Bring It On (2000): The decade kicked off with a spin on the bitchy-cheerleader cliche in teen movies by presenting us with cheerleaders as both heroines and villains in the ridiculously silly Bring It On. Not only did the film poke fun at the world of competitive cheerleading, but it also presented cheerleaders, perhaps for the first time in the teen movie world, as legitimate athletes with serious skills.
Important Life Lesson To Remember: "This is not a democracy, it's a cheerocracy."



Save The Last Dance (2001): I'm using Save The Last Dance to represent every dance-will-save-you movie of the decade, a theme that seemed to run through the past 10 years the way extreme makeovers dominated the teen movies of the 90s. If you could dance in a teen film of the 00s, you could pretty much do anything. As long as you wore a "slammin'" outfit, of course.
Important Life Lesson To Remember: That outfit you're wearing from the Gap is "country, and you look country in it."



Saved, 2004: The dark comedy tale of an uber-religious teenager who becomes pregnant centers not only on the issues surrounding teen pregnancy, but on religion (and the hypocrisy within), abortion, sexuality, disability, love, and the difficulties of finding yourself in high school and breaking away from the worldview that is often imposed upon you by authority figures. It also taught us that it's a good idea to avoid crashing your van into Jesus.
Important Life Lesson To Remember: "So everything that doesn't fit into some stupid idea of what you think God wants you just try to hide or fix or get rid of? It's just all too much to live up to. No one fits in one hundred percent of the time. Not even you."



Mean Girls, 2004: The true heir to the great teen films of the 80s and 90s, Mean Girls stands out for its Tina Fey-penned script and stellar cast, including a top-of-her-game Lindsay Lohan and the always-excellent Rachel McAdams. And while the film is often name-checked and referenced due to its catchphrases, the true importance of the film lies in the exploration of bullying amongst girls in high school, a very real and difficult issue that still needs addressing. The film is already dated in the world of social networking (can you imagine what Regina George would have done with sexting and Facebook?), but the overall message of the film still rings true: high school, and the girls in it, can be a real bitch.
Important Life Lesson To Remember: "Calling somebody else fat won't make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn't make you any smarter. And ruining Regina George's life definitely didn't make me any happier. All you can do in life is try to solve the problem in front of you."



Juno, 2007: Diablo Cody won an Oscar for her screenplay about a 16-year-old girl who discovers she's pregnant, briefly considers abortion, and eventually decides to carry the child to term in order to give it up for adoption. Focusing on Juno's quirks, fears, and frustrations while attempting to navigate both high school and pregnancy, the film attempts to create a character who is much more than an afterschool special cliche. Whether it succeeds or not depends on who you talk to—in our comments, anyway, the film is always fairly divisive. In any case, for all the pop culture posturing and quippy dialogue, there is something quietly honest about Juno; she is depicted in moments of absurdity, weakness, strength, sadness, and acceptance; all elements of growing up and trying to figure out how to make sense of the world when it doesn't seem to make any sense at all.
Important Life Lesson To Remember: "Look, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person is still going to think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with."

Did I miss any? Feel free to leave your favorite moments from the past 10 years in teen movies in the comments.

Earlier: Important Life Lessons Learned From B-List Teen Movies Of The 90s

Many of the questions people asked were about life in the workplace, and Rosalind has some advice about how to deal with nasty, undermining people you work with—including what situations to deal with right away and what situations might require a more serious response.

She also responds to a question about what to do when you work with someone you've had conflict with in the past.

Earlier: Queen Bees, Wannabes & How Technology Has Changed Teens Forever

Jezebel Asked, I Answered [Rosalind Wiseman]
Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World [Amazon]

High school was bad enough when I was a teenager. But reading Wiseman's new book—which expands on the original by discussing technology and why "Mean Girl" culture has filtered down to younger girls—I realized how much trickier being a teenager is today. When I was in high school, if I got in a fight with someone, maybe we'd exchange a couple of bitchy notes. There would definitely be some behind-the-back gossip. But I never had to worry that someone was going to set up a fake Facebook account in my name or trash me on MySpace or unearth naked photos of me on their cell phone.

