Explore the vast range of titles available.

For some time, reality TV, talk shows, soap-operas, and sitcoms have turned their spotlights on women and girls who thrive on competition and nastiness. Few fairytales lack the evil stepmother, wicked witch, or jealous sister. Even cartoons feature mean and sassy girls who only become sweet and innocent when adults appear. And recently, popular books and magazines have turned their gaze away from ways of positively influencing girls' independence and self-esteem and towards the topic of girls' meanness to other girls. What does this say about the way our culture views girlhood? How much do these portrayals affect the way girls view themselves?In Girlfighting, psychologist and educator Lyn Mikel Brown scrutinizes the way our culture nurtures and reinforces this sort of meanness in girls. She argues that the old adage girls will be girls - gossipy, competitive, cliquish, backstabbing - and the idea that fighting is part of a developmental stage or a rite-of-passage, are not acceptable explanations. Instead, she asserts, girls are discouraged from expressing strong feelings and are pressured to fulfill unrealistic expectations, to be popular, and struggle to find their way in a society that still reinforces gender stereotypes and places greater value on boys. Under such pressure, in their frustration and anger, girls (often unconsciously) find it less risky to take out their fears and anxieties on other girls instead of challenging the ways boys treat them, the way the media represents them, or the way the culture at large supports sexist practices. Girlfighting traces the changes in girls' thoughts, actions and feelings from childhood into young adulthood, providing the developmental understanding and theoretical explanation often lacking in other conversations. Through interviews with over 400 girls of diverse racial, economic, and geographic backgrounds, Brown chronicles the labyrinthine journey girls take from direct and outspoken children who like and trust other girls, to distrusting and competitive young women. She argues that this familiar pathway can and should be interrupted and provides ways to move beyond girlfighting to build girl allies and to support coalitions among girls.By allowing the voices of girls to be heard, Brown demonstrates the complex and often contradictory realities girls face, helping us to better understand and critique the socializing forces in their lives and challenging us to rethink the messages we send them.

Winner of the Best Book of 2008 from The International Gender and Language Association In this ground-breaking ethnography of girls on a playground, Goodwin offers a window into their complex social worlds. - Combats stereotypes that have dominated theories on female moral development by challenging the notion that girls are inherently supportive of each other - Examines the stances that girls on a playground in a multicultural school setting assume and shows how they position themselves in their peer groups - Documents the language practices and degradation rituals used to sanction friends and to bully others - Part of the Blackwell Studies in Discourse and Culture Series

In low-income U.S. cities, street fights between teenage girls are common. These fights take place at school, on street corners, or in parks, when one girl provokes another to the point that she must either step up or be labeled a punk. Typically, when girls engage in violence that is not strictly self-defense, they are labeled delinquent, their actions taken as a sign of emotional pathology. However, in Why Girls Fight, Cindy D. Ness demonstrates that in poor urban areas this kind of street fighting is seen as a normal part of girlhood and a necessary way to earn respect among peers, as well as a way for girls to attain a sense of mastery and self-esteem in a social setting where legal opportunities for achievement are not otherwise easily available. Ness spent almost two years in west and northeast Philadelphia to get a sense of how teenage girls experience inflicting physical harm and the meanings they assign to it. While most existing work on girls' violence deals exclusively with gangs, Ness sheds new light on the everyday street fighting of urban girls, arguing that different cultural standards associated with race and class influence the relationship that girls have to physical aggression.

This book studies the HBO program Girls from multiple perspectives by comparing the series to similar programs from the past and present by examining it through the lenses of gender, race, sexuality, and culture.

Latinas are now the largest minority group of girls in the country. Yet the research about this group is sparse, and there is a lack of information to guide studies, services or education for the rapidly growing Latino population across the U.S. The existing research has focused on stereotypical perceptions of Latinas as frequently dropping out of school, becoming teen mothers, or being involved with boyfriends in gangs.Latina Girls brings together cutting edge research that challenges these stereotypes. At the same time, the volume offers solid data and suggestions for practical intervention for those who study and work to support this population. It highlights the challenges these young women face, as well as the ways in which they successfully negotiate those challenges. The volume includes research on Latinas and their relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners; academics; career goals; identity; lifelong satisfaction; and the ways in which they navigate across cultures and gender roles.Latina Girls is the first book to pull together research on the overall strengths and strategies that characterize Latina adolescents' lives in the U.S. It will be of key interest and practical use to those who study and work with Latina youth.

