Mean Girls in Young Adult Literature Weese 1 A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Alfred University Mean Girls in Young Adult Literature by Cassidy Weese In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Alfred University Honors Program May 1, 2017 Under the Supervision of: Chair: Susan Morehouse Committee Members: Juliana Gray Nancy Furlong Mean Girls in Young Adult Literature Weese 2 Contents Introduction …………………………………… 3- 6 Blubber …………………………………… 7- 22 The Clique …………………………………… 23- 35 Gossip Girl …………………………………… 36- 56 Conclusion …………………………………… 57-60 Works Cited …………………………………… 61-62 Mean Girls in Young Adult Literature Weese 3 Introduction Young Adult fiction is one of the fastest growing fields of modern publishing. From 2002 to 2012, the number of new YA book releases jumped from 4,700 to over 10,000 (Peterson). While YA novels span a variety of topics, one of the most popular genres features a “mean girl” character. Mean girls are presented as the character that everyone loves to hate. As easy as it is to read mean girls as snobby and spiteful, the characters are also strong leaders and generally intelligent. The fact that readers are conditioned to hate the mean girl stems from our current patriarchal culture. The mean girl uses traditionally male tactics to obtain power in a patriarchal culture that does not value her, and therefore that culture argues that she is worthy of hatred. Reading is, of course, important in both the educational and social development of children. Through the stories that young readers encounter, they can learn about themselves and their place in the world. Young adult readers may especially find books helpful in navigating their own problems with friends, school, and growing up. Because young readers pick up important ideas in the books they read, young adult literature must be analyzed. The mean girl character spans across a wide range of age groups, and accordingly I have selected a text for young readers, a text for “tweens,” and a text for teenagers. I chose books that I loved when I was growing up because I wanted to see how my perceptions of the novels I valued growing up changed in adulthood. In each book, I looked carefully at characters and the undertones of the messages that readers, including my younger self, take away from the story. Judy Blume’s Blubber is representative of a mean girl novel for young readers, with a suggested age range of 8 through 11 years old. Blubber explores the story of a young girl who is bullied by her entire class because of her weight, as told through the eyes of a classmate who joins in on the aggression herself. Mean Girls in Young Adult Literature Weese 4 A popular novel series among middle school-aged children is Lisi Harrison’s The Clique. Though the novel expands into a series after publication, I will focus only on the first book. Here, queen bee Massie is challenged by new girl Claire. While the two fight over friends, boys, and fashion choices, the narrative truly focuses on the insecurities felt by both characters. Finally, for teenagers, is Cecily von Ziegesar’s cult favorite Gossip Girl. Another novel that was expanded into a series, the book quickly became popular among high school readers and became a massively popular television show. Again, I will only focus on the first book, which follows Blair and Serena, two former best friends who vie for the top position of their school’s social hierarchy. Each novel’s mean girl is her own unique character, but all share a few common traits. First, the mean girl has plenty of money at her disposal. This plays less of a role in younger novels, like Blubber, but even in that case every character is described as upper middle class and white. Having an endless flow of money often allows the mean girl to curate a perfectly styled appearance, through designer clothes and cosmetics. Regardless of the age group, the mean girl is rarely, if ever, picked on for her looks. However, the mean girl does care about her appearance. The mean girl will often mention brand names to further solidify her superior style choices. She is also unafraid to rate her peers’ outfits against her own. Though the parents are often inattentive, the characters often learn the most from brief encounters with mothers, who teach the girls how women dress and behave toward each other. The mothers are not teaching manners, but rather give advice about avoiding weight gain and gossip about their friends. Mean girls pick up on patriarchal pressures to perform some kind of sexuality. These pressures can take on many forms, from dressing in a sexualized manner to actual sexual Mean Girls in Young Adult Literature Weese 5 encounters. The mean girl is also generally heterosexual, as the societal pressures that the mean girls succumb to are generally heteronormative. Because the mean girl is upholding patriarchal values, it is necessary that the character find value in competing for male attention. Women who find men sexually attractive would be easier for men control than women who do not. Older audiences will see their mean girls become more promiscuous, and the protagonist of the novel will use the sexuality of the mean girl as a reason to judge her. The mean girl in any YA