Still, there are some things that seem to be universal. There will always be Queen Bees, the Regina Georges of the world, who are, as Wiseman so excellently puts it, "a combination of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland and Barbie." For adult women, learning how to navigate the Queen Bee isn't just an exercise in nostalgia; unfortunately, many adult relationships still seem to hew all too closely to the lines drawn in high school (or earlier).

On her website, Wiseman answers questions from teenagers and parents every day. But she's agreed to answer questions from Jezebel readers who might need advice about how to deal with the bully at work, or the friend who's mad at them but won't say why. Leave your questions in the comments or email them to Doree if you want to stay anonymous. We'll publish her answers in a separate post next week.

Why did you feel like you needed to write a new edition of Queen Bees and Wannabees?
As soon as I'm done with something I always think of things I forgot to put in. I've done that already with the new book. But definitely, about two years ago, I realized that the only thing in the book about technology was email. That is just not acceptable. I started feeling guilty that girls and moms and dads were reading it, and I do feel a very strong sense of obligation to these people. I'm constantly trying to take the things that I see and put them forward and think, what can we do about it. Specifically the things I wanted to change the most about were about technology and some of the more leading questions that I get—people always say, everything that's happening is happening so much younger. I wanted to answer that question.

How do you answer that question?
Okay, yes, girls at younger ages are acting more "teenage-like" and exhibiting mean girl behavior. But it's because we're not teaching our kids to be more mature, we're teaching them to be older. Older meaning getting to sort of typical adolescent behavior earlier, like dressing as teenagers, having them listen to teen music, laughing when they're "precocious," going with moms to get a manicure and pedicure, when they go to dance recitals dressed in hip-hop outfits. All these things we think are "cute."

What do you see on the ground, in terms of how things have changed since you wrote the first edition?
Every day I teach kids between kindergarten and college. And then the kids reach out to me all the time. Every day I get emails from kids, boys and girls. There is no part of their lives that is not connected to technology. But I don't teach on cyberbullying. I think it's complete waste of time, because it's completely integrated into everything that they do. I started out doing stuff on cyberbullying and six months into it I was like, this is ridiculous. We need to integrate it into everything that they do. All this social aggression, dominance stuff. It's exactly why they come to me about it—they say, I have a problem with this person and part of it is how I'm being attacked online.

What do you tell kids to say in that case?
I have a whole sort of system of how you deal. For example—you are hooking up with, hanging out with, however you want to call it, a guy. He used to hang out with/hook up with another girl. You're like, a junior in high school. You start going to parties where every time she sees you, she will start screaming something. It's not your name, but everybody knows it's you. She's screaming firecrotch. Or slut, or whatever. You know it's directed at you. Your boyfriend won't do anything about it. Then you find out she's completely trashing you on Facebook. So how do you handle it? I was giving a talk in Houston, for high school kids. I gave them three options. One, you say nothing and hope it goes away. Two, you talk to your boyfriend and him have to talk to her. Or you start your own Facebook war. All the kids in Houston were yelling, "Three! Three!" And I said, "That's acting like you're 12." Instead, you send one email to this person. You say exactly what you don't like. You admit you cannot control her behavior, but the drama stops here. I always give kids scripts that they can start with, but then they can put it into their own words.

How are adult women affected by Mean Girl behavior?
Some of them have never let go of their being ruled-over personas, never being able to say that they're angry with people. Women need to know how to take seriously their own feelings of conflict and of anger, and then know how to communicate that to people—because what that is is an underlying belief that someone will not take you seriously. Forget the Queen Bees—that's a minority of women. It's just that they have disproportionate power. It's this issue of not being able to express your anger because you don't take yourself seriously. Women say, I can't be the complaining bitch. They don't want to be seen as uptight. You don't know which battles to choose and so you choose none of them. It's also women knowing how to give apologies and accept apologies. If that was addressed we would have substantially less work to do.

