What happens to all the mean girls

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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?

I see. I mean maybe being in the ‘popular’ group is the reason you think there were no mean girls? You wouldn’t have really been a target for those mean girls, because they tend to pick on those who don’t have many friends/are more isolated as they’re easier victims.

I’m sure if you asked one of those girls who was not in the popular group they’d have a different answer as to whether there were mean girls at school.

I recently looked up the mean girls on fb. The ones I could find seem largely unremarkable. A few quite obviously had shitty upbringings (obvious now, via social media - didn't know at the time).

Wondering if I was also a mean girl. With hindsight I prob did a few things that I'd call mean now - laughing at people, a bit of gossiping. But no bullying, going out of my way to make people miserable, humiliating people etc....surely those people know they did that, even if they don't want to publicly admit it.

One of the really nasty girls from my school is a deputy head too! I often wonder if she thinks about her own behaviour when kids who are being bullied come to her.

There was quite a lot of girls from different backgrounds in my school, so the mean girls took different paths. However, what a lot of them have in common is that they’ve stayed very close to home and tend to still have the same little cliques. A couple of them still spend every weekend at the pub where we used to underage drink. They tag each other on Facebook. It’s a bit sad really.

"The one I went to school with is an estate agent now"

She will be getting her comeuppance very soon.

I didn't really have these at my school. But one girl who at primary wasn't very nice to anyone got in touch with me some years ago on Facebook and said she realised she was an arsehole at school and is embarrassed she was like that. I know of another friend who was contacted by a school bully seeking closure. My friend just ignored it.

Depends - some do change I feel, one of the mean girls that bullied me was arrested for terrorism offences at one stage though.

One has a dead end life and job.

One has done very well and is a human rights lawyer.

And one is a therapist.

The nasty bully who made DD's life hell in year 10 doesn't stay friends with anyone from school, and makes a lot of money on OnlyFans. I know this because there was a newspaper article about her in the local paper.

@Kanaloa As I was typing that I knew you would respond to me with that 😆.

A lot of us from 6th form are still in touch with each other or have connections (my best friends are from the same school) & if anyone was a bully I'm sure it would have come out by now. I'm not saying no one felt insecure but I do think it was a bit of a bubble. There wasn't really anyone who was unpopular if that makes sense.

One of the meanest girls I knew at school is now a successful comedian and wrote a sitcom popular on here. She did fine.

I wasn’t known as a mean girl, quite popular, but I did some mean things-ostracised people, destroyed their lunch etc. I am mortified by that behaviour and go out of my way not to be that person now. Age has given me some understanding-I had a dreadful home life, my mother died, we were very poor and my father hated being left with a teenage girl so I had to fend for myself. I’ve talked a lot with my kids as they grew up, talked about not liking people and how to handle it without meanness, being on the receiving end of meanness and what to do about it. And I call out meanness at work when I see it.

@Hoppinggreen Thank you for that honest response. It's refreshing to hear someone admit their mistakes and to have worked on it.

So many of us have been mean at some point. Whether it's as a result of our upbringing, our own view of ourselves at the time or haphazard circumstance , that we acknowledge our failings and better them is to grow into better people.

Intrigued!

Definitely not a mean girl (also a bullying victim) but all seemed to have multiple kids very quickly at a young age and raised mean kids

The funny thing is they’re classed as the poor family of the street.

Hilarious. How does the street classification work? Is it a formal thing with rankings, or is it just a case of a knowing look shared between the other residents? Who needs mean girls when you’ve got mean neighbours!

As to the question, I don’t recall any real ‘mean girls’. Apart from one truly awful character (a lad), memories of people at school are much more mixed with no out and out villains. I was bullied a bit, and to my eternal shame gossiped horribly about a former close friend when we fell out. I didn’t even think about it until I was much older - just struck me one day. I think it’s easy to gloss over our own bad behaviour. Likewise, when I think about girls who weren’t very nice to me, I can see good and bad in them.

One of the ones at my school works in PR for a business based in our home town. I just had a look. She seems happy enough, I suppose. It wouldn’t be my choice of life - I couldn’t wait to get out of that place - but we are all different after all. 🤷‍♀️

I did allow myself a teeny bit of schadenfreude at her hairdo, but that probably says something bad about me - the difference being that the thought will remain in my head rather than being loudly announced to the whole class for a giggle... Given that it’s anonymous on here, I don’t feel that sharing it counts!

I bumped into one of the others a couple of years after leaving school - again, still in our crappy hometown. I was back for a quick visit. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. She was awful to me at school so I don’t feel bad for dropping a death stare at her - doubt I’d recognise her now mind you, or be bothered much if I did.

So based on that totally unrepresentative sample, they don’t seem to have branched out much beyond their comfort zones of being big fish in small ponds. I guess when you’ve been the queen bee it must not give you much impetus to get out into a bigger world?

I would say our school means girls are all exactly the same.
They tend to own small businesses that their husbands launder money through, have husbands that cheat/flirt with much younger women.
They all have a very similar hairstyle to what they had 15 years ago, and are not starting to over do it on the 'tweakments' and have puffy cheekbones and frozen foreheads.
Their children invariably where clothes that are a bit too old for them (crop tops on 6 year olds).
To me They seem stunted, like nasty little bonsai trees.

@eltonjohnsglasses

Well of course your friends from sixth form might not have been bullies - I wasn’t suggesting they were. I was saying that being part of a ‘popular’ group would of course have protected you from any really mean girls, who would have picked on easier targets, which might explain why you think there weren’t any mean girls in your whole school when it’s in fact really unlikely. I always swerve schools etc that say they have ‘no bullying’ because generally that just means they ignore bullying. Every school has bullies, mean kids etc.

*are now starting

Fortunately I haven't seen or heard about any of them in decades as I moved to another country. I honestly can't remember any of their names.

Agree with @RewildingAmbridge

They become the mean mums at the school gates.

There's a reason we have so many threads from Mums baffled by the behaviour at school drop off.

They become bitches

I think most of the mean girls were probably just young women struggling to find their place in the world. Possibly not in the best way. But people work with what they've got.

I wasn't a 'mean girl'. Nor was I affected by them.

I do think both sides of the coin were being failed.

My observation was that 'mean girls' felt powerless in some way, so used the tools they had to make themselves feel better. Unfortunately the victims were also powerless in some way in the school hierarchy so were an easy target.

I actually never saw the 'mean girls' as mean, rather damaged. Their outcome depends on the subsequent help they were able to access I imagine.

Either way, schadenfreude isn't a particularly good look.

Doesn't that make you the 'mean girl' now if you indulge?

Better to get past and not give a fuck I say.

I think some of these comments are a bit "mean girl" tbh. So if you work or admin, nursing, childcare or retail and you were a mean girl you've got your comeuppance? Seriously?

Yikes. There must be something about Brighton... this one is there too.

@Kanaloa I'm just saying I don't know anyone who says they were bullied. Like I said we fell out with each other, did some bitching, got pissed off but we always made up.

Tbh we were a very diverse school but not that diverse in terms of socio economics as it was a nice part of London & we were mixed a lot by the school, so in maths I wouldn't be sitting next to my out of school friends or they wouldn't even be in my class so my partner would be my maths friend, same for sports teams. I also think one benefit of growing up in London is individuality is seen as a good thing so no one would be teased for looking different. When I left London for another city for uni I felt insecure for pretty much the first time as everyone tended to dress & style themselves very similar & it wasn't my "look" at all.