Red, White and Femme: When Mean Girls Grow Up20

by Darrah de jour

When I was in eighth grade, after two years of scratching, clawing, whining and whimpering outside the door of the popular girls, I was finally let in. I scored a cute boyfriend, who, without coincidence, was my BFF Paula’s* boyfriend’s best friend. Paula (a Queen Bee) was a transplant from a nearby school and was part Filipino with gorgeous thick black hair, thick black eyebrows, tan skin and a smattering of freckles on her nose. She wasn’t particularly thin and this made me happy. I was happy because I was 13 and absolutely obsessed with my weight. Plus, if she was super-popular and not super-skinny, then maybe I could be too!

I was dreadfully insecure, and covered this up by being overly-nice, pleasing everybody within a four mile radius, not doing things my popular friends told me not to, and doing pretty much anything they approved of. This included wearing overalls with one suspender hanging down, walking during P.E. instead of running, even though I was a great runner (thus, getting a B instead of an A), ditching class and going to the mall to occasionally shoplift nail polish and other assorted sundries, and talking back to my parents about curfew.

Eighth grade got even more complicated when one of the other popular girls, Karly* (a Middle Bee), a beautiful, thin, big-boobed, pouty-lipped girl with more sexual experience than li’l me, fell for the same boy that I liked. Eddie had been flirting with me by whispering in my ear on the way to class that he wanted to fuck me. These were some pretty advanced little nothings. I just giggled. Really, I was mortified, but given that he was a year older and about three inches taller than the rest of the pimply faced guys in our class, plus a legend on the b-ball court, I dealt.

One night, Eddie came over to my house. Well, he cat-called me from outside my window. And when I came outside, he French kissed me and felt me up over my Calvin and Hobbes T-shirt. I remember his friend watching from the driver’s seat, and that he never turned off the headlights. Afterward, Eddie told me not to tell anyone. I recall feeling instantly ashamed, and a pang weighted my gut – I had done something wrong? I figured he was embarrassed about his affiliation with me and wanted to keep it secret, in the same way girls take guys to some restaurant in a weird part of town when they don’t want anybody to see or meet ‘em. He didn’t molest me (although the experience was less than gratifying for me) and he didn’t have a girlfriend. So why the secrecy?

I didn’t have a lot of time to wonder. I instantly dialed up Paula, and told her what had happened. Her retort I will never forget. ”What about Karly? What is she gonna say?”

Despite promising she would never tell a single soul. Ever! Paula told Karly. I spent the next two months exiled from the popular girls. Of course, it was Bat Mitzvah season, and I had garnered a hefty amount of pink, glittery invitations and my mom had already bought expensive gifts for these soon-to-be ‘adults.’ So, I trudged through school, and then the weekends. Through P.E.’s alone, and through lunches (I was now back talking to the ‘nerds’ from whom my ego was sure I’d transcended). And Derek and I broke up. Even girls I didn’t know made fun of me. They didn’t even know why they were doing it. I got yelled at by strangers at lunch. I began eating at the lunch tables, instead of parading my Diet Coke and new NYC lipstick shade next to the planters in the middle of the courtyard, where everybody could watch me and my friends and our hypercolor clothes. One Skidz suspender licking the pavement. I considered joining band.

Until one day, out of nowhere, Paula called me after school to let me know that Karly had decided to forgive me and “the group” would too. Paula said she’d arranged it, and credit should go to her. I thanked Paula profusely, and she called me “sweetie.” I was back in. Forget the fact that she was the Puppet Master who had used all the girls in “the group” like marionettes to entertain her court. Forget the fact that I had trusted her and she had betrayed me. Forget the tangible lessons about how downright shitty me and my friends were to ‘the nerds’ –– and yet they were the only ones to include me once I was ousted from Popularville. Forget band. I was cool again.

I told my mother. She wasn’t happy. I believe she said something graceful and motherly, something to the effect of “Screw them!” My mom, god love her, has always had the potty mouth of a sailor. Wanting to be just like her when I was a kid earned me the brother-coined nickname Eddie Murphy Jr. But I digress… Mom told me that we’d grown closer over the past eight weeks, and she just knew she was going to lose me.

But, I never did forget what happened that year in eighth grade. And it never really was the same. Shayla* (an Afraid-to-Bee), a girl in the lower tier of “the group” had risen through the ranks and surpassed most to land in my coveted spot next to Karly and Paula, and she wasn’t too thrilled about my return. She even tried to start a physical fight with me in art class that the teacher had to break up. I never fully trusted my friends, and I got so angry and panicked about socializing with them that my knees used to shake and my heart would race. Did I mention this was junior high school?

Those girls have inevitably grown up to become women. And yet, our society has not changed much in regard to how we allow women to express their anger. We can’t. Women who express their anger like men are dubbed ‘angry women.’ In case you hadn’t noticed, society doesn’t like angry women. I don’t know a lot of women that aren’t angry however. Not unless they are on heavy doses of Lithium. I do know a lot of women who stifle their shit. Who would be a psychologist’s dream. Who could be called passive-aggressive. Maybe even bi-polar. Who appear fine on the outside, but I’d be damned if I didn’t find a razor blade hidden in their VS panties.

These are the women who have cheating husbands. These are the women who haven’t been given the raise they deserve. These are the women throwing up their dinner in the big stall when you dry your hands halfway and jet to give her privacy. These women are no different than you or me. We’ve learned to gossip, trash talk, stink eye, suppress, cry in private, and throw up our hands. We’ve learned to eat funny and obsess over Gilt Groupe and dye our teeth and bleach our assholes. We’ve learned how to change our molecules, adapt, be chameleons, receive and give until our skin crawls. But, we never did learn what to do with all these crappy feelings. Cuz in 2011 it’s still not considered all that cool for a woman to lose her shit. Not with the kids, not with her man, not at work, and not with her friends. But, covert missions to seek out and destroy? We got that one covered.

*Names have been changed to protect the accused. And me. Those bitches be scary!

If you dug this story, check back next month, when Darrah chats with the creative forces behind the movie Mean Girls, and experts in the field of female friendships and the teen bullying epidemic.

Photos: Bully, Sunshine and Meow in Schooled.

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