novel displays some form of leadership ability. Mean girls are often surrounded by a posse of friends, but they ultimately hold the most power over their social circle and often the social life of the entire school. However, mean girls tend to be the trendsetters and the most in-tune with the thoughts and feelings of the people around them, talents that make them effective leaders. Finally, by virtue of being “mean,” all mean girls are aggressive. Most mean girls are relationally aggressive, meaning they focus on hurting a character’s feelings and her social standing rather her physical body. This makes sense, because we are socialized to believe that boys solve their problems with fists while girls prefer to spread rumors. The aggression expressed by mean girls is often seen as negative because aggression is traditionally associated with men. The mean girls are not calm and demure because they demand power in a culture that tells them they do not deserve to have it. Spreading rumors and telling other people’s secrets is a form of social, or indirect, aggression. The attacker does not confront the victim directly, but instead opts to hurt the victim’s reputation with other people. Most people have experienced this pain in real life, and it is necessary to address this kind of common problem in young adult novels. However, it should be noted that while the mean girls are the first to spread rumors, it is not uncommon for the Mean Girls in Young Adult Literature Weese 6 protagonist to exhibit her own social aggression in return. The protagonist usurps being categorized as a mean girl herself because her motives are (allegedly) justified. It is not enough to know that the mean girl exists. We, as readers and as people who exist inside a culture in which mean girls are incredibly popular, must seek to understand them. One feminist scholar notes that “the way women are represented in literature influences how they define themselves as subjects in their own lives” (Johnson). The characters we encounter, and especially the ones we enjoy or identify with, leave a mark on our individual understanding of the world. YA authors often use mean girls to subtly encourage patriarchal values in their actions and descriptions. Therefore, understanding the mean girl allows us to understand the roles that women grow into in Western patriarchal culture. Mean Girls in Young Adult Literature Weese 7 Blubber Originally published in 1974, Judy Blume’s Blubber tells the story of a fifth grade classroom controlled mainly by girls. Every student in the class is required to give an oral report on a mammal of their choice, and Linda, an unpopular and overweight student, chooses the whale. This sparks popular Wendy and her friends, Jill and Caroline, to make fun of Linda relentlessly throughout the novel. This book features mainly upper class white students, and with so little diversity, the victim of bullying is a volatile role that almost anyone in the classroom can be forced into. However, loner Linda takes the brunt of the abuse in this novel told from the point of view of Jill, one of her bullies. Wendy is the leader of an entire classroom of bullies. She decides who is “out,” and the rest of the students follow suit. Jill recalls that when Linda is first decreed “Blubber,” Wendy makes the announcement via a note passed around the classroom: “Blubber is a good name for her! I smiled, not because I thought the note was funny, but because Wendy was watching me” (5). Despite being less interested in the note than in leaving school on time, Jill laughs along because she knows that it is what Wendy wants from her. Jill is aware that in the classroom setting, any student can easily become a scapegoat. The students have interactions with other kids on the school bus and in their neighborhoods, but for the most part, their social life exists within their classroom. Jill understands that not laughing at Wendy’s joke can easily make her Wendy’s next victim. On Halloween, Jill and her classmates all dress up for a costume contest that is held at their school. Wendy chooses to be a queen for the day, with a large crown and cape, as a visual representation of the power that she holds over her classmates. Since she is the one who always chooses the next victim, she avoids ever being bullied herself. In her book Odd Girl Out, Rachel Mean Girls in Young Adult Literature Weese 8 Simmons explains some of the reasoning behind aggression in girls: “Children want three things out of life: connection, recognition, and power. Connection propels friendship and the need for recognition and power ignites competition and conflict” (Simmons 9). Essentially, children will become aggressive when they see an opportunity for control. Girls especially crave power because it is something they traditionally lack, considering their age and their gender both act as deterrents from power in Western culture. Wendy dresses as a queen because it allows her to feel as though she has “control, recognition, and power:” she controls the actions of her classmates, she is recognized as an important figure in her school, and she has the power to bully without being bullied. Readers never find out what Linda’s costume is, as we are only told it includes a red