Play nicely, ladies

Last night I re-watched one of my favourite teen comedies, Mean Girls (man I’d forgotten how pretty Lindsay Lohan was before all that alcohol and drug abuse!).

Anyway, the movie reminded me of how mean we girls can be to each other. Why is that?

In Mean Girls, Lohan plays Cady, a sweet new girl at a very clique-y high school. She quickly befriends the only people who are nice to her, a pair of “losers”. At their encouragement, Cady pretends to be friends with the mean, popular girls, the Plastics, in order to sabotage them. For instance when one of the Plastics tries to lose weight, Cady gives her a label-less protein bar and “swears” it is a weight-loss trick.

In the end Cady loses her way a bit, and discovers she has become just as nasty as one of the Plastics, who are actually not as awful as they seemed at first.

Why are girls such bullies to each other? Especially in school. Watching Mean Girls reminded me of how terrifying my school days were at times, how self-conscious I was of what my girlfriends thought of me.

I remember one time my best friend liked a guy who supposedly had a crush on me. When he asked me to the dance, I told my friend. Naturally she was really upset, but instead of telling me she told everyone BUT me. Soon enough, I dreaded walking around campus: from the corner of my eye I could see my former best friend whispering to another girl, while looking at me. I felt everyone watching me when I walked around. For awhile I ate alone in the corner of the tennis court.

Our friendship cooled off for a long time, all thanks to a dumb boy I didn’t even go out with. (my friend and I are A-OK now. You get over things pretty quickly with age)

Anyway, just something to think about: girls (and boys, if you want to guess), why do you think girls are so mean to each other? What’s the meanest thing you’ve done to another girl, or the meanest thing someone did to you?