No more Mean Girls: youngsters beat bullying by being nice not cool

Deliberately being ‘nice’ instead of aspiring to be ‘cool’ is the best way for girls to avoid bullying and get through their school days peacefully, research by education experts at Goldsmiths, University of London suggests.

Through observation and interviews with Year 5 school pupils as they moved into Year 6, researchers found that contrary to the views of ‘cool girls’ who think everyone wants to be like them, many 9-to-11 year old girls have no desire to join the in-crowd.

Instead, they’re protecting themselves from vicious playground power relations by deliberately positioning themselves as opposite to the cool kids.

While the ‘cool girls’ – popularly referred to as ‘Mean Girls’ after the Lindsay Lohan film of the same name – regularly engage in malicious gossip and constant vying for power and positioning in a hierarchy, other girls deliberately make themselves as nice as possible, while an intermediate group are just trying to be ‘normal’.

Once the nice girls accept that their social status (as defined by the cool set) is low, they’re generally ignored by the cool girls and left to their own devices, unregarded and unmolested by the latest gossip and fighting: bullying them is not considered worthwhile.

Professor Carrie Paechter and Dr Sheryl Clark (Department of Educational Studies) immersed themselves in the lives of the girls at a south of England school for two days a week over two terms, with Sheryl even finding herself on the receiving end of one attempt by the ‘cool girls’ to bully her as they bullied each other.

They found that the dominant girls maintained their position by openly scorning other groups, while keeping each other in a constant fear that they might be excluded from the group. While the girls were fascinating to other pupils, they were also distrusted and feared: being popular was associated more with being fashionable and attractive than with being liked, and the cool girls were seen as being unkind to others.

In contrast, the ‘nice’ girls were much more tolerant of disagreement and difference. They deliberately made sure everyone from their group was always included in games and were concerned with being ‘good’ and not courting trouble. The intermediate, ‘normal’ girls were also far more inclusive and generally got on well with others in the class.

The researchers found that ‘nice girls’ are not self-conscious about the unwritten rules that seem to govern everyone else, especially the ‘cool girls’, and particularly when it came to hair and dress. The ‘nice girls’ didn’t feel the need to make fashionable tweaks to their uniforms, and most of them did not cut down on active physical play such as chasing games as they got older.

Unfortunately, while most of the ‘nice girls’ avoided being bullied by ‘cool girls’, they had more of a problem with dominant boys in the class. Because the ‘nice girls’ were generally well-behaved and didn’t like to complain, teachers were unaware of problems so paired them with dominant boys, leaving the girls open to sexual and other bullying.

Professor Paechter, Head of the Department of Educational Studies, Professor of Education and a former maths teacher, comments: “Contrary to dominant cool girl discourses, our research found that not everyone aspires to be in this group. Children are forming their own ways of belonging and by doing so they’re actively resisting assumptions, and experiencing a more peaceful and stress-free school life.

“Not only did some of the girls we studied not aspire to coolness, they also didn’t operate their friendships in the competitive and surveillant manner that is seemingly ubiquitous among more dominant groups.”

“Our research took place in a large ‘middle-class’ school in which aspiration and competition pervaded daily life and was encouraged by staff. Staff were proud of the school’s local dominance in sports, and pupils were very aware of their position in hierarchies of academic performance.

"We believe an atmosphere of competition allows groups such as the ‘cool girls’ to flourish, but it’s important to draw attention to the way other girls are constructing an alternative.”

Being ‘nice’ or being ‘normal’: girls resisting discourses of ‘coolness’ (2015) by Carrie Paechter and Sheryl Clark was published in the September issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

(Image - Creative Commons - Brad Flickinger)