to class and I can’t concentrate on anything except why are you mad at me? And, you know, you may think, oh, God, that’s so melodramatic of kids. Well, that’s the reality. For girls, relationships are the primary kind of source of nourishment in their lives and so any type of relational disruption is going to affect them and that’s just the tiniest, tiniest form. Imagine if all your friends turned against you. You feel like your life is over.

FUDGE: Do you go to movies?

SIMMONS: Do I? Do I?

FUDGE: I’m just wondering if there are any movies that have – because there are a lot – then “Heathers” is one that – I mean, I’m kind of an old-timer and I haven’t, you know…

SIMMONS: Yeah, you’re dating yourself.

FUDGE: I’m dating myself because I think “Heathers” is something like 15 years old but, I mean, are there any films that you think have kind of really gotten it right on this subject?

SIMMONS: All right, well, I have to say that one of my problems with all the films on this topic, as much as I may enjoy them, is that they tend to mock the behavior. They’re all comedies.

FUDGE: Umm-hmm.

SIMMONS: And that’s not a coincidence. This is not a society that takes seriously how girls hurt each other.

FUDGE: Umm-hmm.

SIMMONS: So they may be fun to watch but there’s something wrong with mocking them, I think. That said, I just saw the documentary “American Teen,” which I liked very much and it actually has a real subtext of aggression between girls and does a very nice job of rendering that. And there was a movie based on my book, called “Odd Girl Out” that was made, a movie of the same name. It aired on Lifetime. And it is a dramatic representation of this and it’s used in schools around the country as a way – sort of an antidote to the behavior as comedy.

FUDGE: Well, once again my guest has been Rachel Simmons. Rachel is founding director of the Girls Leadership Institute and author of the book “Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls.” And thank you very much for coming in.

SIMMONS: Thank you, Tom.