Her Campus talks to Rachel Simmons of Mean Stinks!

Remember when you graduated from middle school, and you thought that drama was over for good?
 
And then you graduated from high school, and you were like, “Okay.  Drama is seriously done this time.  Like, LEGIT.”
 
And then the drama continued anyway?
 
Rachel Simmons knows your pain—she is the author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls and has become an educator for girls everywhere on the subjects of bullying and aggression. 
 
Exciting things are happening for Rachel these days!  Odd Girl Out was just rereleased with four chapters of new content, and Rachel has also started a partnership with Secret deodorant for their Mean Stinks campaign, a Facebook initiative that helps girls work together to end bullying.  Through the application, girls can send compliments to their friends, listen to tips from Glee’s Amber Riley on how to stop bullying, and even post a video apologizing for a past act of bullying.  Pretty cool!
 
I got to talk to Rachel about Mean Stinks, her work with girls, and tips for girls who are enduring bullying today—yes, even in college.
 
HC: Why did you want to be a part of the Mean Stinks campaign?
 
When I was first approached, I was really struck by how common our missions are, in terms of Secret’s commitment to promoting fearlessness in women and girls which is a huge part of what I do. And of course their commitment to giving girls and young women a platform to talk about aggression means so much to me because one of the main arguments of my book Odd Girl Out is that we have to create a public conversation about bullying and aggression among girls.  We have to stop making fun of it and saying it’s just something that girls do, and we have to take it seriously. 
 
We so often post abusive social media but also usually only see coverage of cyberbullying. We don’t really see that platform being used positively and Mean Stinks is one of the first projects to really do that, so it’s an exciting way to reverse the trend and use something that has been a real weapon for girls as a platform and a resource.
[pagebreak]

HC: I think a lot of girls would be surprised to know that bullying still goes on after high school.  What kind of bullying happens in college?
 
We all want to think that once we leave 8th grade behind we’ve left the nightmare behind too and that the worst of it is behind us, and I think for most of us that’s true.  But I get emails fairly frequently from young undergraduates who are telling me about bullying situations.  And I think when you go to college, if you are going to college away from home, and you get bullied, you’re dealing with it alone, in a way that you didn’t have to when you were in high school or middle school.  Your parents aren’t there to support you, you can’t just go home at night and shut the door, you live with the people who are hurting you.  That’s a pretty big difference. There are all kinds of situations that I’m told where a girl, just like in high school might get threatened over another girl’s relationship to a boy that she’s interested in, or there simply may be some type of conflict that festers and spins out of control, unlike the way it might in middle school or high school.
 
I used to think when I was younger that one day I would wake up and I would be a grown-up, and everything would be different.  And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that we just being who we are, we’re just older.  And if we don’t take steps to change ourselves we’re going to keep doing what we do, and that’s why Mean Stinks is targeting young women today, so we’ve got to take charge of this both for the sake of ourselves and for the girls that are coming after us.
 
HC: What are some strategies college women can use if they are bullied?
 
Using the peer counseling system on campus, going to counseling services to get that support, and taking steps to change your residence if you need to do that, talking to your RA. I think that it’s really important to reach out to support and not to go through it alone. Identify one or two people in your life, whether they are at home or on campus, who can be a support to you.  Not being by yourself is vital.  I also think that many college campuses have support and resource networks.   One of the great things about going to college is that you do have a ton of resources at your disposal, and so, use those and don’t blame yourself, and don’t believe that there’s something wrong with you and you can’t make it at college. You think, I’m in college, I’m being bullied, there might be something wrong with me.  And there’s nothing wrong with you.
 
HC: What can a girl do if she realizes that she is the bully?
 
First of all, congratulate herself on her courage and fearlessness and her ability to reflect on herself.  Thinking about who she might owe an apology to is really wonderful.  One of the things we have at Mean Stinks is the opportunity to apologize, either through video or through text you can use that as a platform to do it. But I think that thinking about who you feel the most remorse about in your life is really important and even before you apologize to spend some time thinking about it. Really take in why you might owe someone an apology.  And then I think getting some help would be a good idea.  I’m a big fan of using counseling and therapy as a way to learn about yourself.  A lot of times when we are aggressive and we do bully it’s coming for a reason, something inside of us is not right, something in our lives may not be right, sometimes it takes some real reflection to figure out what that is.
 
