What if we’re all mean girls, really?

Ride or die, or just die...

When the film Mean Girls came out, in 2004, I was in the middle of my own ‘queen bee’ situation: living with a real life Regina George and her devoted followers, in my second year of university.

It felt as though the writer, Tina Fey, had cracked open my brain and rummaged around inside for all the ways in which girls can use power, control and alienation to break each other. Even though I loved every minute, it hurt to watch.

Two decades on, here we go again. Fey has updated the movie for the next generation - the one with smartphones and social media instead of quaint hard copy Burn Books. 

I think we need it (even though the ‘Not your mother’s Mean Girls’ tagline can fuck right off because I’m still very youthful actually). Even in 2024, we’re not free from these sort of female friendship issues - and they’re not confined to school or university, either.

Since the first film was released, the term ‘mean girls’ has become shorthand for the sort of bitchy behaviour female friends supposedly inflict on one another remorselessly, all the time.

Using that definition, my former housemate was your classic Regina: swinging between being sweet and generous, and incomprehensibly cruel as a way of protecting her own social standing.