MGs

I have a confession to make: I never had Mean Girl experiences in high school. Sure, I was not the most popular or athletic, not the most beautiful or social, but I was never burned by that eternal flame called ‘Womanly Scorn’. Don’t hate me for this confession, because my college experiences more than made-up for my socially care-free high school years. But as a young adult it is a lot easier to escape the MGs…resign from the sorority, don’t sign the new lease, de-friend a few people on Facebook, get a job at a different mid-level restaurant and you’re basically home-free.

I just read an article about what happens to Mean Girls once they grow up last week, and the consensus was that mostly they just mature into nice, sweet ladies who you would never suspect were once masters in the art of torture. I have had no contact with any of my ex-sorority sisters therefore I was contented to believe that this is exactly what had happened to them. For about a week I hopefully clung to the belief that after a certain age, females just stop being Mean Girls. I am so naïve.

I got Mean Girl-ed yesterday. A full-on, surprise attack, full of cattiness. I never saw it coming. The MG was merely an acquaintance, not a dear friend, so the sting did not last long but in a split second I went from confident (ish) and happy, to being defensive and experiencing feelings of self-doubt. Awful! Now, never fear, reader, I bounced right back, but I will never ever again fall into the trap of thinking that women out-grow their MG habits. One of my (true) friends quickly rallied around me and explained that the perpetrator of this blow looked ‘boring’ on Facebook and was just jealous…I felt better, of course. But isn’t what I did with my friend EXACTLY what an MG would do? Scary isn’t it? Even though this individual will never know that I burned her right back, am I any better? Don’t misunderstand, this woman knew exactly what she was doing when she delivered her snide, cutting remark, but did that really mean that I had to do the same? And if she wasn’t a high-value person in my life, why did it bother me, even for the slightest second? The conclusion could be a bit unnerving…I can’t help but wonder…are we all Mean Girls?