By Paula Kamen.

Paula Kamen's book "Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution" was recently released in paperback by Broadway Books
Published November 24, 2002

Woman's Inhumanity to Woman
By Phyllis Chesler
Thunder's Mouth/Nation, 551 pages, $22.95

Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls
By Rachel Simmons
Harcourt, 296 pages, $25

Catfight: Women and Competition
By Leora Tanenbaum
Seven Stories, 335 pages, $24.95

Queen Bees and Wannabes: A Parent's Guide to Helping Your Daughter
Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence
By Rosalind Wiseman
Crown, 336 pages, $24

In the spring they began coming, one by one, and they haven't stopped since. A crush of non-fiction books, a tidal wave of them, all reporting on one topic: the dark side of women, mainly expressed in the form of the mean teenage girl.

Two of the earliest and most visible of these books are best sellers with evocative titles, "Queen Bees and Wannabes," a guide for parents, by Rosalind Wiseman, and "Odd Girl Out," a journalistic report and analysis, by Rachel Simmons. The most recent addition to this group is "Catfight: Women and Competition," by journalist Leora Tanenbaum, about the general nastiness that goes on regularly among grown-up women. (Her 1999 debut book, "Slut!: Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation," about the aggressive use of that label by teen girls, is actually a forerunner to the others.) The most ambitious and sweeping book in this group is "Woman's Inhumanity to Woman," by veteran feminist thinker and psychologist Phyllis Chesler, which covers the wide array of female relationships experienced by women and girls.

(Other dramatic books in this group include "Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut," from Scribner, a report based on interviews and a personal meditation on the world of high school cliques, by freelance writer Emily White; and "The Secret Lives of Girls: What Good Girls Really Do--Sex, Play, Aggression, and Their Guilt," from The Free Press, an original analysis based on original interviews by psychologist Sharon Lamb.)

These books represent an important wave of feminist literature on a topic of intense concern to individual women and to the women's movement itself: how girls and women treat each other. Instead of reporting only the obvious (girls can be mean) and bashing women, these books generally offer valuable, multilayered, introspective and solidly researched insight into the complex underlying power dynamics involved in women's relationships with women--and the bigger societal questions they raise. Meanwhile, in the process of critiquing women realistically, they don't idealize men's ways of dealing with conflict or brush their stereotypically more direct forms of aggression under the rug.

It is no fluke that these books have come out now. They quote from a new body of academic research on women's aggression that has only gained momentum in the past 15 years. Chesler explains that before that, social scientists mainly conceptualized aggression in terms of men, and have only recently started to delve into women's aggressive behavior, which may be less obvious but is just as real--and has its own set of serious social consequences.

This focus on the dark side of girls and women logically follows other political and social dialogues. Chesler also explains the timing of her book, and other explorations into "women's sexism," as rooted in a new security of the women's movement to expose real human weakness, after 30 years of achievements. We talk about it now because we can afford to do so. Also, in the past 15 years, radical women of color have led the way in questioning women's so-called sisterhood as a given. They made a great impact on this new generation of feminists, who grew up reading such authors as black feminist professor bell hooks, who is quoted as an influence by most of these authors.

Another factor shaping this wave is the age of the authors. Born in 1940, Chesler is the oldest of this group. All the other authors were educated in the 1980s and 1990s, at a less political and more individual-oriented time, for better and for worse, without the personal investment in and exposure to activist ideology about women's automatic sisterhood coloring their views of what women are or should be.

And this latest crop of books illustrates a response to and elaboration on another major wave of best-selling books concentrating on teen girls, those from the early 1990s. Those books reported on the phenomenon of teenage girls losing self-esteem as they are socialized into womanhood. Instead of listening to their inner voice, they begin being swayed more by external pressures to be "nice" and not make waves.

