Free BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine by Unknown Page A

asserting that girls themselves, not the popular culture that feeds them, are the “prime enforcer of these standards.”
    Furthermore, though Wiseman is genuinely interested in the health, safety, and success of teen girls, those reporting on her work are not. The revelation of the news articles and TV specials that followed the 2002 release of Queen Bees and Odd Girl Out was not that America had created an emotionally stifling culture for its daughters that sometimes caused them to act out in calculated and hurtful ways, but that girls were, well, mean. The constructive ideas suggested by Wiseman, Simmons, and others for promoting self-esteem and challenging the teen social system were left out of nearly every article on the subject. In a March 2002 article in The Observer (U.K.), Tim Field, author of Bullycide (and presumably an authority on this sort of thing), declares girls “better” at bullying than boys and is “appalled” by the lengths to which girls go to commit acts of relational aggression. A 2002 episode of Oprah on “the hidden culture of girls’ aggression” revolved not around the question of why popularity has become paramount to teen girls’ existence or how that might be changed, but, as Oprah.com summarized it, “Why are girls so mean?” Questions of cultural and social responsibility for girls’ well-being were quickly lost in the sensationalistic and frequently sexist rush to reveal “the truth” about girls. In the ensuing melee, the authors’ compelling ideas were spun into stereotypes disguised as social science.
    At best, mean-girls theory has been lumped in with the larger field of bully psychology, completely ignoring the gender element except when it provides a little added titillation. At worst, the subject has become a safe cover for hostilities and fears about teenage girls and their power. The media’s interest seems to be less about spreading awareness of behavior that hurts girls than about the potential of having real, psychological proof that the only asses girls kick are each other’s.
    While most of the media dust has settled around this “crisis,” mean-girls theory has left its imprint on pop culture. One of the most obvious is the aforementioned film, which alternately embraces and mocks its source material, one moment parodying the idea that “meanness” is something that can be exorcised, the next suggesting that one can be reformed
with some well-timed apologies. The film showcases, at its dramatic turning point, a style of consciousness-raising that Wiseman developed for her youth-mentoring program. When hostilities are high and all the film’s female students are mad at each other, they must engage in a practice Wiseman calls “owning up,” which entails a girls-only group publicly apologizing to each other. (Curiously, the practice was omitted from the curriculum for boys that Wiseman later developed.) Mean Girls scoffs at the act’s potential to heal wounds—in fact, it shows the possibly more realistic outcome of dividing the girls further.
    However, when Cady does her own “owning up” after being elected prom queen, it achieves the desired forgiveness, and in the end everyone hangs out in one big, nonjudgmental group. But the plot points that take them there are suspect: Innocent Cady doesn’t become a Machiavellian power puppeteer because she has anger to vent; she does so just because it’s so damn easy. Conversely, the film’s end finds former Queen Bee Regina channeling her hostility into a new life as a lacrosse player, suggesting that her anger didn’t stem from any specific place, and that her emotional health is simply dependent on “burning it off” in a socially acceptable manner. Likewise, sarcastic Janis is mellowed by the love of mathlete Kevin G. (These are, of course, age-old ideas for how to calm overly aggressive women.) And in the “owning up” scene, a teacher—played by the film’s screenwriter, Tina Fey—comments,