There’s an audio of Charli xcx currently going viral (no shocker here at brat nation) where she proclaims the very relatable fact: “I think I can be bitchy, but I don’t know if I am a bitch.” To which, Bowen Yang replies: “That is a big distinction.”
Like everything Charli seems to touch lately, the sound has captured the hearts of the internet folk – with mostly young women creators embracing this very-important distinction.
The “bitchy but not a bitch” comment comes after Charli dedicated a song on brat to “all her mean girls.” The song alludes to the idea that the mean girl is simply misunderstood – a dialogue further kindled by the Girl, so confusing remix.
All these comments have made me think about the enigma that is the ‘mean girl’. I have never been told that I walk like a bitch but I get told I come off intimidating — something that sounds like a brag but is pure poison to my need to be liked. When I look at the dregs of me (an un-curable nail-biting habit, my anxiety, my inability to drive), I wonder how I could get so misconstrued.
As Charli said: “you think you know her, but you don’t.”
What is a ‘mean girl’ anyway?
Fortunately, this will not be a study of morality.
The term ‘mean’ and the term ‘girl’ may have both long existed but the nineties would join the two in media-trope matrimony. The ‘mean girl’ emerged during a moral panic over young girls’ behaviour and aggression. This era has since been characterised this time as the “modern epidemic of ‘mean girls’” – which stressed the need to ‘fix’ the ‘relational aggression’ sweeping through high schools.
In 2002, The New York Times Magazine February issue was dedicated to this cause, with a cover article by Margaret Talbot titled “Girls just want to be mean.” This essay followed the work of Rosalind Wiseman, a thirty-two-year-old woman who presented programs to try and address the issues facing teen girls (namely, meanness). She would also go on to write the book that inspired Mean Girls (2004).
Talbot’s article reached the 2002 equivalent of viral, with the journalist receiving a chorus of support from teachers, parents and Internet chat groups who confirmed the diagnosis that the article put forth of girls. The cultural effect can’t be understated.
Folklore scholar (so me at the Eras tour) Eleanor Tucker argued that this media sea “reclassified” the folklore of girlhood. In her essay, she notes the chants and jeers from as early as the 50s to reveal that children have always been mean and the ‘mean girl’ reframed this tradition.
‘Mean’ is a deeply effeminate term. Little boys in the schoolyard can be mean. Girls can be mean. Grown women – coworkers, friends of friends, general acquaintances – can be mean. But we rarely would ever define a man’s behaviour as ‘mean.’ Maybe that’s because men’s proximity to power has let us develop a more legitimate lexicon to define their behaviour or personalities.
Since the creation of the ‘mean girl’, meanness is usually presented as a by-product of femininity. The essentialist relationship between ‘mean’ and women/girls alludes to a woman’s inherently conniving soul. Whilst men’s behaviour is a response to the complex circumstances of life, fuelled by nuanced motivations, women’s behaviour is just who they are. As Lilith published: “The mean girl becomes a convenient tool with which to express widespread ambivalences about girls as a breed.”
I’ve grown up being told (by friends’ mothers, other women, men) that girls “can be just so mean.” These two sociology scholars Jessica Ringrose and Emma Renold define this as “normative cruelties.” “Meanness is part of the normative cruelties of 'doing' girl,” they said.
Most of us walk a tightrope to show respect for men we know with the footnote of “*not all men”. We also afford them the grace of recognising they’ve been socialised in certain ways, battling against toxic masculinity (or shamelessly surrendering to it). However, girls are rarely allowed to be understood as equally just trying to survive – or equally as complicated.
Oh that’s not …
I recently finished reading Eliza Clarke’s Penance which made me feel a lot of ways.
The murder case in the novel was based on an American 1992 case that fell into the category of ‘teen girls who kill.’ Unable to resist the true-crime-industrial complex, I’ve been reading a lot about this original case – and it’s odd to see the title of ‘mean girls’ so readily thrown around to discuss the case. The perpetrators get repeatedly described as “mean girls” despite their crimes going far beyond gossip or sly remarks. The true-crime podcast Rotten Ramble titled its podcast episode “The Mean Girls Killers” (I do not recommend listening to this), along with many article headlines. I even found a documentary covering another murder case on Prime called, “Mean Girl Murders.”
