Mean Girls: Facing Your Beauty Turned Beast

Rating:
Summary: a few fries short of a happy meal
Review: Mean Girls by Hayley DiMarco has it moments of brilliance. But most of the time the book is a rerun of everything else out there on the market. I did learn that I still have a few moments of meanness, and that several of my friends are bad news as well. But I did pretty much figure these things out on my own without reading this book. In fact, I found some of this out in the book Dateable and in a couple of other places, including the Bible. This book is hard to read...correction, it is painful to read. Any teenager who has sat through sermons will be bored with this book. It repeats common Bible verses like a broken record (think the Beatitudes, The Ten Commandments, and John 3:16) Not to mention that I am completely sure that I would have ignored this book altogether as a teen. The message I would have got would be like this: let Chi and Kayla tear you to smithereens, in fact, let them steal your flute, trash your Sweet Valley High books, gossip about you to guys, diss everyone that hangs out with you. And if they like your coat, give it to them. That was just Junior High. Now lets get started on High School: Allow the uncool people who gossip about you to sit with you. Tell your friends Dani and Shelby that they are mean. Invite your enemies to football games with you, in fact, let them sit with you and your popular friends. Let them slam you in the bleachers while Layton High is loosing the football game, and feel free to let them ask the guy you want to take to MORP out before you do. Allow them to trash your car so that YOU are to blame and your dad will ground YOU for the trashed car. Allow all the girls at church to continue slandering you; let the adults treat you as a little baby. Let your boss slander you at work; let Bobby harass you all the more, cuz you are a human doormat.

I would have ignored this book, and then burned it in the fireplace. I am sure that I am not the only one. DiMarco appears to be a tad detached from the times. I became a Christian while being tormented in seventh grade; had someone given me this book back then I would have turned 360 degrees and become an atheist. We live in a time when bullying causes teens to commit suicide or bomb schools. The two guys at Columbine where very much unpopular and they were tormented. Guess what? They went in and killed people, it was that bad. DiMarco's solution? Don't tell adults (even if it involves the theft and mutilation of library books and school band instruments) don't get back, in fact, do not do anything. I was especially unnerved by how shy girls were told to end the cycle. Speak up? An introvert is not going to speak up. Then there was the advice aimed at the popular girl. As I was one in high school, her advice would have completely gone ignored. There were kids in my school that tried to have the popular guys jailed by provoking them into fighting. Invite the uncool to join the cool? Had I done that I would have joined the uncool very quickly! Considering the fact that the people tormenting me also tormented my friends, it would be really mean to expect them (my friends) to sit with such people.

Deal with it is a really crappy principle. I once had a friend who got a new car for her sixteenth birthday. It was a really nice little convertible. A girl became jealous and she beat the car with a baseball bat during the day while the other girl was in class. My mother, who worked for the school, drove a Blazer that all the guys wanted. It was very vintage. Time after time it would get egged, have food thrown at it, sugar left on it, etc. All because the guys were jealous. They figured that since they couldn't have such nice wheels, why should someone else? How about yearbook day. Every year several yearbooks as stolen from my high school. According to DiMarco we should put up with it. I mean it's a yearbook, nothing special!

Don't waste your time on this book. It has good ideas. But it really is out of touch. Bullying is far worse than three-way calling these days.

(...)

Rating:
Summary: DiMarco tells it like it is!
Review: This book is totally awesome! I sure do wish I had it when I was in high school. I was one who did the tormenting and was also on the flip side as well. DiMarco's style of standing up and being the bigger person - ignoring the bully - is exactly what's needed! You bully someone because it's fun, because it provokes a response. If it doesn't, you move on to something else.

Teaching teens to turn the other cheek is the best lesson one can learn these days. If we are truly striving to be like Jesus, why are we trying to get even, trying to tattle, or trying not to befriend those who aren't 'cool'. Man - I'm sure that Jesus doesn't think I'm the coolest person in the world when I'm not living at my best. But I'm glad He loves me and wants to be my best friend no matter what.

There are MANY valuable lessons to be learned through this book. Girls just need to be receptive to them and remember we are supposed to be Christlike in our behaviors - not like the world. And that's not always easy.

Rating:
Summary: Super sized advice
Review: This book looks gorgeous and its effect on my daughter has been AMAZING! She loved "Dateable" (by Hayley) so this book was an easy purchase for me.

First off, this book is not for dealing with physical bullying, rather, for verbal meanness. This is not a book to help prevent (or even understand Columbine.) Hayley DiMarco tackles the all too common "everyday mean", mean that is just written off as being ingrained into the catty female culture. Hayley gives refreshing counter-culture advice, one that potentially makes peace and wins over enemies while teaching a valuable lesson that the world doesn't revolve around "me" and my "rights".

While a few people might have a pessimistic view of Hayley's out of mainstream methods (she discourages confrontations and the whole "how did that make you feel?" encounter and encourages girls to not take themselves so seriously and focus on higher things), I found the advice highly insightful coming from a woman who was scarred by mean girls in high school all the way through through corporate America. She talks about having all guy friends as a result and rediscovering how she had to "relearn" how to be friends with women.

The last thing you feel like after reading the book is that of a victim. This book gives plenty of practical advice for teen girls dealing with mean, and a bigger spiritual perspective to grow on.

Highly recommended for the teen girl in your life that is open to the concept that life is bigger than just her. If she needs the world to revolve around her, she's probably going to come up empty and still searching for someone else to blame after reading this book (unless she has an epiphany!)

Every teen girl should have a chance to read it. Some of the greatest spiritual figures in history have lived by a similar walk that how you treat people matters more than how they treat you. This message is lost on the cynical. My teen daughter read this book hoping to find help with her mean girl problem and discovered the ways she was encouraging or even being mean. The changes in her have been simply amazing! A must read!!