--{ on being a girl }------
The current issue of New York Times Magazine has this article called "Girls Just Want to Be Mean," with words like "relational aggression" for things I'd always wanted to verbalize. I find the article fascinating, because it explains why sometimes I just don't relate well to other women -- of the people who hurt me the most growing up, most were other girls.
Not that every woman who started out as an unpopular girl turns out like me. To oversimplify, there seem to be two major routes for unpopular girls to take--forming their own core groups, and withdrawing from everyone. Me, I chose the second route.
I envy those who found the first route, sometimes. I mean, I read about the girls with their zines and their alt-everythings, and I think, wow, I guess I could've had a support group like that back then, too, and wouldn't that have been nice. They had real relationships with other people, other people in this whole alternative society they created.
Me, I withdrew. My whole social history from elementary school to high school is blank. Empty. Detached.
I wouldn't give up, however, what I got in place of all the friendships and social interactions I missed out on. My alternative world didn't involve other people, but it did involve a hell of a lot of reading. A lot of abstract thinking. Ideas. And from it, I even got a few extra years for my life (from skipping grades and going to college early.)
But it explains why I relate to the stereotype of outcast boys more, the stereotype of nerd boys who immersed themselves in math, or computer games, or other things that didn't involve other people. It explains why I don't relate to much of the empowered outcast female stuff that I read nowadays. I mean, I think it's super-great, in some ways. But even those scenes seem to involve their own metrics of popularity. Maybe better metrics, but metrics nevertheless. They still relate to each other, and still judge each other. By stuff like who knows what grrl band. Who can quote what hot cultural theoretician. Who can gain cachet within their own groups.
And I didn't, and don't, want to be a part of that. I'd really rather be alone.
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