"The Culture of Mean offers a sea change, asking us to reconsider everything we think we know about bullying. Through careful analysis of both public policy and media myths about bullying-that relational bullying is carried out only by girls and that it is more damaging than physically violent bullying, that bullying and suicide are inextricable, that youth inevitably use new communication technologies to cyberbully-Emily D. Ryalls makes clear that our current cultural response to bullying not only is ineffectual but also perpetuates troubling sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia. A cutting-edge and unwavering media analysis useful for media scholars, policy makers, parents, and the countless of us who have both been bullies and bullied."-Sarah Projansky, University of Utah
Acknowledgments - Mean Girls, Cyberbullying, and Bullycide: An Introduction to Bullying Culture - Empowering Ophelia: Postfeminist Empowerment in the Mean Girl Discourse - Bullies in the News: The Tyler Clementi and Phoebe Prince Suicides - "I Can Be a Bitch When I Wanna Be": Queering "Mean Boys" Through Social Aggression - The Hierarchy of Victimhood in Bully -"Beware of Young Girls": Millennial Mean Girls in Scream Queens - Prepping the Queen Bee: Mean Girls and Bad Wannabes on Gossip Girl -Trumping the Myths of Bullying - Index.
Emily D. Ryalls received her Ph.D. from the University of South Florida. She is an assistant professor in the Communication Studies Department at California Polytechnic State University.