cape. Linda refuses to tell her classmates what she was dressed as because it is her attempt to push away the popular girls’ hold on her. However, when Wendy is fed up with Linda’s refusal to talk, she orders the other girls to steal Linda’s costume. When the girls in the classroom graduate from verbal abuse to physical, Wendy keeps her hands clean but instead has Jill, Caroline, and their friends strip Linda of her costume and clothes. Jill gets caught up in the moment, and tells Linda: “Do whatever Queen Wendy says, Blubber” (40). The other students, though hesitant at first to be so mean to Linda, recognize that it is easier to survive in their small classroom society by obeying Wendy than it is to fight her. The only reason that Wendy has power is because the other students believe that she does, just like the only thing making her a queen is believing that she is on Halloween. Whenever the aggression escalates from verbal and relational to physical, the girls act as a group against Linda. Simmons notes that this is common for young girls: Mean Girls in Young Adult Literature Weese 9 A plurality creates a safe space for girls to be mean in a culture that refuses to allow girls individual acts of aggression, making alliance building a rare intersection of peer approval with aggression. Alliances create underground network in which girls can be in charge of their own social norms, deciding together when the use of aggression is deserved (Simmons 83-84). The bullies, Jill, Caroline, Wendy, and their friends, are bonded in their attacks on Linda. Whenever the girls assault her, they create a shared experience that they perceive as positive because it makes them feel powerful over a classmate. The girls act as a group from the beginning, and it is possible that if only one girl had thought the nickname “Blubber” was funny, Linda would be spared the abuse. However, Wendy and her friends are such trend-setters that students in other classrooms make fun of Linda on the bus. To Jill and Wendy, Linda deserves to be bullied because she does not have a group of friends to defend her. However, Jill does not have the excuse of simply being caught up in the moment and wanting to please the popular girl. From Linda’s report, Jill learns that the person who strips blubber out of a whale is called a flenser. In a burst of last-minute inspiration, Jill decides to dress up as a flenser for Halloween. Jill spends time and effort on dressing up with the specific intent of harassing Linda. When Linda confronts Jill about her costume she says, “‘Oh… a flenser. I’ll bet you got that idea from my report,’” to which Jill replies, “‘What makes you think so?’” (30). Jill intends to make Linda question her own sanity by pretending that her direct attack on Linda somehow also has nothing to do with Linda. Even with a costume meant especially to attack Linda, Jill manages to separate herself completely from her victim. Jill recognizes the fragility of her position at the top, and makes sure to distance herself as far as possible from Linda so that she does not become a victim herself. Mean Girls in Young Adult Literature Weese 10 While Wendy is the traditional mean girl among her classmates, Jill is also a bully. Even without Wendy’s encouragement, she often makes rude remarks about her peers. When we first meet Jill, she introduces herself by saying, “My best friend, Tracy Wu, says I’m really tough on people. She says she wonders sometimes how I can like her” (1). Immediately, readers are aware that Jill is not concerned with being nice—even Jill’s best friend worries about what she really thinks of her. This is an interesting approach, because the narrator, and therefore the reader, is immediately put in an offensive position. This allows readers to feel as though they are in the position to participate in the fictional gossip of the story. Like many young adult novelists, Blume relies on a first person narrator. This creates a narrative intimacy with the reader, meaning that the reader is intended to feel closest to the narrator, and that the narrator “feels” safe disclosing private information to the reader. In her work exploring the narration of young adult literature, Sara Day asserts that “the thoughts, knowledge, and emotions disclosed by the narrators of adolescent fiction frequently reflect the various personal bonds adolescents explore as part of their transition into adulthood” (Day 4). Young adult authors utilize narrative intimacy to make the reader feel as though the narrator is their friend. This also allows readers to feel as though they are part of the narrator’s social circle, which here means that the reader will have limited empathy toward Jill’s victims because the reader feels as though he or she is part of Jill’s alliance. In her class, Jill picks on multiple victims. She is annoyed with how frequently Donna talks about horses, and comments that it is no surprise that it is the animal she chose to do her report on. Jill thinks: “Most of the time Donna smells like a horse but I wouldn’t tell her that because she might think it’s a compliment” (3). This says a lot about Jill, who not only wants to make a snide comment to her classmate, but also wants that comment to hurt Donna’s feelings.