🌪 Why Are Girls So Mean to Each Other?

The quiet cruelty that starts in childhood and follows us into adulthood

It starts young. Too young.

My eight-year-old daughter came home in tears after a classmate called her fat. Again. This same girl—always the ringleader—has called her “big,” “heavy,” “ugly,” and managed to rally other kids to join in. Never mind that my daughter is tall for her age, strong, healthy, with a perfectly normal BMI. The words are what stick. And lately, I’ve watched the light in her dim.

My thirteen-year-old, in a new school, is going through something eerily familiar. She’s quiet, kind, beautiful—and completely shut out. Other girls, maybe threatened by how the boys gravitate toward her or uncomfortable with her kindness toward kids who don’t “fit in,” leave her out. The unspoken message is loud: You’re not one of us. And though she’s not interested in dating, she’s left feeling like an outsider simply for being who she is.

And me? I still don’t smile with my teeth.

I was made fun of for them as a kid, and even after braces, the habit of hiding my smile stayed with me. The emotional scars ran deeper than the orthodontic ones. Later, in my adult life, the pattern continued. A woman at my job—my boss’s girlfriend—started off friendly. Too friendly, even, sharing private details about their relationship and venting about his children. I stayed polite, professional, focused on my work.

But as I moved up, she grew distant. Then cold. Then cruel.
She’d greet everyone in the room but me. Ignore me in the hall.
And one day—around Christmas, when I was stretched thin financially and emotionally—she took my lunch. All of it. My week’s worth of snacks, packed from home because money was tight. She didn’t apologize. I didn’t eat that day. I just sat at my desk trying not to cry.

💔 So Why Does This Happen?

Girls are taught early to be nice, not honest—to smile through discomfort, to compete quietly, to keep the peace even when we’re bleeding inside.
We’re rarely taught to resolve conflict openly or to celebrate each other without comparison. So the pressure builds, and it turns inward—or sideways.

Psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour, author of Untangled, explains:

“Girls are often socialized to avoid direct confrontation. Instead, their aggression is more likely to come out as relational—gossip, exclusion, or subtle sabotage.”

Meanwhile, clinical psychologist Dr. Laura Choate notes:

“Girls often base their self-worth on relationships and appearance. When they feel threatened or insecure, they may lash out by targeting another girl’s social standing instead of addressing the real issue.”

It’s not that boys don’t bully—but boys tend to be more physically aggressive and more likely to “fight and move on.”

🔪 How Girls Learn to Weaponize Relationships

Girls, by contrast, are often trained—subtly and systemically—to weaponize relationships.
That means they learn, often without realizing it, to use closeness, connection, and inclusion as a form of currency—and to withdraw it as a form of punishment.

It starts small:

Only inviting certain girls to the sleepover
Whispering secrets just loud enough for one girl to know she’s been left out
Making someone feel “in” one day, and invisible the next

This isn’t innate behavior—it’s modeled.

From a young age, girls watch how moms, teachers, media characters, and older peers handle conflict. And too often, they see that when women are upset, they don’t talk about it directly. Instead, they withdraw warmth, exclude subtly, or gossip to control the narrative. Girls internalize that relationships are power, and that losing them is the worst kind of punishment—so they learn to use that fear on others.

Where boys might yell or shove and be done with it, girls are taught that expressing anger openly isn’t “ladylike.” So instead, they lash out through emotional manipulation—withholding affection, creating alliances, turning others against a target. It’s not about conflict resolution. It’s about quiet dominance.

In short, girls are taught that relationships are everything.
And then they’re shown how to use them as weapons.

🌱 What We Can Do Differently

We can break this cycle.

We can teach our girls to speak up without shame.
To be confident and kind.
To stand up for the girl getting picked on.
To celebrate the one who stands out.

And as women, we can check our own hearts.
We can recognize when envy is driving our behavior.
We can choose connection over competition.
We can stop pretending we don’t notice—and start doing better.

💬 A Call to Action

If this story resonates with you, share it.
If you’ve been the target—or the one who stood by silently—talk about it.
If you have daughters, nieces, students, or girls in your life, open the conversation. Ask them what school is really like. Ask them who’s getting left out. Ask them how they feel about other girls—and how they feel about themselves.

Because girls aren’t born mean. They learn it.
But that also means they can unlearn it—with our help.

Let’s teach them that kindness isn’t weakness, and that shining together is better than standing alone.