Alpha Girl
In Middle School, Learning to Handle The ABCs of Power
By Laura Sessions SteppWashington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 23, 2002; Page C01
The seventh-grade alpha female slides a size-zero body into her designated spot in the school cafeteria, her perfect blond hair swinging across her shoulders like a 1960s Breck girl's. A half-dozen ladies-in-waiting assume seats around her as she leans over to whisper something to her favorite of the moment.
Whitney Bullock, seated at a another seventh-grade table several rows away, takes it all in with a grimace.
Whitney, of the broad shoulders and wiry black hair, has been snubbed more than once by this girl. If you're a woman reading this, you can feel her pain.
If you're a man, you probably don't have a clue.
With all the debate among professionals over girls as victims, very few people talk about this: In middle school, girls have the only power that counts at that moment, social power. These alphas -- named after the first letter in the Greek alphabet -- are the brightest stars in their constellation, defining life as the young teen knows it. They decide that American Eagle shirts are what you wear with jeans, Dasani water is what you drink at lunch, Jen ispersona non grata at their lunchroom table and Brittany must ask Adam to Courtney's party.
They hang over guys at school and telephone guys at home at night, becoming increasingly direct as they get older. Girl or guy, you don't dare get in their way because they can slice you up with a word or a look. Kids both rely on and resent them, and primatologist Jane Goodall would spot them in a minute.
Although alpha females can be found among many species in many habitats, Goodall was one of the first scientists to identify them among chimpanzees in Tanzania. She shocked gender theorists in the 1960s with the finding that some female chimps kill the young of other females in an effort to maintain their dominant position in the troops.
Since then, primate experts have discovered females among other ape types who lead by cooperation rather than intimidation -- the bonobos, for example. In any middle school cafeteria today you'll see examples of this type also, and there's some reason to believe these girls are on the rise. But let's stick with alphas for the moment.
Alphas have been around forever, assuming their thrones based on beauty, dress, family or sheer force of personality. Back when girls didn't or couldn't compete with boys in the classroom and on the playing field, pubescent alpha females learned at their mother's knee a roundabout route to power that they then passed on to their daughters. Hollywood captured them on-screen in movies such as "Heathers" in 1989 and 1997's "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion."
What we most remember is their power to exclude.
Lauren Kepple, a freshman at American University, knew a girl named Stephanie in fifth grade. "I had just been moved into a class for gifted kids and was assigned a locker next to Stephanie's," she recalls. "She said something that made me feel I was not good enough."
Alphas, she says, "zero in on your biggest failing. If you have weight issues, they'll go right to your weight."
Lauren's friend Meredith McGloin, another AU student, says, "I've never seen guys be so cruel." Her reaction to the alpha girls in middle school? "To go off in my corner and read books. I was going to shut them out before they shut me out."
Goritza Ninova, 16, recently moved to Northern Virginia from Bulgaria and knows all about alphas. Sipping cappuccino at the Pentagon City Mall, dressed in a zipped-up cardigan, jeans and chunky black shoes from her native country, she describes the alphas there, starting at age 11 or so.
"They wear tight jeans, tight, low-cut shirts and lots of makeup. When they walk by a guy, they move their butts just so. They think they can get anything or anyone they want." There's a Bulgarian word for them, she says: tarikatka. In Bulgaria, a tarikatka went after Goritza's boyfriend. "She was so self-confident. I was scared," Goritza recalls. Fortunately, "she scared my boyfriend as well."
Girls flout the wishes of an alpha at their peril. Tegan Hendrickson, a senior at Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, fell out of favor with Jenny in seventh grade. Before she knew it, Jenny's friends started a whisper campaign that Tegan, who liked to wear black clothes, was a Satanist.
"People would come up to me and tell me to go to hell, then laugh," she remembers. "I'd say, 'Been there. Done that. Want a reference?' It was pretty cruel."
질문은 영작 실력이 딸리는 관계로 일단 한국어로 올리고 좀따가 수정할께요 양해해 주세요.. 미리 질문도 올려놔야 내일 디스커션때 좀더 활발하게 진행할수 있을 것 같아서요^^;
1. 요즘 알파걸이라는 신조어가 신문지상에 많이 나오는데 이 단어에 대해 들어본 적이 있습니까?
2. 알파걸들이 사회진출 후 산업구조나 사회문화적으로 어떠한 변화를 도모하겠는가?
3. 당신은 "알파걸"이라는 단어의 상징적 의미에 대해 얼마나 알고 있는가?
4. 현재 취업 면접에서 차별은 많이 없어졌다고는 하지만 사회각층의 보수적인 성향으로 인해 남여 차별
이 존재하고 있는걸로 알려져 있는데 개선방안을 도출해 보고 이로 인한 사회문화적, 산업구조적 영
향에 대해 얘길 해보시오
5. "알파걸"들의 성과는 현재 비약적이다. 앞으로 이들의 영향이 더욱 커질 것이라 보는가? 또는 위축될
것이라고 보는가? 만약 그러하다면 이러한 원인은 어디에 있는가?
6. 자신이 알고 있는 알파걸에 대해 한명씩 돌아가며 말해보시오
Question>
1. Mass media has been reported about the Alpha girls Have you been heard about this word?
2. When these Alpha girls advenced to many side of society how was effects these are?
3. How much do you know about the word with Alpha girs was been symbolic?
4. At enter a profession interview, it is disappear of discrimination in employment but it is still remain a conservative sprit of social grade.
If is that so, let's talking about how to say improvement for enter a fair profession interview between men and women.
5. Alpha girls jump a flight relate to many side recently.
How do you think about the present situation more spread or more
reduce in the future effect to our society and industry?
If follows from the foregoing that... Where is causes connection with Alpha girl?
6. You guys and you... If it is like that you know about a person who Alpha girl.
Let's explain or speak about her.