This is the reason I prefer working with adolescents. If they're saying sort of crappy stuff to me, I know it's a rationalization of crappy behavior. I can say to them you're full of it, you think I believe that? And they're going to laugh and say, yeah, I was just trying to see how stupid you were. But that's not the way it is with adults. They get really angry with you and get really self righteous. You can't have that really honest exchange.

Is it fair to say women undermine themselves in the workplace?
I wish so much that women would take the risk to take themselves and their feelings seriously. And that means acknowledging your feelings and taking them seriously, and taking the time to think strategically through how to express that to someone. That is a way of being an authentic person of integrity. Of course this relates to relationships. This relates to intimate relationships and relationships in the workplace.

Is that why women bully other women in workplace?
When you're in a position of power and authority, it's so comfortable to you that you don't often know where or what you're doing. I just sat in a meeting with a CEO—and she texted during the entire meeting. She was acting like she was 12. She was texting during the meeting and everyone was deferring to her. It was very much like a clique. That's not the only time I've seen that. It's why I work so much with girls and boys in positions of leadership. What does leadership really mean? It doesn't mean how you perceive yourself. It's how others perceive you. It's, I get to do this and you don't. I get to dismiss people's opinions but nobody else does. It's not just women—I've certainly seen that with men. I think it's an issue of power and authority and how one uses it. And it's exactly the same if you're a 12-year-old girl or a CEO.

How do parents deal with their kids' bullying or being bullied?
I'm a parent. So I can say true stories about my own mistakes. Even to my best of intentions, I find myself doing the things that I tell people not to do. Recently, in a video chat on my website, this parent says, I'm the parent of a fourth grader, and nobody wants to be friends with my daughter. The parent says, my daughter has no friends because she's imaginative, fun and creative. I say, you love your daughter so much but I doubt that people aren't hanging out with your kid because she's imaginative, fun and creative. We define the reason they're being rejected in positive ways. My job is to say to parents, in a way they can hear, you love your child and it's so difficult to hear negative social stuff. If we can do this step by step, we can get your kid to be in a better place. It's taken me a very long time to know how to talk to parents. I bombed when the Queen Bee moms book came out. It was just a disaster. I didn't know how to present the information in a way the parents can hear.

Do Queen Bee girls have Queen Bee moms?
I get that question all the time. But there are lots of kids who have Queen Bee moms who are the opposite. And I know why people say, I know why she's this way. But nobody says that about any other role. Nobody says, oh, she's a complete wannabe or rollover. There are lots of girls who look to their mothers as anti-mentors. Like women who try really hard with plastic surgery, who look like they're 18 when they're 45. Some of their daughters are like, that's awful. It's too easy of an answer for me, though certainly there are girls like that. I guess what you need [for a Queen Bee] is a girl who has a high degree of social skills and also ruminates a lot. She holds grudges and ruminates. Then, you have her mom showing role modeling, that the path to power is based on how you look, where you come from, fitting into that box you talk about so much—and the mom saying, I'm not going to hold you accountable for crappy behavior.

How do you advise people to deal with their Queen Bee daughters?
It's easy for me to get reactive. But it's my responsibility—I've chosen this as my path. I'm trying to get information to all different kinds of people. I've worked really hard to really reach out. I think they're hiding a lot. If you talk to them about being effortlessly perfect—everybody wants to be heard, including Queen Bee moms. There's a couple different variations on Queen Bee moms. They feel like they can really speak for other people. I'm speaking on behalf of all the mothers. The worst is when Queen Bee moms have gone after me—it's usually when a woman feels like she's not being taken seriously in other areas of her life. But it doesn't excuse the behavior. Really, you can see it. They don't feel taken seriously in other areas of their life.

