The popular girls

Friendships among girls sure are different and more complicated than that of boys. I recently had a discussion with my two girls, separately of course (everything's hush-hush and personal these days), about how girls form groups. Their answers were revealing:

The Twelve Year Old says:

There's a group of girls that wants to be popular so we call them "the popular girls." But they're not really. My group is just as liked as they are. My group is the "nice girls but not popular."

The popular girls are really annoying sometimes. Once a month they all dress alike in the same checkered skirts. They walk around wearing too much makeup and say things like "that's really sexy." They love that word "sexy." They're sometimes mean to the other girls.

The Ten Year Old says:

Oh it's the fourth graders that have a lot of popular girls. I definitely don't want to belong to them. They pick on nice people and play jokes on them. They're not any better than us.

If you've ever hoped for your kids to be popular, perhaps the above assessment, straight from the horse's mouth, will dissuade you. Clearly, though, groups are unavoidable. It seems to me that self-confident kids would be happy to belong to the "nice but not popular" group.

It seems to me that girls exhaust themselves in their social and emotional issues. It tires me out just watching them. The only thing worse, I imagine, is if my girls were in the popular group.

After thinking about his, I'm feeling a sense of relief that my almost eight-year-old is a boy. But then again, he has his own issues. He's a little isolated with his highly active imagination, and no sports gene whatsoever.

But that's another topic for another day.