by Laura Lynn Roebuck

Maybe you were that girl: the girl no one wanted to sit by in the lunchroom of your elementary school. Maybe you were one of the girls at the popular table, or maybe you sat with the lonely girl so she wouldn’t be so lonely. Lunchroom drama, note passing, gossip whirling-this is where female social aggression breeds.

Let me take you back to Book Club in 6th grade. There were four of us, and we met once a month at one of our homes. Our mothers were likely humoring us, as we didn’t do much book-talk at meetings. They left us alone in the living room with a plate of snacks to trade Babysitters Club and Boxcar Children books with each other. We enjoyed the idea of having a club, a group that was all our own, and to which we each belonged. 

One month we invited Tracy to join us. We all knew her from school and we had fun at her slumber party earlier that year. She came on a “trial” basis to see if we wanted her to join our club. After most of the book trading went on that day, we went into the bedroom to discuss her entry into our club. It is hard to believe that we actually were mean enough to tell her “no,” but we were. We came out of the bedroom, pretending to laugh at a joke, and told her that she could not join our club.

In her book, Odd Girl Out, author Rachel Simmons discusses exactly what happened at that Book Club meeting, how “girls use intimacy to manipulate and overpower others.” Simmons interviewed hundreds of girls from grade school to high school, exploring hidden patterns of aggression and the deep wounds they often leave. Reading this book is a painful reminder of both the injuries I sustained during those years and the ones I likely inflicted.

Though the games change and the social circles look different, there are unspoken rules of acceptance and outcast that haunt us all. “Since the dawn of time, women and girls have been portrayed as jealous and underhanded, prone to betrayal, disobedience, and secrecy."(Simmons) What’s going on in the lunchroom may be the exact same thing that is going on in the teacher’s lounge.

I want to fly in the face of these patterns. Not only for the sake of Tracy, who must have been crushed by the denial of entrance into the book club, but for the sake of every woman who walks past and feels she is not good enough, not acceptable enough, or doesn’t have the right shoes to run with the in-crowd.  I don’t mean just pretending these things don’t exist, but radically countering them by fostering a culture of female acceptance and embracing every woman who walks by, into, or past the social circles to which I belong.

There are a few ways this looks in my life. One is by modeling my female relationships after those which I have experienced as the warmest and most secure: my sisters. If I treat every woman I possibly can with the same love and acceptance that I exchange with my sisters, though not easy, the reward of watching the social walls melt is enormous. A lonely gal who is new to the area and timidly stumbled into our superbowl party becomes the dryer of dishes while I wash and we talk like old friends.

A second strategy requires an alliance of like-minded women. Nothing breaks the walls of social circles better than a group set on the task. When I have a party with lots of women attending, I try to incorporate the help of a kindred-spirit, by verbalizing the need to reach out to someone who may be coming in feeling she is the odd one out. When we do this, we not only experience the camaraderie of working together, but the synergy of acceptance and outreach spreads through the group. The result: a party where everyone feels comfortable as herself.

I am unperfected in my execution, and sometimes I even withdraw, feeling the old sting of being the odd girl out. But I believe it is a fight worth fighting. Every woman we meet just might have been a Tracy, and I sure pray that my old classmate Tracy is being loved and accepted somewhere today.