What kind of mom are you?
The barely getting through mom. My boys are six and a half and eight and a half. I really try and aspire to be the person I write about—the loving hard-ass mom. But there are really moments when I'm so tired when I'm like, go ahead and do it. Right now, at this moment, my sister's staying with us. My sons went into her bedroom and opened her computer to try and get on computer games. So their punishment is, they're allowed to watch TV, but they have a trade-in system for good behavior, and they're not allowed to play a game on a phone. Also, I'm teaching them how to fold their own laundry. They drop it everywhere. Socks are like a calling card around the house. Now they're doing their own laundry, but it's tough. I want them to fold it, and instead they leave it in an enormous pile in their closet. It drives me crazy but I have to let it go. They are washing and drying and taking into their room, so the idea of having it in perfect stacks is ridiculous and I have to let it go.

Have you ever had to deal with a bullying situation with your own kids?
I had a really tough time with my older child. He was acting out in school and getting into trouble. I was freaked out. It was completely bad. It turns out he was being bullied really badly by five kids and I didn't see the signs. I didn't pay attention to anything I talked about. There was someone at the school who I had trained, just by happenstance. At the time I trained her my children weren't even attending that school. But she has just been a lifeline for him. Sometimes as a mother you really aren't the person who can fix the problem. Your anxiety is so high. You can't think straight. It was a pretty life changing moment for my family and for me. I was like, oh shit, I can't see the signs of my kids being bullied. There was a lot of social aggression. Boys saying they were going to beat him up at recess. It was quite similar to girl dynamics. My kids are getting in trouble all the time—it's not an infrequent experience.

Are you going to be doing any work at Millburn High School [the high school in New Jersey where the senior girls write a "slut list" of freshmen every year]?
I got an email from the head of the PTO there and I wrote her back and I haven't heard back.

What do you do about something like the Millburn High School slut list? The girls were defending it, saying that it was something that people wanted to be on. How do you teach them that it's actually not okay to make a "slut list"?
I think you talk about it very straightforwardly. You talk about the reasons why a ninth grade girl would want to be on the list. And just because you've done it forever doesn't make it right. Just because people have been treating each other like shit forever, doesn't make it right. You don't just get a pass. That's one of those tricky things about tradition. As soon as you say it's tradition you don't question it. But that should be when you do question it. When i talk to the girls about it, I'm really straight up about it. The senior girls are like, it's so pathetic, she wants to be on it. You really have to put a mirror up to the senior girls. They can be so cold and unforgiving about a position that they were in very shortly before. I do a lot of work when I work with high school kids about that dynamic. I say straight up, some girls will want to be on it desperately. Let's talk about why. There are girls who don't want to be on it. There are girls who will lie about being on it because they're so desperate for attention. I just talk really straight up with them about what's going on. I'm like, if I'm completely wrong, you think I'm insane, you need to back it up.

The principal's reaction to the list seemed, at first, to be very ambivalent—he didn't want to search for the perpetrators because he said no one would come forward and it wasn't fair to punish the whole class.
People feel like, oh, we have a policy about that stuff—but very few people know how to implement a policy in real life. They get co-opted by the system like everybody else. It takes a really gifted administrator to know how to deal with that. It takes a tremendous amount of thought in the midst of a tremendous amount of drama. It's always really disappointing. I was speaking at a conference of superintendents. I was like, look, here's the deal. You can continue to say, if it's done outside of school grounds then we have no jurisdiction. But there is no separation with technology between outside of school and school. Now, I think that administrators are going in that direction.

But what I think is more compelling in a way, is why would girls in a perfect, high achieving school want to do this. Girls haze for social power. In my experience, what I've seen with girls who do that, is those girls are not doing well. They're not excelling in other areas. You have to excel in a school like that in something. You take what you can get. Girls haze. They always haze to dominate socially. It also shows the lack of power that some girls have, if this is the only power they can get. Their capacity is limited in other areas. It sort of goes to the heart of everything we're talking about. In Chicago, girls completely beat the crap out of each other at a powder puff game. That was exactly the same thing.

