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Meangirlism
Why this ancient-old practice is still a thing.
Over the summer I read a review on the Mean Girls musical and the critic was “shocked and saddened” to learn how relevant the themes remained 20 years after the release of the original film. Her words stayed with me for days, maybe even weeks and returned full circle at the start of this school year.
Having two high schoolers, I am often around quite a few of these odd, wonderful, inspiring, alien-like creatures known as teenagers and have many friends with kids the same age so it only took a few days of school for the stories to be shared. “She was so mean to me in 8th grade.” Or, “I don’t think she likes me.” Or, “So and so asked me to have lunch with them and then blew me off and ignored me.” Or, the old favorite, “I PROMISE I won’t tell anyone…”
For clarification, and to hopefully prevent any gender-specific moral outrage, I do realize that all genders can both experience and perpetrate this kind of bullying, but for the purpose of this piece I am focusing on the old-fashioned sneering, look someone up and down, what are you wearing, “Classic Mean Girl” phenomenon.
I did a video on my Instagram account about this and was overwhelmed by how many people emailed, called, and texted me thanking me for bringing it up. While pleased I was speaking to something that…
