Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary since the movie Mean Girls debuted. It has become a cult classic, launching the careers of some of today's hottest stars and confirming Tina Fey's brilliance. It's also created some incredibly memorable, highly quotable lines. "Is butter a carb?" and "That is so fetch!" are two of my favorites.
And while the movie is funny as hell, it's also highly relatable. Every single girl who has attended high school either was a mean girl, knew a mean girl, or was persecuted by a mean girl. And I'll go on record to state, I think mean girls suck.
I had one. Her name was Mitchie. (It wasn't really, but I won't share her real name, and this made up one rhymes with her personality.) She terrorized me through a chunk of middle school. She was a year older than me, and outweighed my pre-pubescent boy-shaped body by about 50 pounds.
When I entered sixth grade, she set her sights on me. She was taller than me, curvier than me, and liked my "boyfriend." And she wanted what I had. So she literally plotted against me to capture her prey while planning my demise. And this would all take place in the hallways of school, and on the weekends at Granite Rollo.
Yup, some badass s*it went down at our local roller skating rink. The lights would go down, and rather than making out in the corner like the other kids, I'd be hiding out in a group, attempting to protect myself from this girl. It was insanity for over a year, well into her eighth grade year.
This was well before the era of parents or schools taking serious note of bullying. Kids fended for themselves, and it toughened us up. It certainly did for me. Because something happened over the course of that time. I stopped being intimidated by her, and took stock of the situation rationally.
I realized this chick had nothing going for her. She might have had boobs, but that was about it. She was heavyset and unattractive. What she potentially had in natural assets were marred by her heinous personality. She wore garish makeup and trashy clothes. She was crass and rude to people, well beyond me. She had friends, but they just fed off of each other with their venomous words and taunts. Not of this was complemented by academic or athletic prowess…she just there. A bully with nothing to back up her giant roar.
And she was mean to me because I appeared weak. For a while, I was. I was small, and didn't know who I was yet. In the end, it turned out, she picked the wrong person.
I might have been intimidated at first, but I never backed down from her and she never broke me. And she never got her hooks into my boyfriend, who I dated through most of that time period. She might have had a big roar, and she loved to flash the claws, but I learned during that time I was the Queen of my own jungle. So step off, b*tch.
Mean Girls the movie was funny. Mean girls in real life aren't funny at all. Adolescence is hard enough, we don't need teen terrorists hijacking our already fragile self-esteem with their bulls*it games.
They are SO not fetch.
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