Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

Original poster

What happens to all the mean girls

354 replies

RedPanda901 · 09/10/2022 14:35

My daughter was talking about the mean girls in her school and it made me ask what she meant. I mean I knew what she meant but wondered what her experience of it was. In her words: they are dismissive of the girls they don't like; talk down to other girls; laugh and bully them to make others do what they want.

Just out of interest…
Are you a mean girl? Were you a mean girl? What made you change?

OP posts:
IntentionalError · 09/10/2022 16:17

The meanest girl at my school has been in the news recently. She’s just got a big, high-profile new job. The salary package includes a flat in central London, a big house in the country and a chauffeur driven limo.

Apparently it isn’t going at all well for her, she’s made several serious fuck ups and her colleagues are thinking of knifing her already.

Grin
kegofcoffee · 09/10/2022 16:19

Interested by the people saying the mean girls did well in life.

Completely opposite here. They are all doing 'ok', but in many cases the ones they bullied (including me) and doing better.

Im from a very deprived area, where no one was well off. Most of them didn't focus academically, didn't go to uni and therefore didn't leave the area to meet a wealthy husband. Whereas, a lot of the bullied ones went to uni, where they met their partner and now both work in successful careers.

Carrotzen · 09/10/2022 16:19

In my experience a lot of the girls at my school showed some mean girl behaviour. It depends what we are classing as a mean girl

The girl who was mean to me at school joined the army, she seems to be doing okay. But she was just a bit of a bitch not a full blown bully

The boys were bullies and they've all done okay. I don't know if they will ever even acknowledge they were bullies.

faffadoodledo · 09/10/2022 16:20

Babdoc · 09/10/2022 15:25

There was a mean girl in the shithole rather crappy outer London suburb where I grew up.
I moved 400 miles away to uni, but on a very rare visit south as a final year medical student, I discovered her selling cabbages in the local greengrocer’s shop. Not that there is anything wrong with selling cabbages, but I confess to a tiny smirk and a teeny bit of schadenfreude… Grin

DD gets the same feelings when she comes home. Went to dodgy comp and was hated for wanting to get on. The mean girls are still in the hometown waiting to get married. Again, nothing wrong with that. But like you DD has a great career backed up by academic achievement and can't resist a quiet smile to herself when she runs into her old tormentors.

Ihatecocomelon · 09/10/2022 16:20

The mean girls at my primary and secondary schools now have lots kids (some with a few different men) with men but aren't married and have been engaged for a very long time.

NotQuiteUsual · 09/10/2022 16:26

The ones I've run into since school we're all so very normal. They all seemed to think they were the one in their social circle that wasn't mean to others. They just passively watched their friends cruelty, which 1. Wasn't true and 2. Would be just as bad.

But as I said, they were all living very normal lives, a mix of single mums, married sahms, career climbers, minimum wage jobs etc. The only thing they all had in common was dyed and quite lovely, blonde hair(nothing against blonde it's a lovely colour, just the truth).

slowquickstep · 09/10/2022 16:28

The main nasty bully in my school never bothered me as i thought she was a joke and she knew it as i laughed at her every time she walked past me flouncing her hair. She went too far one day with one of the younger girls and tore her ear lobe by pulling an earring out of the girls ear. So i gave her a good hiding. She never flounced in school again.

RFPO77 · 09/10/2022 16:32

At least 3 of them became my SILs ☹️ they're pretty, well off and MEAN!

Tistheseason17 · 09/10/2022 16:32

Rich bullies still doing well, riding horses and bullying rich husbands who work away to avoid them. They create mini versions of themselves and cycle repeats.

I just grew my confidence to call them out on their 💩 in front of others and taught my children to value themselves, use smartass responses and punch back harder so they are left alone.

@Joystir59 Fair play to you. My mum is a narcissist and it takes time, age anf life experience to recognise parental behaviour we do not want to repeat 😊

Vecnussy · 09/10/2022 16:34

I was bullied by the 'mean girls' for being part of the grebo/goth/alternative circle. They were all pretty and slim and confident, with their Jane Norman bags and all the boys liked them. They haven't expanded their social circle. Still have all the same friends, live in the same small villages, hang out with the same people, mostly married the same boys from school, mostly work in admin roles, nursing or have rich husbands. Meanwhile I've lived in 2 European countries and have settled in a different county nowhere near where I grew up, have friends all over the globe and have what seems like a much more varied life. I pity them to be fair, their worlds are very insular.

They're probably the ones on instagram who follow Mrs Hinch with the everything grey/beige houses.