As Rachel Simmons lucidly explains, that group of books and the current one discuss the same phenomenon--girls being pressured to be "feminine" and please others above all else--but each concentrates on a different set of results. The earlier books, such as Mary Pipher's "Reviving Ophelia," discuss the effects of these pressures on individual girls: the insecurities that get channeled inward and lead to such problems as eating disorders and losing interest in the purportedly more masculine pursuit of sports and the academic subjects of math and science. The newer books explore the social, interpersonal effects of these pressures, of girls learning to deal with conflict in other destructive ways. Instead of addressing problems directly with other girls, in an effort to still seem "nice" and conflict-free they channel their feelings into forms of indirect aggression, such as by waging a gossip campaign against an offending girl and excluding her from the group.

The newer books explain that because women typically value intimacy and relationships, isolation or exclusion from a group is a form of punishment. In the teen world, this stands in contrast to the type of aggression favored by boys, which may be more physical--and unmistakably direct--in nature.

It is this topic of indirect aggression--its roots and dynamics and various forms of expression--that binds this new crop of books. Each of these authors sheds light on the problem with her own distinct approach.

The most comprehensive book in the group is Chesler's, which is based on what the author describes as 20 years of research into "the shadow side" of women. She draws on her own interviews, social science, psychoanalytic theory, myths and fairy tales, and literature.

Chesler, a bold and passionate writer, is most famous for "Women and Madness," her best-selling 1972 polemic exposing oppression of women and the extreme points to which it can drive them. And, as the author of the recent book "Letters to a Young Feminist," she is a leader among Baby Boomer feminists in reaching out widely and thoughtfully to the next generation.

But this book is perhaps her most important and practical legacy to young women, so they can avoid the painful mistakes of the past. She faults feminist activists of the past for never having dealt realistically with issues of women's competition and power, dismissed as destructive male vices. As a result, these feminists often excluded (or "trashed") some of their own who seemed to stand out too much from the group or show too much ambition. (Such stories have also come out in the past several years in memoirs, such as by early activist Susan Brownmiller.)

In the interest of the movement's vitality, Chesler's hope is that future generations of feminists will take this topic seriously, respect "the rules of engagement [and] disengagement" and not take things so personally. Her goal is that women not dismiss sisterhood as a possibility, but actively work to build a more realistic, and ultimately durable, form of it. And, as with other relationships (such as marriage), she describes building relationships with other women as a process that takes much conscious effort over time.

One problem some readers may have with this book lies in its major accomplishment: its sheer exhaustiveness. Chesler catalogs every possible form of slight that women inflict on each other, major and minor (even including a section about the jealousy one of her interview subjects experienced from infertile friends when she became pregnant for the first time). Some readers may wish she had been more selective in her examples.

In turn, Tanenbaum's "Catfight" (featuring a whip-smart cover by cartoonist Jessica Abel), seeks less to chronicle what women do to each other and more to explain why they do it. Her theory is that women undermine each other through subtle and constant competition, or what some dismiss as "cat fights." She describes this negative behavior as a coping and frustration-venting mechanism, in response to insecurities about failing to live up to unrealistically high standards and confusing, often contradictory gender roles.

Instead of criticizing women, she takes on society's special pressures on women in four areas: beauty, dating, work and motherhood. She puts forth a provocative concept--which I would have liked to have seen her explore further--about women wasting their time competing with each other over "petty power" rather than real power. For example, instead of joining together to tackle difficult bigger issues, such as securing more child-care and flexible hours in the workplace, they may spend time putting down a co-worker for the way she manages her time while raising her family.

Tanenbaum's book is based on her own background, interviews (like Chesler, she's vague on the specifics of who was interviewed, where and when), the news media, academic studies and analyses of pop culture and classic literature. Giving flavor to the book, she also covers revealing and colorful scenes of women competing, such as a machination-filled New York City singles event. She is also skilled at relating her specific subjects to bigger social ideas, as she did in her earlier book discussing the teenage label "slut" as a mirror about greater societal ambivalence about female sexual roles. Her personal experience as a mother of two young sons enriches the book, as she intimately zeroes in on the no-win competition women commonly inflict on each other to be the perfect mother (one example: the ever-changing notions of the proper amount of weeks one should breastfeed).

A strength of her very original criticism and approach is to illuminate how women experience competition in different areas of life and with different intensities than men do. She characterizes such pop-culture phenomena as the TV shows "The Bachelor" and "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?"--in which women competed for husbands--as dramatizing the endless personal competition women already experience in the most intimate aspects of their lives.