You have a YA book coming out soon too—Boys, Girls, and Other Hazardous Materials.
I'm psyched about the YA book. I'm relieved about Queen Bees, but I'm so nervous about the YA book. I try to do my best to talk about these issues in a way that's more subtle and more graceful. But what's really cool is to look at these YA bloggers. I'm watching these young women write about this stuff and it's amazing to me to watch this. The book comes out in January. It would have been really easy to write something about a really rich kid—but I'm really hopeful that this just reflects all these issues that we're talking about. I just hope this gives people more answers.

Anything else you'd like to add?
I feel so strongly the reason why I'm successful is because of women supporting me, laughing with me, buying me a drink when I needed it, sometimes being hard on me, but working with me. For girls to not have that is just unacceptable. I want girls to have that. I want to be able to talk about the ugly stuff so we can get to the good stuff.

Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and the New Realities of Girl World [Amazon]
Queen Bee Moms and Kingpin Dads: Dealing with the Parents, Teachers, Coaches and Counselors Who Can Make—or Break—Your Child's Future [Amazon]
Boys, Girls, and Other Hazardous Materials [Amazon]
Rosalind Wiseman: Creating Cultures of Dignity [Rosalind Wiseman]
A Rite of Hazing, Now Out in the Open [NYT]

The premise of the article is that "Hillary seems to have found, in the heart of her chief rival's administration, an unexpected comfort level" — and there's probably a certain amount of truth to that; Clinton seems much more comfortable doing a job than campaigning for one. But as someone who supported her in the primaries in large part because I never bought the line that she was cold, uncharismatic or blinkered by ambition (nor the line that Obama was one whit more progressive), every time I see one of these "Now Hillary's really hitting her stride!" articles, I can't help thinking it's not Clinton who's changed, just the media narrative. And Brown's contribution to that is, as usual, so bizarrely backhanded, I hardly know where to start.

The first line seems as good a place as any: "Hillary Clinton has spent her entire career looking bug-eyed with incredulity when an interviewer asks her whatever question she most expects at that moment. Her theatrical bemusement was more convincing than usual on Monday's Today show..." Hey, check out how genuine Clinton seems — what a departure from her long history of being completely disingenuous! This is followed by a recounting of Clinton telling Ann Curry that she doesn't care much about the spotlight, and maybe that's "a woman's thing." Says Brown:

A woman's thing! In that phrase alone the secretary of State revealed what distance she has put between herself and the 2008 campaign trail. Mark Penn, then her strategist (or saboteur, depending on how you look at it), would have aborted that "woman's thing" thought before it was even conceived.

Now, you don't want to get me started on Mark Penn, but let's pause for a little reality check. The prevailing wisdom that Clinton was an unfeminine hardass who tried to divorce herself from her femaleness never came from her own actions, regardless of what bad advice she was getting. She was always a staunch supporter of women's rights, she often spoke of her experience as a woman and a mother, and not for nothing, even if she wanted to come across as androgynous, she was constantly fighting off criticism of her hair, her clothes, her "cleavage" and her "tears," not to mention being grilled about her husband's behavior and cast as an overambitious former first lady rather than a savvy politician in her own right. That the narrative of her Thatcheresque machoness survived as long as it did — pierced only by occasional "breakdowns" and minor neckline failures — is more of a testament to the media's stubborn insistence on that image than her own behavior or Penn's shittastic strategy. Now that there's no threat of her becoming president or anything crazy like that, we can all generously acknowledge her humanity and femininity. Hooray.

But of course, it's not as if anyone's saying that femininity was there all along. "It's as if," says Brown, "she has checked out of that tiresome phallic competition and acknowledged what's different-and valuable-about her own female nature." And what is "valuable about her own female nature," exactly? Oh, the fact that she's willing to step aside, offer the limelight to others, do her job quietly like the good little wonk she is, and forgo the credit. This is totally not a sexist interpretation of events meant to reinforce an underlying idea that Hillary is now somewhat admirable only because that famous ambition has been tempered! Brown thinks it's clever! "Everyone expected Hillary to fight for the limelight with Af-Pak envoy Richard Holbrooke. But she was smart enough to let that booby prize be all his... If we don't know where she stands on Afghanistan, it's not because her views aren't strongly held. It's because she's smart and mature enough to give them to the president, not the press." And hey, knowing just how much criticism the president takes, she even had the foresight to lose the Democratic primary! Way to go, Hill!