Kanaloa · 09/10/2022 16:35

Just depends - I do think it’s a bit of a generalisation to talk about ‘mean girls.’ Just like in the movie all girls (and boys) can be and are sometimes mean to others. For all sorts of reasons. Some of those children who do something mean or are regularly mean will change when they’re older and more mature. Others will grow up to be the man who cuts you off in traffic then screams at you or the woman at work who says nasty things about colleagues and gossips about them. Just impossible to say what happens to mean girls.

stayathomer · 09/10/2022 16:36

Out of the mean girls in my class, two are now lovely and nurses, one is a top accountant in the US, and the rest are all well, they have great jobs and seem to be nice. I don’t know if any lessons ever got learned, or if the are as nice as they now seem but they definitely didn’t end up like the cliché of what would happen in a film or book!!!

donttellmehesalive · 09/10/2022 16:36

They don't know they were mean. I work with someone who was a mean girl, as verified by three different people she used to be mean to. She said hello to one of them on the street - I was with her - and the reply was 'why are you saying hello to me when you were horrible to me at school?' My colleague cried and said she must have misremembered or muddled her with someone else.

My own personal mean girl works in a fish a chip shop. Still very pretty.

bellamountain · 09/10/2022 16:37

Definitely agree they become the mean mums at the school gates. They also tend to still hang around with their old school friends because no one new will entertain them.

verdantverdure · 09/10/2022 16:39

Yes, the mean girls from my school are all still friends, and all married men from the same large friendship group based around the local pub, the last couple of unattached women married the last couple of unattached men in order to stay in the group I suspect. They probably all still live within a mile and a half of that pub.

DewinDwl · 09/10/2022 16:42

The mean girl I remember wasn't (isn't) pretty or rich, just a vicious bully. Growing up she became the other woman. Nobody has a good word to say about her. It's extraordinary that every time her name is mentioned people's faces change into disgust / contempt. Vile human being.

BloodyHellKen · 09/10/2022 16:42

From my personal experience the horrible girls (and boys) at secondary school seemed to leave education after 16 and disappear from my life. I have no idea hos they've ended up. This appears to be true from my son and daughters experience as well.
I've always assumed it's because most of these people aren't very academic so don't go on to do A levels and degrees.

EnjoythemoneyJane · 09/10/2022 16:42

RewildingAmbridge · 09/10/2022 14:56

They become the mean mums at the school gates.

This.

They don’t change. The cliquey, high status, cunty behaviour continues unabated because, just like school, they rarely get called out or shamed for any of it. They also busily produce the next generation of mean, bullying, entitled kids, so the cycle continues.

The only amusing development as an adult is watching competitive queen bees having to pretend to like one another, because they suddenly find they’re moving in social circles which are overrun with twats like them.

BloodyHellKen · 09/10/2022 16:44

That is not meant as any criticism of people who aren't academic btw.

PureBlackVoid · 09/10/2022 16:47

I’ll admit to being mean for a while, but the worst part is I was also bullied before that. Older girls bullied me, spread rumours. All sorts of other stuff, threats etc. I tried going about it the right way, telling my mum, teachers but it made it worse so I ended up being a complete bitter bitch for the last few years of school and got a reputation of being mean.

I’m fairly normal now, quite placid. I don’t really fit in to any of the extremes above, not wealthy/married a wealthy man, not poor with loads of kids, just an average life.

LazyLikeSundayMorning · 09/10/2022 16:48

I dunno but many of them seemed to have ended up working in retail across a small market town, from what I can gather from reports from my DD over a number of years. Needless to say, she is no longer working in retail, and is doing much better and is much happier. She liked retail, she didn't like bullying and cliques though.

No offence at all to all the not-mean girls (women) in retail btw. Just the mean ones who really ought to have grown out of it by now.

Serialcatmum · 09/10/2022 16:50

They come and work at my place it would seem 😂 (fyi I’m not and never have been a mean girl!)

Suetwo · 09/10/2022 16:52

In the majority of cases, vile, spiteful, manipulative, two-faced, bullying little bitches remain that way. My aunt is in an old folks home, and there is a group of old women in there who spread gossip, laugh behind people’s backs, etc, just as they did at school.

PeppermintyPatty · 09/10/2022 16:53

I work with someone who I’m pretty sure must have been a mean girl at school because she’s a bit of a cowbag now tbh. She’s very good at getting our male colleagues to think she’s excellent at her job, whereas the rest of us can see right through it. She will trample over anyone to get to the top. She’s all fake smiles and simpering, and I can’t bloody well stand her. She’s not a ‘woman’s woman’ - she’s not into the sisterhood at all, but also very big on ‘be kind’ and ‘oh it’s guinea pig* awareness week, we must do …’ (delete as appropriate).

also: a few mean girls are school mums. They are the ones who are prone to making bitchy comments and policing the content of the class WhatsApp (parents) group. Slightly braying, usually (but not always) blonde, swishy haired, athleisure wearing, David Lloyd membership, Range Rover driving. Most are very successful by having a high flying husband. Many are very well educated but choosing not to use their education.

the80sweregreat · 09/10/2022 16:54

I looked a few up on Facebook and many are just normal people with husbands and kids and seem very ordinary.
The one who made my life a bit of a misery at school was jilted at the alter ( so I heard on the grape vines ) I often think it was because she wasn't a very nice person, but it must have been horrible for her.
School days can be nasty