Product Description

“My daughter used to be so wonderful. Now I can barely stand her and she won’t tell me anything. How can I find out what’s going on?”

“There’s a clique in my daughter’s grade that’s making her life miserable. She doesn’t want to go to school anymore. Her own supposed friends are turning on her, and she’s too afraid to do anything. What can I do?”

Welcome to the wonderful world of your daughter’s adolescence. A world in which she comes to school one day to find that her friends have suddenly decided that she no longer belongs. Or she’s teased mercilessly for wearing the wrong outfit or having the wrong friend. Or branded with a reputation she can’t shake. Or pressured into conforming so she won’t be kicked out of the group. For better or worse, your daughter’s friendships are the key to enduring adolescence—as well as the biggest threat to her well-being.

In her groundbreaking book, Queen Bees and Wannabes, Empower cofounder Rosalind Wiseman takes you inside the secret world of girls’ friendships. Wiseman has spent more than a decade listening to thousands of girls talk about the powerful role cliques play in shaping what they wear and say, how they respond to boys, and how they feel about themselves. In this candid, insightful book, she dissects each role in the clique: Queen Bees, Wannabes, Messengers, Bankers, Targets, Torn Bystanders, and more. She discusses girls’ power plays, from birthday invitations to cafeteria seating arrangements and illicit parties. She takes readers into “Girl World” to analyze teasing, gossip, and reputations; beauty and fashion; alcohol and drugs; boys and sex; and more, and how cliques play a role in every situation.

Each chapter includes “Check Your Baggage” sections to help you identify how your own background and biases affect how you see your daughter. “What You Can Do to Help” sections offer extensive sample scripts, bulleted lists, and other easy-to-use advice to get you inside your daughter’s world and help you
help her.

It’s not just about helping your daughter make it alive out of junior high. This book will help you understand how your daughter’s relationship with friends and cliques sets the stage for other intimate relationships as she grows and guides her when she has tougher choices to make about intimacy, drinking and drugs, and other hazards. With its revealing look into the secret world of teenage girls and cliques, enlivened with the voices of dozens of girls and a much-needed sense of humor, Queen Bees and Wannabes will equip you with all the tools you need to build the right foundation to help your daughter make smarter choices and empower her during this baffling, tumultuous time of life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #398238 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-31
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Wiseman (Defending Ourselves: Prevention, Self-Defense, and Recovery from Rape), offers parents a guide to navigating the adolescent landscape. Acting as a liaison between "Girl World" and "Planet Parent," Wiseman helps parents understand their daughters' friendships, the power of cliques and the roles of girls within them (including Queen Bee, Sidekick, Torn Bystander, Messenger and Target). She outlines parenting styles (from "The Lock-Her-in-a-Closet Parent" to "The Loving-Hard-Ass Parent") and offers tips on talking to teens ("Don't use the slang your daughter uses"). The second half concentrates on boys, sex and drugs as well as what to do if your daughter needs professional help. Within each chapter, "Check Your Baggage" sections challenge parents to recognize their own biases and remember what it was like when they were teens; as well, Wiseman offers scripts for discussing difficult issues and advice on how to deal with them. The author also forthrightly addresses the issue of homosexuality. To wit, a "Homophobic Questionnaire" that turns the tables on parents with questions such as "What do you think caused your heterosexuality?" Wiseman's straightforward humor, sound advice and practical approach make this a must-read for anyone involved in the lives of teenage girls. Back matter offers extensive resource listings including fiction and nonfiction titles, movies and helpful organizations and their Web sites.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Forget the stereotypes of sugar and spice. Girls are mean, and as this book and a recent New York Times Magazine cover story indicate, their subtle, insidious style of bullying is rapidly garnering attention and concern. Wiseman, who founded a nonprofit company dedicated to empowering teens, calls on her extensive face-to-face research with teens in this book that exposes the social minefields of female adolescence and the deep scarring that can result. Wiseman also gives an excellent overview of the common patterns of aggressive teen girl behavior with an increased focus on a parent-teacher audience, offering valuable practical advice, including how to talk about hard issues like sexual harassment. She also offers admirable, groundbreaking insight into an all-too-common issue and will be invaluable to any adult struggling to help a girl get through her teens. Also suggest Sharon Lamb's revealing title The Secret Lives of Girls . Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
?Wise, humorous, life-affirming advice for parents that is utterly respectful of girls. I recommend parents mark it up, turn the corners of pages, and heed Wiseman?s creative and practical strategies for guiding girls along the sometimes treacherous pathways of growing up today. Queen Bees and Wannabes is Mapquest for parents of girls, from fifth grade all the way to young adulthood.??Patricia Hersch, author of A Tribe Apart: A Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence

?Who?s in? Who?s out? Who?s cool? Who?s not? Why is one girl elevated to royal status and another shunned? Queen Bees and Wannabes answers these unfathomable questions and so many more. Wiseman gives parents the insight, compassion, and skill needed to guide girls through the rocky terrain of the adolescent social world. This is such an honest and helpful book; we recommend it highly.? ?Nina Shandler, author of Ophelia?s Mom and Sara Shandler, author of the bestselling Ophelia Speaks

?Laced with humor, insight, and practical suggestions, Queen Bees and Wannabes is the one volume that?s been missing from the growing shelf of girl-centered publications. Wiseman explains the inner workings of teen culture and teaches parents, educators, and peers how to respond.??Whitney Ransome and Meg Miln Moulton, executive directors, National Coalition of Girls? Schools

?Wiseman cuts through wishful parental thinking with a wonderful mixture of humor, facts, girls? voices, and a healthy dollop of reality. No, the harm cliques cause is not a natural fact of life. Wiseman gives us both hope and strategies to help our girls (and boys) build a more healthy, nurturing world for themselves.??Joe Kelly, author, Dads and Daughters: How to Inspire, Understand and Support Your Daughter When She's Growing Up So Fast, executive director, Dads and Daughters

?Rosalind Wiseman invites us into the ?Girl World? with insight, honesty, and humor. Based on the most thorough, helpful research I know of, this book should be required reading for parents, teachers, and health professionals.? ?Edes P. Gilbert, acting president, Independent Educational Services

Customer Reviews

Great Insight Into Girl Bullying
This book does a beautiful job of painting a picture of the unique culture of girl bullying and teasing. Alot to be learned. Every parent with a daughter should read this book. Additionally, I recommend highlyBully-Proofing Children: A Practical, Hands-On Guide to Stop Bullying which gives so many strategies...both proactive and for intervention on how to deal with this ever pervasive topic.

A must read!
If you have a daughter currently in middle school, this is a must read before high school!

Almost, But Not Quite. NOT Recommended for Parents of Fat Girls
There's so much good in here, but Wiseman's naivete on the normality of fatness gets in the way of this being an entirely safe or sanity-promoting book. It's simply normal for some women and girls to be "overweight". There's no evidence anywhere that fat people "eat their problems" (to use the naive phrase from "Mean Girls") any more than thinner people. Some of us are genetically destined to be at the top of the weight bell curve. It's great that Wiseman recommends The Beauty Myth, for instance, but I wonder if she actually read it. Or The Dieters Dilemma. Or The Obesity Myth. Or Losing It. Or any of the other books in the fat acceptance/health at every size canon.

Perpetuating the old fat-people-are-gluttons myth simply is no longer acceptable or scientifically accurate. Reading this book and projecting its messages on to young fat girls is potentially as dangerous as any other form of bullying Wiseman describes.

Maybe someday she'll correct this major flaw in a future edition?