“Mean Girls” and Memories

A recent conversation with my grown daughter about the ways in which she and other young women often battle each other verbally online in social media made 

me say to her, “this is like high school.  Aren’t you past this?” She didn’t really understand why I found it so astounding.  The physical distance and anonymity of the internet make it possible to be a mean girl long after high school is over.

When “Queen Bees and Wannabees” was published in 2002 by Rosalind Wiseman, and then satirized in the comedy “Mean Girls” in 2004 by Tina Fey, I was fascinated by a public discussion of what I had not realized was a widespread phenomenon.  I thought I was alone and neurotic about my own traumatic memory of the queen bees in my seventh grade class. Not so.  I attended an appearance by Ms. Wiseman to an audience of moms and daughters in which she opened with the following:

“How many of you moms in this room remember the name or names of the queen bees who mistreated you in middle school?”

Nearly every woman in that packed auditorium raised her hand, including me.  So now it was permissible to discuss this openly.

In the summer of 1966, a girl from my sixth grade class moved across town into my neighborhood.  She wasn’t new to school, just new to my neighborhood  Her name was Jean, and she and I became BFFs over the summer, spending every day together in her rec room or mine, dancing and lip-synching to records like the Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” and talking endlessly about girl stuff like boys and clothes and how to do our hair in a flip.  We both pined for the cute boy up the street named Barney. By August, she told me they had taken a walk together and he held her hand.  “Do You Believe in Magic” was their song. I was jealous. Barney was my first loss to Jean.

I was especially excited to return to school that year, with a new outfit Jean helped me pick out and knowing that Jean was friends with the popular girls at school.  Surely I would be able to join this group now that Jean had put her stamp of approval on me.  How I wanted to be a part of the Diana-Christine-DeeDee-Jean group.  They were pretty and had beautiful penmanship.  They wore pastel colored poor-boy ribbed sweaters and golden circle pins over their training bras; and nylon stockings with their linen flowered skirts.  I was a year younger and a nerd; my mom still sent me to school wearing undershirts and ankle socks.  But I knew that Jean would help them not to notice that. Each day I would follow Jean out to the school yard at recess and join the circle.  They never spoke to me, but I would stand with them, feeling special.

 A week or so into the school year, they dropped the hammer on me.

Dee Dee asked me to step out of the circle while the group did a football huddle for a minute, after which she stepped my way, and smiled, “We just voted.  You’re out of our group.”  Jean didn’t look at me.  In fact, she and I never spoke again.

Of course I was shocked, hurt and immediately shrugged and walked away, crying.

Another girl, Nancy, saw me crying and came over to me. 

“What happened?” she asked, her hand on my shoulder. 

“They kicked me out.” I sobbed. 

 “Those girls are mean.” She said, “Everyone knows that.  You can be with me.  I’ll be your friend.”

Thanks goodness for that moment.  Nancy and I became good friends over the next year; Soon after, I moved away, my father’s job taking us to the West Coast. Several years later, we returned when I was in tenth grade.  I was more grown up now; with a stronger sense of self, yet back in this school system I was afraid to make friends.  In that large high school I would easily get lost in the crowd, which helped me avoid those same girls who were still the popular ones; cheerleaders and class office holders and homecoming candidates.  They didn’t see me or recognize me. For them I was a forgotten memory, but I hadn’t forgotten them, and feared the possibility of them humiliating me again every day. It never happened.  Midway through that year I changed schools and my life changed; I made new friends.  I became a cheerleader and an office holder and a homecoming candidate. 

Finally, I let the seventh grade hurt go, or so I thought.

Years later, when I was a senior at the state university I spotted Dee Dee in the student union.  It had been over ten years, a lifetime in a child’s life, yet that awful moment was suddenly new.  I quickly turned and walked in the opposite direction, hoping she didn’t see me.  I know now that she couldn’t, because she had forgotten me the moment she slammed me in the school yard.   

In retrospect, school meanness in 1966 looks tame compared to the high-tech bullying and meanness that happens today.  What hasn’t changed is the early teen years are still a sensitive time, and there is little adults can do to soften the blows. Only a peer friendship can make a difference, as Nancy did for me.  And if my daughter is typical, this applies to late teens and early twenties as well.  The good news is, often there are messages onscreen of hope and caring, a version of Nancy for the internet age.

I understand now that the reason “Mean Girls” was such a success was because it offered some much-needed comic relief to the many of us who harbor bad memories that never go away.  Perhaps Rosalind Wiseman performed a great service by drawing attention to that, and Tina Fey helped us by making it possible to laugh about it.