How the Clique Books Taught Me to Hate Other Girls and Myself
The New York Times
I thought these middle-grade novels would help me navigate private school. Instead, they immersed me in bullying and materialism.
In 2005, I stopped rubbing my face with washcloths, for fear that I might stimulate early wrinkles. I asked my mother to buy me lower-calorie foods for breakfast. I became brand-obsessed, convinced that if I could own just a Coach purse or pair of Tory Burch flats, all my problems would be solved.
I was 11 years old.
I’d internalized these beliefs from the Clique books, a popular series of novels by Lisi Harrison that follow a group of fabulously wealthy middle-school girls in Westchester, N.Y. As I clung to their every word, the stories taught me that other girls could not be trusted and that unpopularity, dowdiness and fatness were essentially worse than death.
