Verified by 
I must confess that I am a true "Gleek"! I particularly loved this week's Madonna-themed episode. Not only did it have fantastic music and dancing, it took on the very important topic of empowering young women and educating young men to be more sensitive and respectful of their female peers. It all started when Mr. Schuester overheard his student, Rachel, asking her peers for advice on how to handle pressure from guys for sex. Finding the perfect balance between the Madonna/whore extremes is an impossible act for most women to navigate, let alone teenagers who are subject to peer pressure and lack important access to unbiased resources and accurate information about sexuality. This desire to be sexually appealing to one's male peers but not seen as a slut by one's female peers was also at play in the last few months of Phoebe Prince's life in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
In this week's episode of Glee, Mr. Schuester assigns his students to find Madonna songs in the hopes of empowering his female students with her message of strength and independence. Although I loved the show, using Madonna to empower young women is somewhat problematic since so much of her commercial success and cultural impact was directly tied to her overtly sexual costumes, dancing, and lyrics. This may send the message to young women that sexual equality can be obtained, but only if you "own" your sexuality by being the initiator rather than the receiver or rejector of sexual contact. This played out in 3 different vignettes of female characters inviting a male object of desire to have sex (all while singing "Like a Virgin", of course). Fortunately, this sequence ended with two characters opting out - which allowed another narrative to emerge: you can own your body and be empowered by deciding when you are ready and by not giving in to others' expectations of when you ‘should' have sex, not just by initiating sex.
How does this relate to Phoebe Prince? Most of the headlines that have been written about her tragic death have linked her suicide to the "bullying" she experienced over several months at her new high school (see wikipedia, NYDaily News, BostonHerald, CBSnews, and People magazine 4/26/2010 issue). Although she was definitely bullied by being exposed repeatedly and over time to negative actions that were intended to hurt the target (Olweus, 1993), most of the "negative actions" that were directed at her were sexual in nature. She was repeatedly called, "Irish slut" and "ho." The origins of these insults were linked to her brief sexual relationships with two older guys and the jealousy that followed from the girls these boys had previous relationships with. Although many are horrified with the lack of action taken by the school to stop this behaviour and protect Phoebe, it is sadly consistent with the current research on sexual harassment in schools.
Over the past 15 years several studies have documented the prevalence and public nature of sexual harassment in schools (Larkin 1994; Lee, Croninger, Linn & Chen 1996; Timmerman 2003; Gruber & Fineran 2008). In Timmerman's (2003) study she found that sexual harassment happened so regularly (both student-student and teacher-student) that the only explanation for this was that the culture of the school accepts this behaviour as normal. In Gruber & Fineran's (2008) study that compared bullying and sexual harassment, they found that although bullying was more pervasive, sexual harassment had more severe impacts on the self-esteem, mental & physical health of targeted students, and that girls and GLBT students were more often targeted. In my own research (Meyer 2008, 2009) I reported that teachers hesitated to intervene in cases of sexual and homophobic harassment because they lacked clear leadership from their administration on these issues and were afraid of professional and parental backlash for taking on such ‘controversial' topics.
Sadly, the teachers and administrators at South Hadley were doing what most professional educators do: they were talking about bullying, but completely ignoring sexual harassment. They had already had Barbara Coloroso (author of The Bully, the bullied, and the bystander) in to address their school and were starting an anti-bullying task force. These actions will work to reduce certain kinds of bullying, but unless sexual harassment and homophobia are explicitly named and talked about, students like Phoebe will continue to suffer in silence and the culture of the school (which is created by students, teachers, and the community within which it is situated) will continue to teach girls to live in the impossible patriarchal sexist roles of either Madonna or whore and teach boys to be sexist macho womanizers.
This is why I love Glee. This show paints a portrait of the social hierarchies in high school and the ways different teachers either reinforce (Sue Sylvester) or try to work against them (Will Schuester). Near the end of this episode, Mr. Schuester had his male students sing "What it feels like for a girl". These lyrics helped a few of the guys reflect on how they had been treating their female peers and led to some improvements in their relationships. Let's hope there are a few more Mr. Schuester's out there sharing these important lessons about gender equality and respect with their students so we don't have many more stories that end like Phoebe Prince's did.
Girls can wear jeans
And cut their hair short
Wear shirts and boots
‘Cause its OK to be a boy
But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading
‘Cause you think that being a girl is degrading
But secretly you'd love to know what its like
Wouldn't you
What it feels like for a girl
References
- Gruber, J. E., & Fineran, S. (2008). Comparing the Impact of Bullying and Sexual Harassment Victimization on the Mental and Physical Health of Adolescents. Sex Roles, 59, 1-13.
- Larkin, J. (1994). Walking through walls: The sexual harassment of high school girls. Gender and Education, 6(3), 263-280.
- Lee, V., Croninger, R. G., Linn, E., & Chen, Z. (1996). The culture of sexual harassment in secondary schools. American Educational Research Journal, 33(2), 383-417.
- Meyer, E. J. (2008). Gendered harassment in secondary schools: Understanding teachers' (non)interventions. Gender & Education, 20(6), 555-572.
- Meyer, E. J. (2009). Gender, bullying, and harassment: Strategies to end sexism and homophobia in schools. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
- Olweus, D. (1993) Bullying: What we know and what we can do. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
- Timmerman, G. (2003). Sexual harassment of adolescents perpetrated by teachers and peers: An exploration of the dynamics of power, culture, and gender in secondary schools. Sex Roles, 48(5-6), 231-244.
