This New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/fashion/10Cultural.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me
rightly claims that some Moms are responsible for their daughters' meanness, based on the fact that if their daughters are showing such signs, it is because they are "popular" and therefore feel invincible and protected by some kind of "popular immunity". Mean girls' mothers are fixated on their progeniture's "popularity" part and forgo any chance and opportunity to teach them kindness, ethics, compassion and empathy.
To illustrate yesterday's article in the New York Times about girls getting meaner at a younger age, the great feminist blog "Jezebel" has found 5 examples in classic children's literature and their TV adaptations for some of them:
http://jezebel.com/5661220/the-5-worst-mean-little-girls-of-all-time/gallery/
I still remember Nellie Olsen from the TV series adapted from Laura Ingalls' book, the world-wide famous "Little House on the Prairie." That is probably the best illustration for yesterday's NYTimes article: indeed, Nellie's Mom also fits the image of the Mean Girl's Mean Mother.
It is one thing... wanting our daughters to be Alpha Females ready to take up the world and be what they want to be (just like boys), and it is a totally different thing to assume -WRONGLY- that an Alpha Female is the one who, at 2 years old, can mimick Alicia Keys (as said in the NYTimes article) or is cute wearing sexualized grown-up attire... What are we doing to our daughters, for God's sake?
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