Girls are mean. Girls lead on guys. Girls break hearts for fun. We’ve all heard this before, but where in the world did this idea come from?
The 2004 production of the movie “Mean Girls” accurately portrays the popular stereotype of the modern day beautiful yet heartless woman. As far as I know, however, this woman is basically mythical. Never once, in all my nineteen years, have I heard any girl say to another anything along the lines of, “I just found out that so-and-so likes me; I think I’ll string him along for a little while before chewing him up and spitting him out,” or seen one sitting back and relaxing with some book maliciously titled, “Manipulating Males for Fun and Profit.”
In fact, if they were to learn that a guy they knew was interested in them and after a while they found they didn’t return that interest, they would do absolutely everything in their power not to hurt his feelings. Why, then, do these girls have such disagreeable reputations? I found the answer in my freshman year of high school.
One of my best friends had found herself head over heels in love with a boy in our class. Little did I know that soon enough I would find myself up to my eyeballs in drama. Sure enough, the moment she began operation ‘I Like You,’ I was strapped into an emotional rollercoaster that would last the rest of the year. She started with friendly conversation, then flirting, then hanging out, then Friday nights at the movies, then Prom, all to no avail. He still seemed to be blind to her advances. After months of desperation, she tossed subtlety to the winds and sent him a text informing him that she was in love with him and begging him to react. When this final act failed to force him into action, we decided that the only plausible conclusion was that he was simply a mean-hearted jerk who had been knowingly leading her on all year.
It still wasn’t until the next time that I heard the familiar dilemma, “I keep trying to let him know that I’m not interested, I’m giving him all the signs, but he just won’t get it! Boys are so dumb!” that it finally clicked. Our freshman heartbreaker hadn’t been leading her on at all; he had been doing everything he could to let her know that yes, he noticed her feelings and no, he didn’t feel that way at all. The only problem was that he had taken a leaf out of the official “How to be a Girl Handbook” and chosen subtlety as the best means to let her down easy. He had been giving her all the signs (avoiding eye contact, never beginning conversations, keeping other friends around at all times, etc), but she wasn’t getting it because they were so irrationally subtle!
Girls are so dumb.
The revelation that we nice girls created the mean girl stereotype through our efforts to avoid it was mind-boggling for me. People think we’re mean because we treat guys so indifferently for so long, which we do to try to let them down as easily as possible, which we do so people don’t think we’re mean girls. Life is cruel.
Since this lesson, I have adopted “Honesty is the best policy” as my motto. When an uninteresting guy seems interested, I avoid subtlety as much as is reasonable, and while there is still the occasional boy for whom “I want you to stop talking to me and following me around” still doesn’t quite get the message across, I’ve found a great deal more success with this route. I may very well have still developed a reputation for rudeness, but at least it’s because I have actually been rude on occasion and not because I’ve just been way too nice.
The 2004 production of the movie “Mean Girls” accurately portrays the popular stereotype of the modern day beautiful yet heartless woman. As far as I know, however, this woman is basically mythical. Never once, in all my nineteen years, have I heard any girl say to another anything along the lines of, “I just found out that so-and-so likes me; I think I’ll string him along for a little while before chewing him up and spitting him out,” or seen one sitting back and relaxing with some book maliciously titled, “Manipulating Males for Fun and Profit.”
In fact, if they were to learn that a guy they knew was interested in them and after a while they found they didn’t return that interest, they would do absolutely everything in their power not to hurt his feelings. Why, then, do these girls have such disagreeable reputations? I found the answer in my freshman year of high school.
One of my best friends had found herself head over heels in love with a boy in our class. Little did I know that soon enough I would find myself up to my eyeballs in drama. Sure enough, the moment she began operation ‘I Like You,’ I was strapped into an emotional rollercoaster that would last the rest of the year. She started with friendly conversation, then flirting, then hanging out, then Friday nights at the movies, then Prom, all to no avail. He still seemed to be blind to her advances. After months of desperation, she tossed subtlety to the winds and sent him a text informing him that she was in love with him and begging him to react. When this final act failed to force him into action, we decided that the only plausible conclusion was that he was simply a mean-hearted jerk who had been knowingly leading her on all year.
It still wasn’t until the next time that I heard the familiar dilemma, “I keep trying to let him know that I’m not interested, I’m giving him all the signs, but he just won’t get it! Boys are so dumb!” that it finally clicked. Our freshman heartbreaker hadn’t been leading her on at all; he had been doing everything he could to let her know that yes, he noticed her feelings and no, he didn’t feel that way at all. The only problem was that he had taken a leaf out of the official “How to be a Girl Handbook” and chosen subtlety as the best means to let her down easy. He had been giving her all the signs (avoiding eye contact, never beginning conversations, keeping other friends around at all times, etc), but she wasn’t getting it because they were so irrationally subtle!
Girls are so dumb.
The revelation that we nice girls created the mean girl stereotype through our efforts to avoid it was mind-boggling for me. People think we’re mean because we treat guys so indifferently for so long, which we do to try to let them down as easily as possible, which we do so people don’t think we’re mean girls. Life is cruel.
Since this lesson, I have adopted “Honesty is the best policy” as my motto. When an uninteresting guy seems interested, I avoid subtlety as much as is reasonable, and while there is still the occasional boy for whom “I want you to stop talking to me and following me around” still doesn’t quite get the message across, I’ve found a great deal more success with this route. I may very well have still developed a reputation for rudeness, but at least it’s because I have actually been rude on occasion and not because I’ve just been way too nice.
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