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The Twisted Sisterhood: Unraveling The Dark Legacy Of Female Friendships (2010)

by Kelly Valen(Favorite Author)

2.84 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0345520513 (ISBN13: 9780345520517)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Ballantine Books

review 1: I really wanted to like this book. I agreed with Valen's basic premise that mean-girl behavior plagues women long after they've left high school and that it's much more harmful and prevalent than many women like to acknowledge. However, I could barely get through this book due to the author's style and tone. It was extremely conversational, but in that trying-too-hard kind of way. Some examples:"I have to come clean here and admit that while I wrote this book, I took my little surfing breaks and scanned a few online gossip blogs. The Tiger Woods scandal was brewing and, I'm mortified to admit, I do enjoy ogling Angelina and Brad's beautiful brood.""I've seen the impulsive, mean, insulting commentary among children teenagers firsthand on cellphones, Facebook, email, AIM, an... mored the latest favorite, Skype. It's potent stuff. Really, it's not a thick skin you need--full body armor's more like it.""Nobody's making my job any easier. I am so pleased that the awful Lizzie McGuire show is mostly gone. Talk about your bad influence. Sorry, Tyra Banks, we're not into America's Next Top Model."Anyway, an entire book's worth of this sort of writing was very difficult to get through, no matter how much I liked and agreed with the message.Also, especially at the beginning of the book, Valen spends a LOT of time discussing the negative responses to her original Times essay that inspired this book and arguing with them. I get that she wants to respond and that these responses were hurtful, but really. This is a book, not a Facebook page. As a blogger, I can definitely relate to the unpleasant feeling of having people tell me that my opinions are stupid or that my lived experiences are invalid, but I try to accept that those people just don't get it and move on. Valen clearly has no desire to do so. This definitely isn't the first poorly-written book I've read about this important topic, so I'll keep looking.
review 2: Valen gets into some pretty emotional territory, and I believe she shines a truthful light through research and self-conducted qualitative and quantitative studies and surveys on how female-on-female "hating" can cause serious scars and lasting damage. What was most interesting to me about this book was the backlash the author professed to receiving after it was published. The backlash was from women who called her an anti-feminist "woman basher" and said she was being overly sensitive to the inevitable disagreements that arise among groups of women or between women. Which seemed to me like some weird Stepford-ish denial from her critics of what's obvious to everyone. Or even worse, like an abuse victim who doesn't want to admit what's going on out of fear of being perceived as weak or just too proud (or scared) to admit they've been the target of any ill will. I mean, DUH. There are women who sadistically and pathologically go for the jugular of other women--out of insecurity, jealousy, boredom with their own lives, being over-exposed to bad reality TV, being a sociopath, whatever. And we all know it. And for the most part, they're easy to spot in a single conversation and drop like a bad habit. The author didn't explore this (mostly unexplored) territory to whine or lament about nasty women who talked about her girls' bathroom between classes. She says several times the piece which was brought to life in an OpEd in the New York Times is a "battle cry" for an acknowledgement that there's a not so fine line between overlooking a disagreement and turning a blind eye to mean, cruel and often emotionally manipulative behavior. And that the latter is worthy of weeding out, calling out and tossing aside for our own sake and for that of the other beloved and well-intentioned, caring women in our lives; our sisters, our close friends, daughters, mothers, etc. I think my one negative is that her highly personalized overtone did distract me from keeping an objective perspective. But Valen at no point claims to be an expert in sociology and/or psychology, and her personal tone does make the book read like a book club conversation rather than a dry, uninviting text book on cases studies. This book made me think a lot, and I appreciate that. less

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