How do girls act when they get mad at each other? That's the question on the table during a recent interview, and several Charlotte Country Day Middle School girls are trying to answer. Instant messaging lets you say mean things you wouldn't say in person, they confess. Three-way calling can burn you if you say something nasty about a girl without knowing she's still on the line.

And then they describe how girls in their grade recently ostracized a classmate - we'll call her Michelle - after a few of her friends decided she thought she was too good.
"It sounds so bad," one girl says. "It's the only way to make it clear. It does sound bad, though."

It does. But this nastiness goes on all the time, especially among middle-school girls. It has for decades, if not generations.

Until recently, though, researchers and educators studying bullying and aggression focused on boys. Now, some have turned their attention to aggression as practiced by girls. "Relational" or "social" aggression, as it's called, is bullying without fists. Girls do it with dirty looks, turned backs and gossip, sometimes devastating their victims.

This month, Rachel Simmons' "Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls" (Harcourt, $25) arrives in bookstores. May brings the publication of "Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and other Realities of Adolescence" by Rosalind Wiseman, (Crown, $24.)

The books already have sparked interest in a subject once regarded simply as something girls do. "We're starting a national conversation on girls and bullying," Simmons says. "And it's long overdue."

At a few schools, including Charlotte Country Day Middle School, that conversation has already begun. For several years, counselor Ann Young and others at the school have engaged students in skits and exercises focused on bullying and empathy.

Some boys, she finds, can be "just amazingly mean." They might call someone names - fat or ugly - or they might physically bully.

"But girls can be more subtle and vicious verbally," she says. "Girls tend to rally people on a side, so it becomes a group against an individual."

Simmons' book was born out of such an experience. When she was 8, a classmate convinced other girls to avoid her. "She made other girls run away from me. She just isolated me all the time," the 27-year-old author recalls, yet "she never lifted a finger, never broke any rules."

While a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, Simmons decided to study girls' aggression to better understand her own experience. She found little on the subject. So when she returned to the United States, she did her own research - interviewing hundreds of girls, parents and educators. She talked to girls whose grades dropped and who grew depressed after being ostracized or gossiped about by female classmates. She watched mothers weep as they described their daughters' ordeals. And she heard from smart, successful women who still stung from cruelties when they were barely teenagers.

What makes girls so mean? There's no one answer, researchers say. Girls may attack or ostracize a classmate to increase their own popularity. Sometimes, they instigate bullying or go along with it so they don't become targets themselves. When an Australian researcher asked girls why they engage in such behaviors, the top answer was "for the entertainment value."

Simmons believes such behaviors flourish because our culture refuses girls open acts of aggression. "Femininity says girls have to be sweet," she says. "They repress their anger until it boils over into these cruel acts."

Boys engage in social aggression, too, experts say. But studies show that girls feel hurt more acutely by it, while boys feel more hurt from physical aggression.

"They have so much of a more simpler life," one eighth-grade girl at Charlotte Country Day says of her male classmates. "They don't have to worry about anything. They're ranked based on who can beat each other up."

Maybe boys' lives aren't that simple. But many girls can recount painful stories of friends-turned-tormenters.

One Charlotte seventh-grader recently described how she made the mistake last year of bragging about herself. School officials allowed The Observer to speak to her and other girls in this story on the condition that their names wouldn't be used.

The seventh-grader's classmates responded by picking on her. Someone even deposited an anonymous letter in her locker saying no one liked her. "It went on and on. I was the worst person in the grade, and they said they didn't want me in school anymore. It was horrible," she says.

Another girl said she's been struggling with mean girls since third grade. For a couple of years, she tried being friends with two who alternately courted her friendship and abused her.

"One would call and ask me to come over, then tell me, `You're fat. You're ugly, but we'll fix that.' "

Sometimes, she says, she has dreamed about fast-forwarding her life to college, where things will be different.

At Charlotte Country Day Middle, outrage against Michelle escalated recently until it involved most of her closest friends.

Some who decorate their binders with friends' photos scratched over hers. In an assembly, girls moved away and left Michelle sitting by herself. Nasty e-mails fanned the flames.

One eighth-grader who admits she was among those who was "a little mean" to Michelle says she believes jealousy of Michelle's popularity spurred the whole event. She has now apologized to her, and the episode seems to be over.

To help resolve it, Young talked with several girls involved, and a couple mothers even stepped in to encourage their daughters to do the right thing.

In some social aggression cases, Young brings both the girls involved to her office to address each other. Sometimes, she tells squabbling students to physically change seats as a way of helping them see the other's point."You are fighting an uphill battle developmentally," she says. As adolescents who are trying to find their own identities, they're very self-focused, and that it make hard for them to see the view of others.

Most experts say relational aggression peaks in middle school, when adolescents are struggling to define themselves, often through peer relationships. In high school, it subsides.

Several groups, including the Pennsylvania-based Ophelia Project and the Washington-based Empower Program, have begun conducting classes and workshops with girls to try to curb relational aggression.

We'll never eliminate it, experts say. But Simmons and others hope society will come to view this kind of aggression as hurtful and wrong.

The new spotlight on the issue also may make some aggressive girls think about the consequences of their actions, Young says. It may help those who've been targets realize that they're not alone.

And it may spur more educators to step in when they see bullying. When Young hears students make mean remarks, she tells them: "That was really unacceptable, and I think you should apologize."

*Pam Kelley: (704) 358-5271; pkelley@charlotteobserver.com.

What Can Parents Do?
Parents must tread carefully when dealing with a child experiencing relational aggression, because they may make the situation worse. Experts suggest that parents should:

OFFER UNCONDITIONAL support at home. Don't criticize her or push her to be more popular. If she senses she's letting you down because she's not faring well socially, she'll feel even worse.

ENCOURAGE HER to reach out to relationships outside of school - through church, scouting, babysitting, even pen pals.

AS A GENERAL RULE, be wary of confronting the bully or her parents. If the situation is severe, try talking with a trusted school administrator or teacher. Explain what's going on and ask them to be aware of it.

What Can Girls Do?
In her new book, "Odd Girl Out," Rachel Simmons offers suggestions to girls. Among them:

TALK TO your friends about how you react to each other when you get angry or upset. Is it better to let emotions build up or deal with them immediately? Promise each other that when you get angry, you'll work it out.

IF YOU'RE EXPERIENCING bullying, get help. Talk to another friend, parents or a teacher.

DON'T TRY to maintain a friendship with someone who makes you miserable. Let her go.

KNOW THAT this will pass. As you grow up, you'll never again be defined by a single group of friends in school.