How to Deal With the “cold Girl” Culture of Adolescence
High school and college students suffer from unprecedented levels of anxiety , and anyone raising teens these days knows they can handle tremendous stress. This is doubly true for girls who have what Rachel Simmons calls “role overload” in her new book, Stop It As It Is: How To Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Success Standards to Live Healthy, Happy, and fulfilling lives . Girls need to be smart, beautiful, athletic and … they need to look like they don’t take any effort to play all these roles.
Simmons calls this teenage culture of “calm girls”: girls should get good grades, but never explicitly learn; lose weight but swallow hamburgers with guys; staying up late and having fun, but never being distracted from school or extracurricular activities – and that should be sex play, but not overly needy or dramatic. The last kicker? The girls then experience tremendous pressure to hide any suffering associated with these impossible expectations. In the end, everyone else succeeds easily.
But parents shouldn’t be discouraged – she offers some valuable advice on how to deal with your kids’ stressful, “relaxing” culture.
Maintain an open dialogue about social media
Teenage girls have always participated in “social comparison”, even before the advent of social media. But Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are allowing users to create their public images like never before, which means girls can have an unrealistic idea of how wonderful everyone’s life is compared to theirs. Simmons calls it “why is my life so shitty and everyone else is so cool?” phenomenon. For children already prone to anxiety or depression, these scrolling sessions can be brutal.
With his students, Simmons uses two strategies: the first is to really examine in detail the effort required, for example, to create a “perfect” photograph. (She recalls talking with a student about a two-hour photo shoot to get one shot that would make the subject look thin.) Curated life on social media takes time and effort – no one writes about being rejected, bored, and paid by the Mallomars for them. bed.
Second, she tells them that the successes of others are not their failures. Even if a classmate wins a competition or goes to Harvard, it has nothing to do with anyone else’s achievement. Simmons offers several exercises from Julia Taylor’s Teen Body Painting Workbook , such as asking, “What do I get from humiliating myself towards someone else? What is the reward? Are there long term costs? “
She also suggests rethinking any negative thought processes: instead of thinking, “Annie is prettier than me,” after seeing the photo on Instagram, your daughter can replace it with “Annie is beautiful.” Annie’s appearance is not a benchmark for the appearance of anyone else – Taylor says: “Try to see these people as they are, and not who you are not.” In other words, a pretty Annie does not have very much.
Tell them it’s okay not to be okay
Simmons believes that the need for impeccable perfection, as well as unrealistic standards of beauty, are destroying girls’ relationships: they are overworked and hide their grief about “role overload” from their friends (after all, everyone does it effortlessly, right? ). And to top it off, they just don’t have enough time to hang out with their friends to make real connections. Building the perfect look, both online and in real time, means girls are rarely sincere and vulnerable to anyone – even to each other.
Girls think that admitting that they are struggling is a sign of weakness. But they need to know that they can ask their friends and family for extra support during difficult times, or seek advice if they need it.
Teens should also know that it is okay to quit extracurricular activities or exercise – if your daughter is overwhelmed, she is allowed to take it down. Simmons describes the social life of adolescents and college students: a busy week of school and sports, then partying all weekend and late. The girls felt that they could not miss the social event for fear of missing out. She writes: “The weekend, ostensibly a time for relaxation, was now as full as ‘intended’, just like weekdays.” Girls need to know that they can say no – decline an invitation, quit the club, turn down the connection. If you give up one activity, you will have more time for other activities, such as hanging out and watching TV with your family.
Misery Poker
Paradoxically, Simmons mentions the sport of “competition complaints” among high school and college students. She calls it the stressful Olympics ; When I was in college, we called it suffering poker . Essentially, someone is suggesting an initial “employment” rate: “I have two articles and a test tomorrow; I’m so nervous! “And someone else bets and raises:” I have three jobs, a test and an away game! ” Bidding continues until everyone has dispersed, still tense and unhappy. It’s fun!
This might contradict the idea of “calm girl” culture, but when I was a teenager, at least it was a way to advertise exactly how much you can handle (and succeed) without getting hacked. Naturally, you will get an A on all exams, even if you only had one night to study.
It would be helpful to tell your daughters that in our culture, being busy is a sign that you are important – everyone needs your time; you are in demand, but in other countries (for example, in Italy) leisure is a status symbol. But if your daughter and her friends are playing poker with accidents, it can help show empathy and solidarity rather than loneliness. For example, saying “Can I do something?” Breaks the competitive stress cycle. If “Chill” culture is inhibiting adolescent friendship, then slowing down, listening to each other, and expressing empathy and support is one way to take Olympics stress down notch.
This is not to say that there is no room for complaint – many female connections (and social change for that matter) can result from “shitty sessions,” but the end result should be constructive, not competitive.
Be honest about your stress.
It’s not just adolescent girls who struggle with role overload: mothers also feel like they were breadwinners and homemakers, among other things, while maintaining an attractive appearance. Simmons refers to mothers as the “primary socializing agents” of their children, so if you are a mom it might be helpful to discuss the cultural expectations of girls and women and share your own challenges.
It can even help to be open about your own role overloads let your daughters know how you might feel, how you came short, like a breadwinner or a perfect housewife or considerate daughters. This can be especially valuable when talking about social media – moms are also to blame for leading their lives on Instagram, and it might be instructive for your daughter to know that these are stressors that you also face (and which, right?).
Enforcing the Code of Conduct on Alcohol and Drugs
Simmons cites a study in which two psychologists tracked wealthy, successful adolescents for ten years, reaching the conclusion when the subjects turned 26. They found that girls “were three times more likely to be diagnosed with drug addiction than they were nationwide” (boys were twice as likely).
Girls drink to calm their anxiety – “to throw off the shackles of a good girl” – and, in particular, to relieve party / social stress (girls are expected to be calm with casual sexual intercourse, but not too messy – difficult walking line ). But that same decade-long study also found that parenting drug and alcohol policies reduced substance abuse.
Research has shown that adolescents are less likely to consume alcohol in their teens with alcohol-free parents. The so-called “European model” of allowing children to drink at home in order to normalize alcohol consumption in society does not work – at least for American children. The more they drink at home, the more they drink, and the more they drink after three years.
Does this mean that your teen, especially a college student, will never drink? No, of course not. But these parental values do have a protective effect – children from homes where alcohol has been banned drink less than children from more forgiving families.
Raising children in any way that does not fit the mainstream culture is not an easy task. It can often feel like you need to deprogram your kids on a daily basis – by deleting messages they receive from their friends and the media about what it means to be happy and successful. But parents have a huge impact on how girls see themselves and how they see society as a whole. If you’re lucky, you can not only teach them how to resist it, but you can also teach them how to change it.