Mean Girls’ popularity shows we are stuck in bitch mode

IT’S 2024, so you would imagine that modern society abhors the celebration of mean girls. Surely a woman lacking empathy and compassion would cause outrage, not adoration?

Nope – quite the opposite, as far as I can see. The world seems to be embracing mercenary females – you could even say we are in full bitch mode.

The launch this week of the musical remake of Mean Girls, 20 years after the original movie, has captured the current zeitgeist. I haven’t seen it myself for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the reviews don’t exactly endear – for example, Observer. com notes of the updated version: ‘Nothing to come in 2024 can possibly be worse.’

Then there’s this – surely life is hard enough without watching hateful, back-stabbing teen girls attempt to destroy each other?

Been there, done that, and I’m still trying to offload the psychological memorabilia, thanks all the same.

There may even be a scientific reason behind our love of nasty people (like the original movie’s protagonist Regina George, played by Rachel McAdams).

A study published in March of last year, in Elsevier’s Evolution And Human Behavior, revealed that making friends with unkind people actually could be a means of protection.

Researchers at Oklahoma State University found that both men and women sometimes prefer friends who are likely to be ‘vicious’ towards their enemies.

I’m not convinced, but hey – if you don’t laugh (and according to the latest reviews, you won’t), you’ll cry, and if you’re female, having lived through your teenage years, no doubt you’ve done plenty of that already.

Apparently, little has changed about the plot or morality of this tale. As far as I can tell, the resounding message of both the original and latest films seems to be the same – being nice doesn’t work, and nasty is contagious.

Meaningful qualities are sidetracked in this high school popularity competition, which ultimately leads Cady, played by Lindsay Lohan in the original, to become the anti-heroine, as she slowly morphs into one of the Plastics, the pretty-but-vile clique she is fighting against.

It’s a losing battle, and 20 years later, that’s still the case – as to make a lasting impact as a female (in Hollywood at least), it really seems to help if you’re not very nice right now.

Real-life meanness has even been referenced in the remake, with Megan Thee Stallion making a crude joke about an old infamous insult suffered by Lohan.

Harsh maybe, but the world is lapping it up – so far, the critically panned remake has surpassed box-office expectations.

And the poster girl of mean-girl mode has to be actress Sarah Snook’s Shiv Roy – the standout star of TV series Succession.

For her role as media tycoon Logan Roy’s ruthless daughter, Snook is also the golden child of the awards season, bagging Best Actress in a TV Drama Series at both the Golden Globes and the Emmy Awards last week.

In fairness, Snook’s brilliantly complex and cold character is the most likeable in TV’s most unlikeable family, as hellbent as each of them are on power and one-upmanship.

BUT her awards success proved one thing – she’s the type of character we love to hate. Similarly chilly is Jodie Foster in her new role as the main protagonist in the highly anticipated fourth series of HBO’s True Detective: Night Country. Speaking at the Los Angeles premiere of the show earlier this month, Foster described her character Detective Liz Danvers as an ‘Alaska Karen’ – ie not very pleasant at all.

‘Liz Danvers is awful,’ she said. ‘No two ways about it. She’s an awful, awful character. But you see why.’ (I’m not sure I want to now.) The actress went on to explain the differences between Danvers – who apparently swears like a fishwife – and her previous detective role in the terrifying Silence Of The Lambs, playing FBI trainee Clarice Starling.

‘Clarice is pretty different than Liz. I think Clarice probably wouldn’t have ended up continuing to be an FBI officer. I just feel like someday she would’ve quit and maybe worked in a soup kitchen or something,’ the actress mused.

Why did Jodie think Clarice wouldn’t have gone further in her chosen career? Because she was polite and softer and dared to show vulnerability (granted, not ideal, given her close proximity to a cannibal)?

This cultural perpetuation of women only getting places by either being brutish or Machiavellian is very confusing, especially at a time when kindness is much needed.

In fact, to be kind is aggressively insisted upon in social media (but as we’ve seen, some of the #bekind brigade can be anything but).

The strong female trope is a tricky one to get right, but the best ones I can think of represent strident, not-to-be-messed-with women – and yet, shock horror – with inherently feminine qualities.

Characters such as Clarice, Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, Rachel Weisz’s librarian Egyptologist Evelyn Carnahan in The Mummy – these are intelligent, empathetic females who brim with intuition and intelligence.

As a mum to two daughters, I struggle with the still-pervasive message that the tougher you are, the better life will be for you.

My eldest girl is more introspective, and is having some trouble with a bully in school.

Part of me wants to roar, ‘Give as good as you get’ – but what kind of parent would that make me?

She’s not a mean girl, and I hope she’ll never be (or at least, I pray it’s a passing phase). I’d like her to be resilient and quietly confident as she becomes the star of her own show. A real-life heroine – now that’s aspirational stuff.