What I Regret About Being a Real Life “Mean Girl” Twenty Years Ago
A candid look at my abhorrent behavior
I saw Mean Girls for the first time as a senior in high school. All of my friends had seen it in theaters the year before, but I thought I was too cool for a film about catty high-schoolers — after all, I was almost in college — so I’d skipped it. But just before graduation, I found myself huddled in a blanket, home sick with nothing to do. Flipping through the channels, Mean Girls was just starting, so I decided to give it a try.
Cady’s story drew me in slowly with clever jokes and intelligently embellished characters: By the time the credits were rolling, I was obsessed. Mean Girls was funny, emotionally realistic, and more relatable than anything I’d seen before. Who couldn’t understand the desire to fit in, the pain of being publicly ridiculed, and the swiftness with which other girls turned on one another? I’d been personally victimized by the popular girls I’d gone to school with. It wasn’t until later, as I thought more about “The Plastics,” that I realized that I had also once been a mean girl as well.
I grew up in a family that moved constantly. I went to four elementary schools, two middle schools, and two high schools across two countries and three states. Out of necessity, I developed a foolproof process…
