“outsiders are preoccupied with how the members of the clique perceive them, while clique members are not preoccupied with outsiders at all”
“In the public imaginary, cliques are almost universally characterized as not only female but as hyper-feminine, and they are held to demonstrate the absolute worst that young women have to offer: cattiness, exclusivity, cruelty, and ruthless social ambition.”
“When cliques are derided, it is usually under the noble banner of uplifting and valuing nonmembers.”
“But this attitude is based on troubling doublethink: it champions the outsider as inherently worthy of belonging to the clique while condemning the very existence of the same clique.”
“The implication of our suspicions of cliques is that the only reason anyone has a close circle of friends is to experience the joy of excluding others, not the support of strong bonds.”
“Much of the academic literature about adolescent cliques views them as something closer to intentional communities, with stated missions and values, than elitist in-groups.”
“But because cliques consist of members who only interact frequently and intimately with fellow members—as both the social science and lay definitions suggest—it should not be surprising that some outsiders can’t perceive that a clique’s values are “positively oriented.””
“Navigating one’s own clique dynamics is challenging enough, to demand that the clique members be responsible for the negative emotions of outsiders is beyond an undue burden.”
““Clique-y” is the pejorative used to describe young women in a friend group that is perceived to be exclusionary.”
“But this dismissal dehumanizes them and disregards their personal reasons for maintaining a tight-knit circle of friends. The suspicion aimed at cliques targets female intimacy, particularly when it shared between women with social capital.”
“My friend and fellow writer Rachel Syme once noted, “Two powerful men being friends is an inevitability. Two powerful women being friends is a conspiracy.””
“Women who orient their social lives around a select group are held in distrust, as if women’s duty is to cast their friendship nets widely and superficially. The expectation that they do so signals that a woman’s social life is not considered her own: it must be arranged for the benefit of the family, of strangers, anyone really besides herself.”
“these women are reduced to “mean girls,” their interior lives and their intentions made into unflattering speculative fiction because they would not perform the emotional labor of actively expanding their social circle.”
“Maintaining a small group of friends is about quality control of the friendships themselves, not quality control of the group’s members.”
“A woman entrusted with any modicum of power and capital faces enough suspicion in her professional and personal lives to make the scrutiny of her friendship choices far more cruel than any imagined slights against those outside her circle.”
“Her approval and her confidence are seductive prospects, but they are only entitlements in the most hollow politics of solidarity. Frankly, it isn’t her job to think of you, much less be your friend.”