If you met my dear sweet friend, Laran Stelter Harris, she would likely tell you about the day she met me. It was the first day of 8th grade at MacKenzie Junior High in Lubbock, TX. Laran was re-joining the public school kids after attending Lubbock Christian School and she was a little leery about what awaited her.
She met me that first day standing outside waiting for the school bell to ring. Here is the impression I made on her that day--she will tell you (because I have heard her tell it 100 times since then) "I was terrified of Libby and knew I wanted her to be my friend and not my enemy."
Wow! What a great first impression. Was she terrified of me because I was 6 ft tall and weighed 200 pounds? That might make sense if it were the case, but if you saw me at 13-years-old, I looked like a ten-year-old and probably weighed 99 pounds soaking wet. I was not physically intimidating.
Laran was terrified of me because I presented myself as a "Mean Girl." I had a smart mouth and I would tell anyone off that got in my way (and after hours of therapy I now understand and know the source of where that was all coming from). When Laran tells that story I half-heartedly laugh, but inside I cringe. The utter embarrassment I feel about who I was at that age is palpable.
If this were a therapy session and I was paying you to hear me laundry list my mean girl history I could tell you some stories. I want to be clear though--those stories would never have been worthy of a movie. I didn't spread mean and hurtful rumors that were life ruiners and I never nominated a shy, telepathic girl for Prom Queen only to pour pig blood all over her. What I did do though was use a lot of "slut" and "bitch" in speaking about other girls and I was never left out of the gossip mill. I suspect that sometimes I was the one driving the gossip mill. I was mean to girls that I found threatening or who did not meet my arbitrary and stupid measurements for what it meant to be "cool".
What happens when these kids like me grow up? Do they grow out of it or do they learn their lesson? (I have no idea about the kid that carved bitch on my purse. Strangely I have not received a FB friend request from him....) That's a good question. As an adult, I have seen mean girls who are now moms living in suburbia among us. These women engage in many of the same crafty tricks to make other women feel less than by leaving them out of things and talking behind their back. They strike a tone of superiority in comparison to those around them. The worst of the worst become enmeshed in their own daughter's lives and participate in targeting and bullying girls alongside their daughters, like it is a sport.
Case in point: Last week my 12-year-old, Trinity, showed me an Instagram photo that was posted by a girl at her school. The photo was pretty ridiculous and silly and a lot of kids started commenting on it with "take this picture down you should know better", "that's gross", "you should be embarrassed", etc. Nothing to call the cops about. But here's where this got crazy nuts. The young girl's mom got involved ON INSTAGRAM and took it upon herself to scold and threaten these kids. Absurd is not a good enough word to define this situation but you don't have to look too far to see that this kind of crazy-ness happens all the time. This mom crossed the line.
Some mean girls never grow up.
I did.
How?
There is not a moment in time I can point to and say "That was when I did a 180 and now I am Pollyanna and Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm on steroids". In fact, there are days I struggle with my inner mean girl. I will tell you, no kidding, that the movie Flatliners had an impact on me. If you remember the movie, Keifer Sutherland experiences "life after death", and his punishment is enduring the bullying that he doled out to one young man from his childhood. I remember a cold chill moving over me watching those scenes in the movie and reflecting on some of the hateful and mean things I did as a kid. A few other things that helped me move past my mean girl tendencies:
1. Speech and Debate. I am not going to lie and say that in that time I made great progress in the mean girl department--even there we had dynamics where "coolness" and "popularity" were at work but... what it taught me was that there were so many kids in my own school I would have never paid any attention to had we not been in debate together. One of the COOLEST PARENTING MOMENTS for me was this year after Maddie had been to a couple of debate tournaments.
She said to me "Mom, these kids are cool. I really like them"
Me: "Well of course you do"
Maddie: "But mom I would never have been their friend otherwise--I would have thought they weren't cool enough. But I don't have to prove anything to them. They like me for me and I like them for them. They don't care if I am wearing the right clothes and carrying the right purse. They just like me. They are cool kids"
Yeah--my heart melted.
2. Facebook. OK--hear me out. I have re-connected with a lot of people from school that I grew up with but never took seriously as a friend. Now as an adult, I have had moments where I think "You are so freaking cool. Why did we not hang out in high school?" I know why--b/c I was a snob, that's why. I regret that A LOT and it has influenced the way I parent.
3. Becoming a parent helped me too. Having girls was an opportunity to try and do better by them and raise them to not be the mean girl that I was. It has not been easy. As the universe is wont to do, I have been taught the painful and awful reality of being bullied by girls because it is an issue that my oldest daughter dealt with in the 7th grade. Her situation never rivaled that of girls we read about in the national news but let me tell you this--I don't want to go through it again with her, ever. The pain that I had to watch my daughter go through without killing these girls and their parents was seriously the worst punishment I think I could have endured. Knowing that I might have made another person feel what my daughter felt that hell-a-cious year of her life is hard to face head on. But I did face it and I am better for it.