Also, her new position "plays to all her strength as a superwonk policy cruncher" (read: nerdiness). "You can imagine how much Hillary digs" writing position papers about Afghanistan for Obama, because deep questions about foreign policy were "the kind of stuff she'd dig into at Wellesley over spring break." See how complimentary that is? Clinton's really, really smart and always has been! And also, being Secretary of State is much like being an overachieving undergrad. Or something.

Finally, what's the most important thing Clinton's accomplished as Secretary of State? Perhaps "sweet-talk[ing] the on-again, off-again Armenians and Turks into ending hostilities over massacres that took place during World War I" or something like that? Nope! "It took Obama's presidency to do what she could never achieve in the White House or on last year's campaign trail: She's got Bill under control at last. From the moment she entered Foggy Bottom, he's been as good as gold. The big dog's in his kennel and she's holding the leash." Oh, thank heavens! It was all worth it!

The weird thing is, I get the feeling Tina Brown secretly likes Hillary. She just seems constitutionally incapable of building her up without subtly (and not so subtly) knocking her down; of admiring Clinton's talent and success without pointing out that she's under Obama's thumb, less visible than she set out to be, and married to a guy everyone's still more interested in; of praising her smarts without coming off as a cool girl rolling her eyes at the straight-A keener. If Brown were trying to get a date with the Secretary of State, Mystery would be proud.

Hillary And The 'Woman Thing' [Daily Beast]

Earlier: Tina Brown-Style "Tide Of Trivialization" Threatens To Swamp Clinton Trip
What's More Important: Rape In Congo Or Hillary's Bad Hair Day?

I decided to find out by comparing the two reigning cliques of the teen comedy genre: The Heathers, from 1989's Heathers, and The Plastics, from 2004's Mean Girls. So which clique is the bitchiest of them all? Let's find out!

• Style: The Heathers
• Everything at Westerberg High was big: oversized blazers, boxy shoulder pads, and big hair. (We'd later learn, via Mean Girls, that big hair is where bitchy high school girls hide their secrets.) The Heathers had a uniformity about them: if you were one of them, you dressed the part. However, a mix of plaids, solids, and opaque tights allowed each Heather to express her bitchy ol' self whilst still remaining a very obvious member of the clique.
• 
  
  
  
• Style: The Plastics
• The Plastics weren't as uniformly dressed as The Heathers, which is weird, considering that they had a billion rules about how one was supposed to dress in order to be accepted as a member of the clique: you can only wear pink on Wednesdays, only jeans or track pants on Fridays, you can't wear a tank top two days in a row, you can only wear your hair in a ponytail once a week, and only Regina George is allowed to wear gold hoop earrings.
• 
  
  
• Advantage: The Heathers: They're able to establish a group identity while still maintaining a level of individuality...without a million stupid rules to remember. And only wearing your hair in a ponytail once a week?! Sorry, Plastics. You can't sit with us.
• 
  
  
  
• Social Life: The Heathers
• They always find time for a game of croquet before they motor to a party of sorts, Heather Chandler can get you into a Remington party, but it's best to not pay her in puke. Other activities include murder, faking suicides in order to continue committing murder, and making out with boyfriends in cars following said faked suicide murders.
• 
  
  
  
• Social Life: The Plastics
• Trips to the mall to maintain high beauty and fashion standards, high school style, manipulating and humiliating fellow classmates, ruining lives, attending sexy Halloween parties, making out in the projection room, performing "Jingle Bell Rock" at the school Christmas concert every year, writing nasty things about you in their Burn Book as Regina George's insane mother dances around in the background.
• 
  
  
• Advantage: The Plastics: I might be wrong, but shopping, dancing, and parties sounds like a slightly better time than croquet and murder. But that might just be me.
  
