For Immediate Release

February 21 , 2008

best-selling author to discuss female aggression

LINCOLN, Neb. — Best-selling author Rachel Simmons, a pioneer in the exploration of schoolgirl cruelty, will give an upcoming lecture at Nebraska Wesleyan University.

Simmons’ lecture, “Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls,” — the title of her New York Times bestseller — will be held Thursday, March 6 at 1 p.m. in Olin B Lecture Hall, located in the Olin Hall of Science on the Nebraska Wesleyan campus.

Simmons contends that incidents of bullying could be avoided if girls were encouraged to assert their negative feelings more directly. She believes this would empower them to negotiate conflicts and to define relationships in new and healthier ways. Parents, she says, should show their daughters that conflict-free relationships don’t exist. Instead of thinking conflict ends relationships, girls would then learn that they can’t survive without it and would not let fear control them.

Following her graduation from Vassar College, Simmons worked for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. In 1997, she received a Rhodes Scholarship and attended Oxford University where she began studying female aggression.

Her lecture is free and open to the public.

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