Mean Girls is one of my favorite movies of all-time, and I could relate so much with the characters as well as the storyline. Although my high school batch had our own cliques, we managed to stay united and avoided stereotyping people unless we knew them personally. For several times, the issue of labeling strangers and exclusivity among friends was tackled in my school writings and blog entries because it happened to me in real life.
Honestly, I felt happier and more accepted in high school rather than in my last two years in elementary. Four to six years ago, I didn’t want to go to school because of all the backstabbing and the unfair treatment some people gave towards me even though I never did anything against them. I joined some friends at breaktimes, but some of them secretly despised me and wanted me to be out of their group. To add the misery, I was stereotyped as “the nerd nobody likes” because I pushed myself to do well in school. My day wouldn’t end without hearing from a friend about two new people feeling bitter about me behind my back. The situation was so bad I even thought of transferring to a new school after my grade school graduation.
However, everything changed when I stepped to the bigger world full of reality, drama, and hysteria. In your typical high school movies, the cheerleaders bully the nice girls. On the contrary, I was glad it never happened to me in my own experience. In fact, I clicked with many of the girls who were in well-known cliques. As for the cliques I have known, they made all of their efforts to be pleasing and warm to those who were outside their circle. I am glad that all of the classes in our batch were close to each other, which makes us distinct from the others. Most of all, we did not care about the labels people thought of us. Each one of us had distinct characteristics, so our flaws were not an excuse to be labeled in such a harsh way.
Simultaneously, Mean Girls mirrors the fact that there would always be good and cruel judgments no matter what world we live in. Luckily, the table arrangements for each stereotype did not exist in our HS cafeteria. I bet none of us would have enjoyed our HS days had it happened.