  
  
• Lingo: The Heathers
• The Heathers popularized everything from "gotta motor" to "lick it up" to "what's your damage," and about a million other hilarious/disgusting phrases. Heatherisms are still thrown about today, 20 years after the film's release. And if you don't like it, you can transfer to Washington. Transfer to Jefferson. No one at Westerberg is going to let you play their reindeer games.
• 
  
  
  
• Lingo: The Plastics
• I'm pretty sure not a day goes by on this site without someone quoting Mean Girls in the comments. The Plastics have some great lines, but in terms of creating their own specific set of Plasticisms, I'm not sure they got that far. I mean, they couldn't even make fetch happen. It's NOT going to happen.
• 
  
  
  Advantage: The Heathers: Pay attention, Regina George. You want to fuck with the eagles, you have to learn to fly.
  
  
  
• Overall Mean Girl Analysis: The Heathers
• The Heathers were so bloody mean that they actually ended up killing each other, or attempting to kill each other, and thanking God at their leader Heather Chandler's funeral for her death. The clique self-destructed under the weight of the cruelty: if it didn't, they'd all be dead due to their own demons and desire for power—or, in Veronica Sawyer's case, a desire to escape the clutches of the Heathers once and for all. The Heathers were the type of girls who would spit in your face and then somehow manipulate you into apologizing to them for it. As far as mean girls go, it's hard to imagine any clique being meaner.
• 
  
  
  
• Overall Mean Girl Analysis: The Plastics
• There is perhaps no greater single mean girl than Regina George; though the Heathers' Heather Chandler was crueler, she was also taken down by one of her own, while Regina George was able to turn the tables back in her favor, proving that she is the master manipulator of the mean girl genre. However, her clique wasn't nearly as ruthless as the Heathers: Karen was just an idiot, and Gretchen Weiners was always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Cady Heron eventually steered the group to a happy, sweet resolution, "sucking the poison" out of the Plastics completely. They ended up being nice girls. The Heathers would have destroyed them...and Regina probably would have traded cafeteria tables and changed her name to Heather George in 2.4 seconds. She's no idiot.
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• Winner: The Heathers
• It's not even a contest: the Plastics may have caused a riot with their burn books and Regina George may be a life-ruiner, but the Heathers' teenage angst-bullshit had a body count. Lick it up, baby. Lick it up.

Disagree? Want to try to make fetch happen? Feel free to battle it out in the comments.

I wish that NeNe and Lisa had gone as crazy on that bitch as they have on Kim in the past, because there was really no excuse for the things she said. Speaking of Kim, the "continued" portion of her fight with Sheree — wig pulling and all — turned out to be pretty boring, because they already showed all the good parts in the previews. But here it is anyway:

In a recent interview with Empire magazine, Ryder discussed two of her most famous roles—Susanna from Girl, Interrupted and more importantly, Veronica Sawyer from the 1988 high school flick Heathers:

"Whatever you hear, there is a sequel in the works. I swear to God," she told the magazine. "But for some reason the writer Dan Waters and director Michael Lehman don't want to talk about it. I've been wanting to do a sequel forever. There is a story, and Christian [Slater] has agreed to come back as a kind of Obi-Wan character."

For those unfamiliar (spoiler alert!), the original film takes place in Ohio, at a fictional high school where a group of mean girls, called "the Heathers," control the student body through their cruel pranks. Three of the girls in the popular clique are named Heather, and they are led by queen bee Heather Chandler. Ryder's character, the sarcastic Veronica, is part of the group, yet still somehow separate. She becomes bored of her life in the popular crowd, and with the help of a new student, J.D. (Slater), she begins to rebel against the tyranny of the ruling class. However, the charming J.D. is actually a violent sociopath with serious mommy issues: He goes on a murderous spree, killing not only two thirds of the Heathers, but also some random meathead jocks. Eventually, he moves on to plan a mass murder of the entire high school under the guise of a suicide pact.

