Author's Note: This article by no means encourages the actions that are described.
You know that girl - the one decked out from head to toe in the hottest clothes. She struts in wearing Abercrombie and Fitch jeans that hug her hips, and Ugg boots cover her small feet, She's wearing the brand-new Hollister shirt and totes the newest Coach. We all know her - she's universal and hated in almost all her forms. That girl is a beauty queen, but is cold and shiny; totally fake. We love to hate her - the mean girl on campus.
We all know what she does to girls, she invokes all out girl wars and brings her frenemies to tears. But have we ever been her?
I always knew this girl in school that was the exact picture of my description. Everyone was fake around her and totally hated her behind her back. She was backstabbing and totally shallow. And I have to say, I really hated her.
But lately I've come to realize that maybe I'm more like her that I ever imagined.
Friends are the cornerstones of our world and we always love them and want to spend so much time with them - we can totally count on them for anything. But I realized that in my group of friends, something bad was happening.
In ninth grade, we did something terrible to one of our closest friends and did the most treacherous thing a girl does to another - we gave her the boot. It was something out of a young adult drama. This girl was somewhat new in our group of friends and we were starting to tire of her. My friends and I decided something had to be done. But oh, we did not ditch this girl gracefully - it was reminiscent of an atomic bomb.
We would always shut her down saying mean things like "OMG, I can't believe you're going to eat that - don't you need to lose some weight?" and "Like we invited you, you always ruin a good time." But girls tend to stay with their friends even if it kills them because it's better to be in the group and hating it than out of it. The last straw of our friendship was when some of my friends had broken into her locker and moved around her books - which we knew she absolutely hated. The war had begun. We stopped duking it out underneath the eye of adults when she went straight to the office and reported us. We got a nice punishment but face it, we were scorned and we weren't going to let her win. The vice-principal ordered us to be nice to her, but they can't tell us who to invite to our parties, right? We would specifically mention parties we were all going to in front of her to be mean, fill up the lunch table before she got there, and basically make her life terrible. The final ditch was really when our queen bee went into her face and announced "Everyone hates you. Go back to wherever you came from because we don't have a spot for you here and we never will. Your days here are over and you're at the bottom of the social ladder. Just consider yourself a loser. Now get out of my face." We watched and snickered as she ran out crying.
Now it's two years later and the queen bee who ousted our first girl is about to have the same fate. We never say we hate her to her face but everyone knows it and we talk incessantly about how we can avoid her and do our own thing. We'd never do something like that to our former queen bee - that would be more than a slap in the face and we're not THAT mean are we? She always gets the better of us and we make fun of her. One morning my friend told her that "Honestly hun, you need to shave your upper lip. Who wants to date a man?" Our new least favorite ran out crying. Around the group was silence of disbelief and a strange tinge of happiness. And we know that someday she'll join the first at a lunch table all alone. We just keep doing it again and again. But we can't help it, we're just turning into girls that everyone hates. And we don't even realize. How can I save my friendship with our former queen bee without getting burned first. Being in the group and hating it is better than sitting alone right? Having fake friends is better than none at all- right? Or is it?
I never really knew how mean we were until I look back on it all. I feel as fake as the girls in Mean Girls and shiny like the plastic they represented. I gossip about my supposed friends behind their backs and honestly, most of them I can't trust with my secrets. We all may look happy but when one of us turns our back, small daggers hit it every time. I have become what I used to ridicule. It's not just the debutantes anymore. Because I'm a mean girl. I wish I could change but sometimes a girl's gotta do what she's gotta do. And I'm going to do what I do best. Watch your back.
Lyd1212
"Don't know where I parked my car. Don't know who my real friends are. I put my faith in you . . . What a stupid thing to do" -The Veronicas, "When it All Falls Apart"