Sometimes my girls will talk smack about other girls. I just listen. Then I try to steer them in another direction. I try to present them with an alternate way to look at the situation, at the kid, at their actions. I tell my girls this all the time: "Be careful you don't become that thing you hate" Because that can happen and it is insidious and dangerous.
Wow. This has been hard to write so far. Had to grab a couple of kleenex to keep going. Here is where I want to end this post. What can we do for ourselves and our kids (I focus on girls b/c that is the world I know but boys can be bullies too) to resist the inner mean person that might be lurking?
1. Stop watching shows that glamorize and endorse Mean Girls. I am ashamed to say, I have watched more episodes of The Real Housewives series that I care to admit. Recently, I caught myself and thought "Why the hell am I watching this show?" I was watching it because it satisfied and fed that inner mean girl. It just did. When I was honest and up front about that, I changed the channel and haven't gone back since. (I have also axed Dance Moms too from the list).
2. Anti-bullying programs at school don't work. In fact, I regret to say that I think they might make it worse. I call the impact of anti-bullying classes "church camp effect" where everyone gets caught up in the moment only to get over it the next day and resume their mean ways. I have some pretty painful youth group memories like these from my teenaged years. If anti-bullying programs at school don't work, what do we do then? Well--how about we address it at home with our kids and have honest and real conversations about what it means to be a bully and show them the consequences? What if we stayed more involved and asked more questions?
3. Get rid of the vampires. A few years ago I ended an important friendship because I didn't like who I was when I was with this person. I am not blaming her. I take 100% responsibility for how I behaved. Take a friendship inventory and see if there are people in your life that nurture and feed your inner mean girl. Then find the courage to do something about it. It can hurt to end a friendship but I can tell you that the impression it made on my girls is something I will not forget. I sent a clear message to them about what kinds of friendships you should have. Ask your daughters and sons to do the same thing. If you notice that your child turns into the awfulest person around one of their friends, have a conversation about it.
4. Change your language. One of my daughters recently called the other daughter a slut (but not in context thank goodness). I just about lost my cool on her that day, in the car, on the way to school. Why oh why oh why oh why do we feel like we can toss this word around and not see the damage it can do? Bitch and Slut have got to go. No more. As moms, dads, adults--we have to shut this down now. Our kids model our behavior. If they hear us calling the next door neighbor a stupid slut, whore, bitch--whatever, they are going to add that word to their vocabulary. Period. So I don't call anyone a bitch or slut. I got rid of it years ago (small steps in the right direction) but who is to say it hasn't slipped one time and my daughter heard it? I hope that my kiddo who uttered the word "slut" did not hear it from me, but I can tell you this--we talked about it and there will be swift and bigger consequences that will come in the future if that word is used again. We have to change our language!
5. Envision your future self and your children's future selves. Who do you want people to remember you as? Who do you want your children to grow up and become? I miss the mark almost daily but one of my life mantras is "Above all things be kind" That is what I want for my girls too. These three women don't know it--but from the time my girls were little I have tried to remember who they were growing up and parent my girls to be like them. One is my friend Laran you met earlier in this post. One is my friend Blynda Blythe and the other is my friend Chelle Scudder. These three were the nicest girls I remember going to school with. I see them in my mind's eye when I think about my own girls and who I want them to be.
At my funeral, I hope no one stands up and says "Man I never crossed Libby when she was on this earth. What an awful person!" I still speak my mind, I still stand up for myself--but I try like heck to do it with a loving heart.
This post is written not just by the "President of the Hair Club for Men", but from a member. I write not from a "Look at me! I am amazing and have it all figured out..." perspective.
I write it as a flawed human being who tries to do better every day.
I write it as former mean girl who has worked hard to make peace with a sad and insecure little girl that developed a mean girl persona to cope.
I write this as a mom who wants better for her girls.
The title for this post has sat on my desktop for months. Why did I decide to write it today? My friend Sarah Rimbey posted on Facebook this morning that she overheard a woman and her teenaged daughter at Starbucks running down another girl. A long thread of comments came soon after and I saw that this is an issue that touches all of us. So I started writing.
I end with this. Laran Stelter Harris is one of my life long, dearest friends. We became fast friends that first day of 8th grade and I can tell you she has had an impact on me as a person. I was in her wedding and just a few months later, she was in my wedding. I thank God above for people like Laran who demonstrated to me that you don't have to be a Mean Girl in life.
OK--gotta get another Kleenex.
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