It’s a cliché but it’s true that [the moment] you become aware of your problem, is the moment you take the first step toward fixing it.  But if you’re clueless or in denial, you’re not going to change.  So that’s a vital part of making a change.
[pagebreak]

HC: You wrote another book, The Curse of the Good Girl.  What is the curse of the good girl?
 
The curse of the good girl is the pressure that girls and young women feel, well, that all females get, but the pressure that we grew up with to be nice and kind to a fault.  To be generous to the point where you sacrifice your own needs for other people and to do everything so flawlessly that you never make a mistake.  The curse of the good girl begins really early, and extends across a woman’s life.  It’s putting other people’s needs before your own, and it’s worrying about coming on too strong, being too much, being too selfish, to the point where you really curve your authentic self-expression.  You also disconnect from what you really think and feel, because you’re really trying so hard to fit into what other people want. 
 
Now, in college I think the good girl translates to raising your hand in class only when you have the right answer or being really afraid to talk to your roommate about her behavior, whether it’s bringing a significant other into the room or having music on too loud, or keeping the light on late at night, and not having the skills to assert yourself.  And when we talk about bullying and aggression in college, it’s often those conversations that don’t happen between young women that can then lead to serious acts of aggression.  If you get resentful because your roommate is bringing her boyfriend or girlfriend home late at night and using your bed for guests or whatever it is, then you get so angry you finally lose control over it.
 
 
HC: Why do girls need to undo “good girl” habits, and how can they do so?
 
So much of how we relate in college to each other you’re going to take with you into the workplace.  Who you are in college and what you’re learning, that becomes the template for you as a young woman leader.  And so if you don’t start to undo some of these habits of communication, if you don’t start to check yourself and reflect on your behavior and on your relationships, this will become part of how your relate to people in the workplace, and it will affect your career.
 
I would say that changing habits and building new ones is like building muscles.  And if you don’t lift weights every other day, if you don’t really work that muscle, it atrophies.  And the same thing is true in everything we do in our lives, we communicate in our relationships.  So in terms of the curse of the good girl, if you’re only used to raising your hand when you have the right answer, once this coming week raise your hand when you’re not sure what the answer is, see how that feels.  And then try it twice next week and keep building that muscle.  In my workshops with college students we always set really small, small goals.  Like, don’t try to change the world in a day, don’t try to change yourself in a day, give yourself a chance to screw up and set goals that are reasonable for yourself.
[pagebreak]

HC: You work with girls of all ages.  How is working with college women different from working with younger girls?
 
They roll their eyes at me a lot less. (laughs)  I’m very passionate about working with undergraduate women.  I think that it’s a moment in life where you are like a sponge intellectually and spiritually you are filled with inquiry and wonder and passion. What better group of people to teach than that? 
 
When I work with second and third grade girls they are completely earnest and devoted to trying what I teach them but they don’t really have the cognitive ability to do a lot of what I’m saying.  But college students have all of that earnest desire to try new things and they’re at the peak of their intellectual ability.  For me, it’s a win win, and that’s what makes them such a rich population for us at Mean Stinks! to work with because college students make incredible things happen, and we’re going to this great power source. I think that there’s enormous potential in that group.
 
HC: You wrote Odd Girl Out 10 years ago as a journalist.  What changed?  How did you end up becoming a speaker and educator instead of detached observer?
 
I was only 24, I was a couple of years out of college.  I was a Rhodes scholar.  I went to Oxford, and I was supposed to go to law school at Yale, and I was miserable.  I realized that I had become so good at winning awards and getting A’s that I forgot what I really cared about in the first place.  So I left the Rhodes scholarship after the first year, and I decided to devote myself to something I really cared about, which was the fact that my friend in third grade had made my friends run away from me after school.  And I wanted to understand why that bugged me so much. 
 
My parents were furious with me, the president of my college told me that I had embarrassed the college by leaving the Rhodes, I eventually did not go to law school either, and I decided to dive in.  I wrote the book, and after I became successful, I just started speaking and working with schools and realizing that this was what I wanted to do with my life and I really didn’t want to be a lawyer, I wanted to work with girls. So I was lucky enough to have a meltdown in my early 20s to help me figure out what I wanted to do. I think another issue that I think a lot of young women in college struggle with is that they work so hard to get into college that they lose contact with who they are and what they want. Now I try to use that in my work with college women to make sure that they do know what they care about and that they can act on that.
 
There are a lot of good women in college who want to know what to do next.  And all I can say is, there is no path, and just do your best and get ready to make a few mistakes, but keep working hard and be a good person and it all works out in the end.