Discover how girls develop a sense of self as they struggle to make sense of complex and complicated times Working Relationally with Girls: Complex Lives, Complex Identities examines the experience of being a girl in today's society and the difficulties social work practitioners face in developing a universal theory that represents that experience. This unique book analyzes how—and why—gender is still a complicated barrier for most girls, despite living in “post-feminist” times. Working from a variety of orientations, the book offers practical suggestions on how to help girls deal with interpersonal tensions, interpersonal conflicts, relational dilemmas, and the difficulties that stem from rules and norms of what is still a male-dominated society. Human service practitioners, regardless of their fields, face an everyday struggle to understand how adolescent girls construct identities in relation to the culture in which they live. The contributors to Working Relationally with Girls call on a range of disciplines, including child and youth care, cultural studies, feminist theory, counseling, and social psychology, to examine how girls interpret cultural expectations to develop a sense of self under complex conditions. This unique book addresses the subtle—and not-so-subtle—practices (symbols, metaphors, images, scripts, rules, norms, and narratives) that shape girls' lives, providing the tools to build a basic framework that will help you understand how girls are alike—and how they're different. Working Relationally with Girls examines: how mothers and daughters perceive general differences regarding sexual experiences in adolescence how girls' health issues are constructed within the context of their dating relationships what do mothers and daughters want to know about each other's sexuality the difficulty girls ha

A consideration of menstruation in the lives of teenage girls—and in the lives of teenage boys. Girls in Power offers a fascinating and unique look at the social aspects of menstruation in the lives of adolescent girls-and also in the lives of adolescent boys. Although there has been much research on other aspects of gender and the body, this is one of the few books to examine menstruation and the first to explore how it plays a part in power interactions between boys and girls. Talking openly in single- and mixed-gender settings, individuals and groups of high school–age girls and boys share their interpretations and experiences of menstruation. Author Laura Fingerson reveals that while teens have negative feelings about menstruation, teen girls use their experiences of menstruation as a source of embodied power in their interactions with other girls and with boys. She also explores how boys deal with their own reduced power. The book extends our theoretical and analytical understanding of youth, gender, power, and embodiment by providing a more balanced view of adolescent social life.

