Raise kind girls

Gemma Barder - 20 Mar 16

Once upon a time there were three girls.

Let’s call them DuckFace, Squatty McFrizzhead and… Alison. We’ll call them that because one looked like a duck, one was quite short and had a bad perm and, in all honesty, I can only remember the actual name of one of them.

Anyway, one day, these three girls decided it would be fun to make the girl in the year below them feel scared, anxious and face-burningly humiliated after school each day for about 6 months. They don’t sound like very nice girls, do they? They weren’t.

When it began, it took a while to realise what was happening. Living in the countryside the pupils of my secondary school were bussed in and out of various villages each morning and afternoon. For the first few years I would hop off the bus and walk the short distance back home with my sister. However, I was now in year 10 and my sister had left for university, so I walked on my own. One day, and I can’t be sure when it started, I began to hear DuckFace, Squatty and Alison talking loudly and for my benefit. “Just look at those legs! How does she stand up without them snapping?” “I bet she thinks she’s Kate Moss,” “There she is, the anorexic.”

You get the idea.

Now, I was always taught to stick up for myself. However, I was also taught not to use bad language and this was to be my downfall. One afternoon I’d had enough of the passive-aggressive name calling and, for reasons known only to myself, I turned round and said: “Why don’t you stop being such twits?”

Yes. I know.

Twits.

In the mid-90s to a group of bully-girls in the year above I actually said the word: ‘Twits’.

Had we been in an Enid Blyton novel the girls would have apologised quick-smart and we’d all have gone for strawberry lemonade at the vicarage. However, what actually transpired was months of being hooted at like an owl (Twits = Twit-Twoo – I said they were bullies, I didn’t say they were clever) on every walk home to accompany the increasing name calling.

At one point, these supposedly cool girls, who well into their teens, actually circled me with their arms flapping and hooting like owls. It would have been funny if I hadn’t felt so targeted.

As the days went on I found increasing ways of avoiding them. Getting off a stop early, staying behind to talk to friends who walked a different way. But on the occasions when I knew it would happen, I would brace myself and walk as fast as I could.

Eventually it stopped. Squatty McFrizzhead left to go to rebel-girl college and Duckface and Alison stayed on to 6th form where they wore their own clothes and hugged folders to their chests. Perhaps the absence of the third witch made them less strong, who knows.

When I eventually joined them in 6th form (now taller than both of them and a bit more confident) I passed them in the corridor and in the common room on a regular basis. Once, one of them (I’m guessing Duckface as she was the nastiest) hooted. Learning from my mistakes, but keeping my dignity, I replied as calmly as I could: ‘Grow up’ and hurried to my sociology class shaking like a leaf. It worked. But it took me to the age of 16 to be able to do it.

Now I am in my 30s and a mother to two sweet little girls this memory scares me more than the months of hooting and name-calling ever did. If this happened today it wouldn’t be for 10 minutes every 4pm weekday. I couldn’t just shut the front door and forget about it, safe in my loving home. It would be 24/7 on social media. They’d probably find a humourous owl meme to post to my wall if they were clever enough.

What if this sort of thing happens to one of my girls? The horrible truth of the matter is, it might. It probably will at some point and in some form and there’s not much I can do to stop it (other than fitting each child with a Batsignal they can activate whenever in trouble. I’d respond with gusto. Trust me).

So I suppose the best thing I can do, the best thing we can ALL do, is to raise girls who won’t grow into a Duckface, or a Squatty McFrizzhead or, God forbid, an Alison. Girls who don’t think it’s fun to belittle another girl who’s younger than them and on their own. Girls whose only way to feel good about themselves is to make another feel bad.

Instead we need to

Teach girls to be KIND.

Teach girls to be INCLUSIVE.

Teach girls to be SUPPORTIVE of one another.

Teach girls that they will have more obstacles to overcome in the future to be wasting their time on making other girls feel bad.

Because if we do this then school, work and the world will be a much nicer place and growing up might not be so hard.

Big’up the future sisterhood.

Gemma Barder

Freelance writer of books and magazines for small people. Mother of two delightfully dotty daughters.

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