I never expected to feel nostalgic for the insult "fugly slut." Yes, that is a Mean Girls reference. And yes, today this newsletter is about "Mean Girls" — the new musical movie, but also the concept of "relational aggression" that inspired it — so if either of those things offend you, now would be the time to archive this email. But if you have ever been a girl in middle school, or parented a girl in middle school, or know somebody who is or who parents a girl in middle school, perhaps read on — because there are a lot of things about Tina Fey's new twist on her millennial cult classic that mimic real life. I recently wrote about the new movie — and the changes made to the original — in an essay for Opinion. Like how, in the new "Mean Girls," adults and teenagers alike are more aware of the importance of inclusivity and more attuned to the seriousness of subjects that used to be treated as fodder for jokes. Gone are the punchlines about the film's inept P.E. teacher making out with his students. The jokes about whether one of the main characters, Janis Ian, is a lesbian have been retired; Janis is now out as queer (she also has a new last name: 'Imi'ike). Notorious queen bee Regina George no longer uses the R-word nor calls her friend "dyslexic"; her followers are no longer derided as an "army of skanks." Even the infamous Burn Book from that movie is now nicer — or, if not exactly nicer, at least avoidant of particular rhetorical land mines: "slut" is now "cow." "Fat virgin" is now "horny shrimp." These changes are meant to be reflective of the real world, of course, where ostensibly we no longer say these words, where we accept all body types and have learned to be attentive to people's feelings, differences and "residual traumas." But what the movie misses, by simply stripping out its most offensive language, is a chance to really update itself — to fully reflect on girl world in 2024. If the hallmarks of relational aggression are still things like cutting friends out, spreading rumors or excluding peers, today's technology has created innumerable new ways to inflict the same old adolescent torture. And what makes us think we've really grown that much more enlightened, anyway? As Ms. Fey herself put it, "people are just as divisive and horrible as they ever were, but now they couch it in virtue." So what does stealth meanness 2.0 actually look like? I asked real teenagers to tell me. Read the essay:
Here's what we're focusing on today:
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Tuesday, February 6, 2024
Opinion Today: Are today’s mean girls meaner?
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