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Girls can dish it and take it. Gotta problem?

BY DEBRA PICKETT CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Can we officially stop worrying about girls now? From the sad and starving girls of Reviving Ophelia (Ballantine, $7.99) to the really mean girls of Queen Bees and Wannabes (Crown Publishers, $24), an entire industry is devoted to chick-related handwringing. The culture damages their fragile emotional lives, people say. Girls are afraid to speak up for themselves. Math teachers don't call on them. They bully each other to cope with their systemic oppression.

Yet, somehow, teen girls seem to be doing just fine.

They are proud of their bodies, showing off all manner of bellies below their baby-sized T-shirts. They play sports and make excellent grades and fill the campuses of elite universities. They make fabulous plans. They are so excited about life, they can barely stop talking.

They also, apparently, spend the occasional Sunday afternoon in a forest preserve, pounding the crap out of each other.

The shaky images of junior and senior girls from Glenbrook North High School, engaged in a particularly rough game of football, or maybe just a ritualized brawl, have now been broadcast worldwide, combining the titillating fascination of a "Girls Gone Wild" video with a fantastic opportunity for over-earnest adults to shake their heads over the state of these kids today.

Watching the video, adults are obligated to disapprove. Kids got hurt. Bones got broken. Things clearly got out of hand.

But there's something else about these images that deserves mention. The girls--both the ones doing the pounding and the ones sitting there and taking it like Marines--looked just as strong, fierce and stupid as any guys ever have.

That's half the reason the "powder puff" game gone bad has become an international story.

A video of a bunch of guys in a rowdy hazing ritual wouldn't have the same appeal. We expect boys to behave that way.

But seeing girls--especially well-off, suburban, white girls--get out of control, now, that's interesting. Interesting to people who are not or have not recently been teenage girls, anyway. The girls themselves are not at all surprised. They're kind of amused.

Their response to the supposedly scandalous video? A resounding "Whatever."

I did a completely unscientific survey of several very cool teen girls Thursday. It revealed unanimous agreement that teen girls beating up other teen girls is simply not news.

What did we all think they did in their spare time? Play with body-image-destroying Barbies? "Puh-lease," said one.

"Powder puff" football used to be a joke. The idea of girls playing such a rough-and-tumble sport was once ridiculous enough that people--especially guys--would pay to see it. At my high school, there was an annual game. It was the student council's best fund-raiser. Girls playing football--what a laugh.

Well, in case you've missed the last decade, here's a summary: Girls don't throw like girls anymore. In fact, girls don't do much of anything like girls anymore. They do things like themselves.

The vast majority of them are cool, smart and pretty much non-trouble-making. But, as with boys, there are always a few who have a talent for getting themselves into big messes.

Now that everyone has seen the video of a bunch of Northbrook girls getting themselves into a big mess, grown-ups feel obligated to make stern statements and issue firm punishments. It's arbitrary adult justice at its best: You kids made us look clueless--Who had any idea girls were up to such things? We were too busy trying to repair their self-esteem to notice--and now you're going to pay. We're going to make examples of you.

Of course, the violent girls who hurt others deserve to be punished. But they don't deserve to be burned at the stake of tragically troubled girlhood. They don't deserve to be treated any differently from the generations of boys who've engaged in similar behavior.

They've learned to play like the boys.

And, because they're acting so much like middle-class fraternity boys, they should be given the same punishment those guys so often get. A lecture. A temporary loss of some privileges. And a second chance.

Just like we should quit over-protecting girls, we should also refrain from overpunishing them.

Broken bones, obviously, are bad. But bones get broken during regular football games, too.

Of course, at regular football games, the guys wear pads.

Sissies.

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