"Packaging Girlhood" Chapter 3: What else they hear from peers: gossip

Thanks in part to the tween marketing campaign and its obession with sexy looks and crushes between eight-year-olds, by the time they're twelve most girls are looking forward to the teen years. Becoming a teen appears to be more exciting, and glamorous for girls in the end of theirreteen years. They have been exposed to and are actively seeking TV shows, movies, clothes, and magazines that vault them into full teen mode. All these factors contribue to the desire to be an older, sexy teenager whose obessions include shopping, boys, and gossip. Even the youngest of the teen magazines have articles about being a good kisser, and the rest have monthly tips about how to keep boys happy and avoid being the school slut. It's all about what others will think of you, based on your actions. There are crowds in middle school that take the job of defining the norm through cliques and gossip.  Both Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown conducted a survey with middle school girls, and they claimed that the latest gossip is about bodies and appearance, attitude, relationships, and sex. These girls monitor themselves if they're going to be "normal"  and have good reputations. It begins to be a moral failing if a girl does not take care of herself, which means buying and wearing the right things. This constant struggle to be considered cool, calm and collected adds more unecessary pressure to preteens. Still, girls continue to snipe at each other with humiliating, repuation-damaging words. It is not always the case that boys externalize their rage and girls internalize it, but the higher levels of depression, eating disorders, and self-cutting behaviors that girls display demonstrate a sense of long-term impact these words have.