Mean Girls stride into the spotlight

By: Samantha Galadzhyan, Special to The Star

The stereotypical “mean girl” has always served as a superficial obstacle to the protagonist, but recent movies have moved to actually tell their story.

In “Wicked,” Glinda crosses the dance floor to join Elphaba, whom she has just humiliated, as the whole crowd laughs. Her friends try to stop her, but she sees how cruelly she acted and pushes past their protests. In this moment, the “mean girl” sheds her villain role and shows her humanity. 

For decades, the mean girl served as an obstacle in someone else's story, a villain audiences loved to hate and never needed to understand. This may have taught impressionable audiences that cruelty requires no explanation, that some people are simply cruel. Now, the mean girl steps into the center of the story, and audiences see her as more than one-dimensional. 

Heather Chandler in “Heathers” (1989) embodies this archetype. She rules the school's most powerful clique. She appears wealthy, beautiful, ruthless, and nothing more. We never see her home life or how she claimed her crown, and the film removes her almost immediately. She functions as an obstacle in Veronica Sawyer's story, gone before we learn who she really is.

“Mean Girls” (2004) takes a small step forward. This time the camera follows Regina George home, where her mother announces, "I'm not like a regular mom. I'm a cool mom," and Regina answers, "Please stop talking." Her mother does. A girl with no rules at home might crave control at school. It offers little, but it gives us more background than Heather Chandler ever receives. 

“Wicked” (2024) pushes much further. Glinda opens the story with every classic "mean-girl" trait: popular, vain, and quick to condescend. But the film refuses to let those traits stand alone. She visibly feels the cost of her cruelty, and we understand that her need to be adored fuels her worst behavior. Her cruelty is no longer a personality but a symptom. The mean girl is no longer an obstacle. She is a protagonist. 

Filmmakers seem to know this. According to Gizmodo, director Jon M. Chu says in his “Wicked” commentary that when Glinda hands Elphaba the hat in an attempt to humiliate her at the dance, “She's just young and she's being pressured.” Audiences have become more sensitive, and creators write these characters differently because audiences want something different.

To be fair, “Heathers" and "Mean Girls” never overlook the pressure behind their mean girls, but noticing pressure differs from staying with it. Critics might say Regina and Glinda simply have bigger roles than Heather Chandler does. There is some truth to that, but giving the mean girl a role that big, with an inner life to match, is exactly the shift being described. 

Understanding Glinda does not excuse her. Elphaba still suffers the humiliation, and the blame falls on Glinda. Knowing why she acts this way explains the cruelty without erasing it. A multidimensional mean girl feels pressure, yet she still chooses to hurt and answers for it.

Back on that dance floor, the crowd keeps laughing. But now we see a girl who feels pressured, humiliates Elphaba anyway, then recognizes her cruelty and crosses the floor to join her. The mean girl hasn't disappeared. What has disappeared is our willingness to accept her as a villain without a past. We used to ask how to get away from her. Now we ask how she got this way.