Girls and boys

I recently spent an afternoon with my niece and 2 of her friends. Over supper, they were playing a game of a show of hands for likes and dislikes, and it occurred to me, listening in, that girls learn duplicity early on. I don’t know whether it’s innate, or if we teach them this, but even at age 7, they’re asking loaded questions, like “hands in the middle if you don’t like me” amid more innocuous ones about liking ice-cream and disliking tomatoes.

I don’t recall my brothers, my cousins or any of my male charges being this aware of the popularity stakes at that age. But I do remember being acutely aware, at that age, of who was popular and who was not within my own class – and that the girls in general were far more aware of social hierarchy than the boys.

It’s a worrying beginning of a lifelong trend – girls tend to be clique-y, tend to use gossip, trends and appearance as social litmus tests to assign each other into the relevant category and relate to them accordingly. Our social definitions of women – good girls, bad girls, tomboys, brainiacs, domestic goddesses – don’t allow for a lot of leeway, honesty or mercy. And girls learn early on that the best way for them to operate is to be ruthless and duplicitous and underhand. Unfortunately.