The title seems so ill-fitting in these contexts. We would never describe the serial killers (the ones with Netflix’s shows dedicated to them) as ‘mean.’ Although they said their fair share of cruel remarks, such a title would be disrespectfully insufficient to categorise what they did. But with women/ girls, it seems the worst crime they committed was not being nice. Everything else is a consequence of that.
That’s not to say I think women murderers aren’t getting their due, but rather that there’s an irresistible habit here to categorise any subversion by women as ‘mean.’ No matter where they sit on the cruelty spectrum. Girls’ inherent meanness, a biblical evil, can explain away anything.
It’s very similar to when ‘mean girl’ is used to describe women who commit hate crimes. Because apparently a woman’s lack of civility is more of note than racism. Meanness is not only effeminate but deeply entangled with whiteness. It unfolds as a type of unavoidable cruelty that’s deemed harmless. The distant cousin of something actually sinister.
The myth of the mean girl can be both a woman’s salvation that minimises her crimes or her damnation that misunderstands her. Either way, it pacifies the actions of women. They aren’t understood as responding to their realities in problematic or prescribed or empowered ways. But just: the way they were.
The archetype lives on into adulthood. Someone said to me this week: “she just has a real mean girl energy, you know?” I accepted that descriptor and didn’t think anything of it until I had started writing this. I now kick myself for not asking what they meant. According to our cultural dictionary, a mean girl could be a murderer or she could have just been too sure of herself.
Oh Lana how I hate those girls
Girls cause harm. That we know is true. But studies continue to find that this gender-exclusive meanness doesn’t quite exist. Whilst girls engage in less physical aggression than boys, some studies suggest that social aggression is equally common among boys. Either way, meanness isn’t a gender-specific trait. It’s universal. The ‘mean girl’ is a social invention to avoid having to fully recognise girls as human beings who are all-feeling, complex and imperfect.
In the Girl, so confusing remix, Lorde and Charli confirm that this mutually experienced riff wasn’t the fault of meanness or hate. But rather, both their own personal insecurities – the struggles of womanhood and constantly forced into competition with one another.
“And it's just self-defence until you're building a weapon.”
In that original 2002 article, Talbot begins by describing the scene of Apology Day at one of the schools that Wiseman was working at. It’s exactly like that trust-fall scene in Mean Girls. She describes girls crying to each other, expressing their distress. In response, Wiseman tells Talbot, “The tears are a funny thing. Because it’s the aggressors, the girls who have something to apologise for.”
“Sometimes, yes, it's a relief on their part, but it’s also somewhat manipulative .. a lot of the time they’re using the apology to dump on somebody all over again.”
I have reread the article, searching for said quotes from the girls admitting to this ‘manipulation.’ Or victims admitting they found the apologies insincere. I realised however that there are only a few quotes in this piece from the girls themselves, most of it is just anecdotes from Wiseman.
Of course, there are a handful of exceptions. A girl (one named Zoe) does seem actually cruel. Another one is quoted saying the heart-wrenching claim, “I hate the person I’ve become.” Another girl, Jessica, is described as having a fixation on elaborate and rigid rules which are so intense she even demands her mother say goodnight to her at 8 pm every night. The rules are used to depict her as heartless and maybe it’s my modern gaze, but that seems like a symptom of something else (my twin flame). In the article, Wiseman is quoted asking, “Haven’t I told you girls are evil?” And that’s exactly what Wiseman did. She’s only told us so.
What gets forgotten in this mean-girl panic is the numerous studies that confirm the power of girls’ connections. Women’s friendships are repeatedly found as more supportive, characterised by adaptability and social cooperation. In fact, the homosociality of girls is associated with a lot of positive outcomes for those involved which boys’ friendships sadly are not.
I don’t have anything interesting to finish this stream of consciousness – other than that I think I’m constantly on the verge of balling my eyes out at a metaphorical Apologies Day or divulging my fears on the remix. I feel like most of us do – consumed by the question of goodness and constantly asking if I was nice enough or if I came across wrong.
Weirdly, we keep perpetuating an archetype that fuels this type of self/surveillance whilst also letting some people evade legitimate and necessary reflection (etc.). Anyway, this one’s for all my mean girls. I bet you’re actually really nice.
I really enjoyed this piece! A lot of interesting angles on the mean girl trope
loved this!! i totally relate as someone who's not exactly mean but is super anxious and shy which causes me to be very standoffish and people interpret that as mean and then it cycles. thanks for writing!