The primary objective for this study was to conduct an empirical investigation to gather information in the form of data from adolescent males and females in the Pretoria region of South Africa. Information was gathered with respects to their level of physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, hostility and depression. The information was used to identify whether correlations exist between the three variables anger, aggression and depression for South African adolescents. Auszug aus dem Text Text Sample: What does the literature have to say? Introduction: Anger is the most frequently expressed emotion in childhood; this emotion continues into adolescence. The onset of puberty generates more stimuli that provokes anger in teenagers; whether these stimuli pertain to the thwarting of desires, the interruption of activities in progress, fault-finding or teasing, they have the potential to create feelings of anger (Hurlock: 1987). Dr Saunders is of the opinion that anger stems from adolescent stress and is systemic to being an adolescent (Saunders: 1998). Anger remains an emotion; when the emotion translates into action it manifests as aggression. Mann (2012) adds that chronic anger has the potential to manifest as anxiety and depression. This is supported by the work of Booth (2010) who suggests that the duration of the anger episode has the greatest impact on our health. Anger that lasts longer has the most harmful effect, while anger that dissipates fairly quickly does less harm to our bodies. As feelings of anger spill over into action there are obvious consequences but failing to express anger can also create health problems. If an adolescent feels that they are unable to express their anger appropriately or they feel that they are prevented from expressing their anger; these situations can generate anxiety and ultimately depression. The research of Chen, Rubin & Li (1997) has indicated that early aggressive behaviour is a predictor for later academic difficulties. In addition, these early signs of aggression include lying, stealing, fighting and resisting authority; while they are rather common to childhood behaviour, in adolescence unusually early or aggressive sexual behaviour, excessive drinking and the use of illicit drugs are frequent (Kellerman: 1999). Violence often occurs in schools because of less opportunity for ist expression outside of the school environment (Guggenbuhl: 1996). It is purported that the tendency towards violence is a basic human instinct. If the school environment is no longer a 'safe' environment for pupils and teachers it is imperative that the potential for aggressive behaviour is sufficiently distributed among the teaching and parental population. Hollin, Browne & Palmer (2004) indicate that family factors are partly responsible for aggressive behaviour in adolescents; sociological and sociodemographic characteristics are crucial to predictive and protective factors. If anger is commonplace in the life of adolescents and a large number of these teenagers resort to violent behaviour while others internalise their frustration; where is the connection between the components of anger, aggression and depression, if indeed there is a connection. Aggressive behaviour takes different forms depending on the situation the adolescent is in but it remains a serious problem in society. Physical, verbal and indirect aggression is a common expression of the teenager's frustration but specific risk factors for aggression are present. The child's character, his home environment, relationships with his peers, his performance at school and social and community factors are instrumental in transforming anger into aggression. Boys tend to use direct physical or verbal aggression more often than girls, while females use indirect forms of aggression predominantly (Hess & Hagen: 2005). Girls also have a tendency towards more intimate peer relations and more positive interactions with their teachers than their male counterparts (Bearman, Wheldall & Kemp: 2006). It would be prudent here to emphasize that not all aggression is bad. Reactive aggression is associated with negative emotionality, specifically anxiety and is related to frustration, while proactive aggression is associated with obtaining a desired goal (Card & Little: 2007). Anger: Children and adolescents with very poor social skills, in particular the angry, aggressive style have difficult imagining the thoughts and feelings of others. They often mistreat adults and peers without experiencing the guilt and remorse prompted by awareness of another's point of view (Chandler: 1973). Anger needs to be dealt with constructively to prevent it from manifesting as aggression (Saunders: 1998). Proposed methods for dealing with anger include waiting for the anger to subside before responding to the stimulus, attempts to identify the cause of the anger, trying to allow the anger to manifest in a calm manner and count to ten. Adolescence is a period in the child's life when dramatic changes are occurring; these changes result in altered perception of the world around them. The emotional peaks and troughs in an adolescent's life are well documented (Adams: 1995). Adolescents feel angry when their physical or social activities are prevented or in the case of an attack on their personalities, positions or status in society. An adolescent may display anger when he or she is criticised, embarrassed, underestimated, or ignored and perceive such situations as threats to his already extremely sensitive personality (Yazgan-Inanc, Bilgin & Atici: 2007). According to Eisenberg and Delaney (1998), anger is a result of a person's personal appreciations and frustrations. Anger has three dimensions: physiological, social and cognitive, and behavioural and reaction. The physiological dimension of anger is related to a physiological change occurring in the body when an individual is exposed to a frustration or situation that increases anger (Kisac: 1997). The social and cognitive dimension explains the interpretation of perceived anger within an individual. The reasons for anger, fear and uneasiness are not related to the event itself, but rather to individual's perception and how they interpret the symbols in their minds: their cliché beliefs, comments and evaluations (Ozer: 2000). The behaviour and reaction dimension of anger is an expression of whether anger is expressed or not, and if it is how it is expressed (Kisac: 1997). Each of us experiences anger differently and expresses our anger in different manners, these can be defined as externalization, internalization or controlling (Spielberger: 1991). The adolescent experiences his anger as a social stimulus but others' personalities and behaviour may be triggers for anger in young people (Yazgan-Inanc et al: 1997). The problem with anger is, too many of us experience too much anger for too much time in our lives; this is when anger becomes a problem for us (Dahlen & Deffenbacher: 2001). Anger essentially comprises four key components; these components may occur separately but when they exist in conjunction the emotion of anger can become a real problem: The feeling of being angry - this feeling can range in intensity from mild annoyance to overpowering rage or fury. A bodily change - this physiological arousal is often caused by the release of adrenalin, which causes a range of reactions in our body (such as increased heart rate and blood pressure). A mental or cognitive awareness - this sense that an event has occurred that threatens us is crucial in anger development. An effect on our behaviour - to feel real anger we need to express it in some manner, whether this is in an appropriate or inappropriate manner (Mann: 2012). It is common to confuse the idea of anger and aggression; anger remains an emotion while aggression is the action that can result from being very angry. The aggression is intended to cause physical or emotional harm, perhaps with verbal insults, threats, sarcasm or raised voices. When aggression becomes so extreme that we lose self-control, it is said that we are in a rage. The emotions connected to anger are not the problem; if we experience too much anger or express it in an inappropriate manner we can create problems for ourselves and for others. We experience anger for a number of reasons; anger in and of itself is not harmful and can be seen as a protective factor in cases. We feel anger when we need or want something outside of our reach. Researchers have suggested that anger is behaviour-regulating programmes that will help us acquire what we want or need in order to survive; our expression of anger can encourage the target of our anger to offer something that might reduce the likelihood of them suffering in any way from the angry outburst. This type of anger would probably not be tolerated with adolescents due to the inappropriate nature of ist use. Anger may also assist in preparing us for action. In a similar fashion to stress, anger sends signals throughout the body in preparation for the fight or flight response. Anger in this sense is essential to prepare us to take action against the perceived injustice against us. While our anger may prepare us to fight, this form of aggression is not socially acceptable. Anger also informs us when our rights have been violated; this heightened awareness.

Arguing for a recognition of the contradictory and ambivalent identifications that both attract and repel those who live the social category “girl,” Marnina Gonick analyzes the discourses and practices defining female sexuality, embodiment, relationship to self and other, material culture, use of social space, and cultural-political agency and power. Based on a school-community project involving collaborative production of a video which tells the stories of several fictional girl characters, Gonick examines the contradictory and textured structure of the discourses available to girls through which their identities are negotiated. Woven throughout the book is the integral concern with the way in which ethnographic writing as a discursive practice is also implicated in the production and signification of social identities for girls.

Strengthen gifted girls′ potential by exploring characteristics of girls′ giftedness; factors affecting development; issues of resilience, self-efficacy, and personal ethics; and the importance of supportive adults.