The REAL Mean Girl

Who is the real mean girl? Is she the passive aggressive rich blonde? Or is she the scary, heartless emo girl? Nope. The real mean girl is none of the above. She’s the “outcast”, the girl next door, the kind-hearted best friend. Ladies and gentlemen, we have been lied to. The real mean girl has been under our noses the entire time. We were made to believe that a couple of harsh words make someone the meanest girl at school, when in reality, it’s the one who has been plotting against our backs the entire time. On the outside, she may be nice, or unpopular, but on the inside, she has a stone cold heart.

Intimidation

The most common mean girl characteristic is the idea of everyone being intimidated by her. She has something that either everyone wants, or everyone is scared of. By default, that makes her mean, and she has to continue with that persona whether she likes it or not. Jade West was the first mean girl on screen that didn’t fit the typical idea of what the antagonist should look like. She wasn’t rich, and she didn’t have blonde hair. So what made her mean? Was it because she had a lot of repressed anger from her neglecting father who didn’t believe in her dreams of becoming an actress, so she lashed out at everyone who crossed her? Yes, yes it is. Jade West’s first “mean” moment is when she spills coffee on Tori, after Tori was all up on her boyfriend. It’s almost as if Jade worked so hard to get into Hollywood Arts because of her passion, and Tori got in (without a passion for singing) by a single performance. If I was Jade, I would be angry too. Then for the rest of the show, we see that Jade has to keep up with her intimidating persona for people to take her seriously. But even then, she is still shown to have love for her friends, even if she isn’t the best at showing it. Okay, okay, let’s say we give Tori the benefit of the doubt. So what if she got into Hollywood Arts easily, it’s not like she wanted to get in, so why does Jade hate her? I’ll tell you why. Imagine you go to a performing arts school in Hollywood, and you’ve planned this huge one woman production that you’ve been working really hard on. You’ve booked the stage months in advance for your performance, and you can’t wait until everyone sees it, so you can finally prove that you’re a capable actress and screenwriter. Then comes along the girl next door, who’s having a crisis because her school doesn’t have a prom. She rips away the stage from you, and completely takes away your performance so she can have a stupid school dance. If you ask me, and almost everyone who has seen Victorious, the real mean girl isn’t Jade, it’s Tori.

Popularity

Okay so we know being intimidating makes you a mean girl, so what else? Popularity. Almost every on-screen mean girl is the “most popular girl at school”. Regina George, everyone hated her for being mean, but they still worshipped her. She lived a cookie-cutter life with fake friends. No, I’m not saying I feel bad for her, because frankly she’s rich, skinny, white and pretty. I’m saying that with all of her characteristics, and the position she was put into, she was the default mean girl. Karen couldn’t be the main mean girl because she was too dumb, and Gretchen couldn’t either because she was a follower, not a leader. The real mean girl was Janis. She didn’t plot against Regina for a rumour she made when they were in grade 6, she did it because she was jealous. If we’re being realistic, Regina and Janis were the same soul in different bodies. They both were internally evil, but one was more extreme, Janis obviously. Regina was passive aggressive, wicked through words. Janis committed heinous acts. She took away Regina’s body, boyfriend, friends, popularity and reputation. The worst part about Janis was the way she victimized herself. When everything went south, she blamed Cady. She blamed her for becoming a real plastic. When all along it was Janis’ fault for putting Cady in that position to spy on them. Janis was in fact, the evil, jealous, crazy and stalker-like mean girl.

It’s interesting to think about how this trope plays out in real life. A lot of people may have that one toxic friend who seems nice, but secretly hates you or is jealous of you. Or the opposite, the cold-hearted mean girl actually has a bad home life, or she’s going through something. A movie trope like this always leads back to a lesson we’ve been learning about ever since we were little kids. Don’t judge a book by its cover.