But her approach also has some serious drawbacks. Overall, "Catfight" is a good book with a great one dying to get out. Her earlier book "Slut" was more focused in its analysis, concentrated on a narrower topic and featured more reporting of women's voices, which especially came alive in extensive oral histories. In "Catfight," Tanenbaum relies more on second-hand sources, such as interviews that appeared in New York Times articles.

"Catfight" also could have benefited from more aggressive editing. Instead of talking directly about women's competition, Tanenbaum spends about half the book outlining the myriad ways they still experience sexism in society. Many of these passages are interesting and well researched, always taking into account issues of race and class, thus giving greater social depth to the book; but the reader can easily get lost trying to connect them to the greater topic at hand. Tanenbaum typically writes several pages on women's oppression in one area, such as the workplace, then concludes with a single paragraph about how that relates to competition.

Another major problem is Tanenbaum's failure to make women--and not society at large--more accountable for their own negative treatment of each other. And, unlike the other writers reviewed here, she fails to recognize competitiveness as a fully natural (and not necessarily socialized) part of women's psyches, as some people believe cooperativeness and caring are. In addition, she fails to fully recognize that this will to compete--no matter its source--can be a positive and vital part of one's character, instead of a flaw to apologize for and regulate and contain. This devaluing of competition goes against the general thrust of the other books, which argue for women to recognize and value their complexities as humans.

With great savvy and accessibility, Wiseman, in "Queen Bees and Wannabes," and Simmons, in "Odd Girl Out," pick up where these other books leave off, in the world of teenagers. They not only document the problem of indirect aggression but also offer the most developed advice. They describe group dynamics and individual characters with the shrewdness, clarity and attention to detail usually reserved for fine novelists. Simmons profiles girls that she has interviewed; Wiseman mixes girls' commentary with her own descriptions of basic character types (such as the "Banker," who derives her power from supplying information about other girls). Even a reader who is not a teenage girl could find herself identifying with the power dynamics described--and (like me) may even suffer some chilling flashbacks of recognition in the process.

Wiseman is a seasoned student of human aggression, as well as an expert in self-defense and feminist issues. She is the founder of the non-profit Empower program, based in Washington, D.C., which has worked with hundreds of girls and boys to help them prevent violence. A second-degree black belt in karate, she is the author of "Defending Ourselves: A Guide to Prevention, Self-Defense, and Recovery From Rape" (1995).

Wiseman vividly illustrates for parents the complex realities of "Girl World" and the central purpose that cliques perform in it. In a world where social power is the main currency, and isolation is most feared, cliques serve as "a life raft" through the uncertainties of teenage life. As a result, girls go to great lengths to belong.

Wiseman also offers concrete advice about how to communicate with teens and how to instruct them in such valuable life skills as confronting other people constructively. She challenges parents to evaluate their parenting styles and to look at how their views of popularity and their own indirect aggression toward women can influence their daughters.

An energetic and conscientious reporter, Simmons immerses herself deeply in the teenage-girl world. Over the period of a year, she interviewed girls in 10 schools across the country--whose student populations included working-class girls, Latinos and blacks--earning their trust and the trust of their parents. Like the other authors here, she does not universalize, or portray as the norm, the middle-class white experience, which historically has been a serious flaw of mass-marketed books about women. But in an in-depth analysis of current academic research on the subject, Simmons does explain that the problem of indirect social aggression is most common among middle-class white girls, who have stronger pressures to act traditionally "feminine" (nice on the surface).

In examining these subjects in detail, researchers are doing women a favor and making them more equal to men. They do this by recognizing women's shared complexities--their frailties as well as their strengths, and everything in between. As these authors assume, in order to deserve equal rights, women should not have to prove that they are better than men. Simmons makes this point in her conclusion about how teaching girls to be more assertive can be liberating for them:

"When we can agree that nice girls get really angry, and that good girls are sometimes quite bad, we will have plowed the social desert between `nice' and `bitch.' When we have built a positive vocabulary for girls to tell each other their truths, more girls will raise their voices. They will pose and answer their own questions and solve their own mysteries of relationship."

Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune