There is not much that is good about the term “catfight”. The description of conflicts between girls is condescending towards those concerned. They are reduced to figures who do not really have much power, who fight over something insignificant. The fight is comical and spicy, and never really threatening. But “catfight” is also an expression that has a negative impact on the person who uses it. It’s a word for sitcoms and tabloid headlines. That’s how you hear the forest laughter that accompanies it. It is a trivialization of a particular kind of strife, a feminine strife, which is no less striking or merciless even if no one is put to death. This year marks twenty years since the cinema premiere of “Mean Girls”. It might seem like the high school comedy became a classic before the pink paint had dried. It is the story of Cady, played by Lindsay Lohan, who has grown up with her scientist parents traveling in what is vaguely referred to as “Africa”, before she is thrown straight into a brutal American school life. NOT HARMONIOUS: The daring Santa costumes of “The Plastics,” including newcomer Cady (Lindsay Lohan), portray a harmonious friendship. In reality it is different. Photo: Mary Evans Picture But as much as that, it’s a story about the gang Cady so wants to be a part of, the trio of pretty, thin girls with long, shiny hair. The leader, of the gang and of the school, is the unattainable Regina, played by Rachel McAdams. The first conversation between Regina and Cady sets the tone for what is to come. “You’re like, really pretty,” says Regina. “Thanks,” says a confused Cady. “So you agree?” Regina says. “What?” – “You agree that you are really pretty?” For those who have experience with this sort of thing, this is a scene that distills a type of game that can take place in girl gangs. Regina has learned that Cady is pretty, pretty enough to be a potential threat. Quickly and effectively, she makes Cady insecure, putting her in a position where she can be arrested for the deadly sin of conceit. At the same time, it is impossible to catch Regina on anything. She just gave a compliment. COMEDY STAR: Tina Fey was well known from Saturday Night Live when she wrote and starred in “Mean Girls”. Photo: Matt Sayles / AP This is pure aggression, filtered through a dazzling smile. It was something that fascinated Tina Fey. The comedian, actor and screenwriter had for many years delivered jokes to and on the comedy program Saturday Night Live. In 2002, she read Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes, a non-fiction book about relationships between teenage girls. “Girls are able to spend a lot of time with someone while hating them,” she later explained. About the book, she said: “It was about girls and it was mean and violent. And that appealed to me.” The book was about some of the same anger, the same hostility, that she recognized from her teenage years. Fey hadn’t been a queen in pink, she’d been an outsider avenging the world’s injustices by delivering killer lines. This brought her into the script for Mean Girls, which she wrote after reading Wiseman’s book. It’s not just the popular girls who are mean there, but also those who are out to push them off the pedestal. Fey’s script also captured a duplicity in this behavior. It may not be good to be naughty, but it can feel liberating, intoxicating. RECORDING: Reneé Rapp plays Regina George in the new “Mean Girls”, which is based on the musical which is in turn based on the film from 2004. Photo: Paramount Pictures / Jojo Whilden In this country, evolutionary psychologist Vibeke Ottesen is one of those who have been busy of aggressiveness, and how it behaves differently in female and male environments. In a column in Klassekampen in September 2020, she wrote that research on competition between people often concludes that men are more driven by competition and concerned with status than women. But when the research takes men as its starting point, there is a danger that it overlooks or takes women’s rivalry lightly. This rivalry more often occurs internally within a group, and without anyone resorting to physical violence. Ottesen refers to evolutionary psychology when she writes that women have historically been dependent on having a strong position within their own group, in order to get help in vulnerable situations. It can be when the children are small, when resources are scarce. Therefore, women can benefit from being on guard when other women challenge this position, and react aggressively. PART OF A TREND: Cameron Diaz and “Bad Teacher” entered a series of comedies about destructive women. Photo: Reuters Still others have seen the smiling manipulations like those we see in “Mean Girls” as something closely linked to the structures of society. When girls are expected to be sweet and kind, their hostility has to be squeezed into a more subtle form. When women are denied access to positions of power, they are relegated to fighting for dominance in a smaller area, over something that may seem insignificant compared to the real wars of the world. If you believe more in one explanation after another, it was as if “Mean Girls” opened a floodgate. There were many out there who delighted in seeing girl intrigue portrayed in an open and convincing way. After 2004, there were a lot of films about girls who in no way liked each other well, and who didn’t have much left for others either. In 2011 came both “Bad Teacher” with Cameron Diaz and “Young Adult” with Charlize Theron. ALSO PART OF A TREND: Charlize Theron played an anything but admirable protagonist in “Young Adult”. Photo: Reuters Both portrayed petty, vindictive ladies who always blamed others and never themselves. Both films led to heated debate. Some celebrated badass women in the name of equality, and found it liberating to see women on film sweep moral boundaries as easily as men had done before them. Others believed that mean was mean, and that there was nothing feminist or classy about behaving badly. Perhaps the best of the recent films, “Bachelorette”, came in 2012. The occasion is a wedding. Three of the bride’s childhood friends troop up, frothing with envy behind pasted-on smiles. What ten or twenty years earlier would have been a silly farce ends up as a study in female shame, self-loathing and destructiveness. The film was then also penned by Leslye Headland, who a few years later would have great success with another filmed story about an avalanche by a woman, the Netflix series “Russian Doll” with Natasha Lyonne. STUDY IN SELF-ACT: Rebel Wilson, Kirsten Dunst and Lizzy Caplan starred in “Bachelorette”. Photo: Chris Pizzello / Ap “Bachelorette” also gave an insight into another alluring side of women who choose not to take a self-critical, depressive round with themselves when something goes wrong. The main characters here refuse to acknowledge that something, somewhere, could be their fault. “Fuck everybody,” says the leader wolf Regan, played by a wonderful Kirsten Dunst. It may not be good life advice as such, but it is easy to imagine situations where it could be the booster many people need. Sometimes you just have to push the self-doubt and the tears away and go on. Where is the bad girl today? She stuck her head out of the water in “Euphoria”, although the depressive side of the misfit young girls is the most prominent there. When pop culture has become more morally vigilant, there is not as much room to be limitless. And the musical version of “Mean Girls,” which hit theaters earlier this year, was widely seen as more toothless than the original. NAUGHTY? Taylor Swift, here at the Friends Arena in Stockholm this year, can be aggressive and vengeful in her lyrics. Photo: Kim Erlandsen / news P3 But perhaps a vein of the bad girl can be seen in the most famous woman of all right now, Taylor Swift. You can say a lot about Swift, but despite her often girly taste in clothes, she’s not exactly cute. The harsh and vengeful is clearly found in her lyrics. If you hit, she hits back. Maybe the mean girl won in the end. Because the hordes of fans no longer see these qualities as bad, but as necessary in the struggle to assert themselves in a demanding world. Published 27/07/2024, at 17.29
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Finally, mean girls were taken seriously. – Speech