The movie became a cult classic, and its not too hard to see why. It contains many of the same elements as a John Hughes film, yet with darker content. Heathers takes the revenge fantasies of every kid who has ever been tormented in high school by those who have been arbitrarily deemed popular and amps them up a notch, allowing us to enjoy watching the backstabbing and bullying of the popular crowd while simultaneously reveling in their downfall. We seem to have a cultural obsession with the bitchy, beautiful girls of high school, whose bad behavior is at once both condemned and celebrated. Is the continued fascination with the cruelty of teenagers because it's so universal, or because it somehow seems less real than the violence of the adult world?

Anyway, we're not sure whether to be excited about the return of Ryder and Slater, or afraid of the possibility that Heathers 2 will completely mangle all the things we once loved about the original. There are rumors that the movie will follow the surviving characters (which are Veronica Sawyer, Heather Duke, and Martha Dunnstock) into college and beyond. If Veronica goes to college, we expect it will be set at a big, preppy, Ivy-esque university, where she will come into contact with some snobby sorority girls. Although there is no mention of whether Shannon Doherty will be back to play Heather Duke, we hope that someone will fill in the role of the Moby Dick-obsessed teen.

As for casting, well, we know that Ryder will be back, hopefully playing Veronica, but here are a few mean girls we'd like to see on screen:

Leighton Meester. This one is a no brainer. Meester has already perfected her bitch face playing Blair Waldorf on Gossip Girl, so this would surely be an easy role for her.

Amanda Seyfried. She played the dumbest of Tina Fey's mean girls, and flexed her acting chops on HBO's Mormon drama Big Love, now lets see her bitch it out with Ryder.

Emily Blunt. It's no secret: we love Emily Blunt. After seeing her play a supercilious fashionista in The Devil Wears Prada, we're pretty sure she could take on the role of a collegiate bully.

As for the other characters, we think Maggie Gyllenhaal could be a great ally for Veronica in her quest to demolish social hierarchies. And although Slater is set to return as an "Obi-Wan character," we would like to nominate Ed Westwick as his Skywalker.

Now that we've had our say, what say you? Who would you like to see duke it out in Heathers 2? And are you looking forward to the sequel, or dreading the potentially disastrous outcome?

Winona: I Have "No Resentment" Toward Angelina Jolie [People]

Jesse admits he was not expecting the response his article received (perhaps another clue that he doesn't read the site very often) and that he based his catty bitches reference on the fact that one of his articles for Scientific American was ripped apart by Dodai last month. It's a bit of a backhanded apology, as he does call you all humorless and refers to Dodai as "serpent-tongued," but in the end, he seems to genuinely like you guys, kinda sorta.

"Perhaps-just perhaps-I made a slight gaffe in directing readers to the Jezebel.com Web site in order to illustrate social aggression in reproductive aged females. It was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek rub at that Web site, I must admit, precipitated by a rather nasty editorial there on an earlier article of mine. But I didn't anticipate a humorless mob of "Jezebelers" commenting angrily in defense of their own tight-knit online community.

Until now, my only experience with Jezebel reflected exactly such maliciousness and cruelty-courtesy of the particularly vituperative and serpent-tongued editor who wrote the aforementioned piece about me. Having now read through some of the commentary threads on Jezebel.com, however, there is indeed a certain wit and clever sensibility permeating there that has gained my newfound respect. I apologize for painting the women (and men) of Jezebel with too broad a brush. I admire the site's incisively liberal bent; as a science writer with my own biases in this direction and one with little patience for bigotry, I suspect we're on the same page.

It's okay, Jesse. We're cool. Just be sure to wear pink on Wednesdays, and all will be forgiven.

Women Really Are More Socially Aggressive Than Men (With Apologies To Jezebel.com) [Scientific American]
Earlier: The Bitch Evolved: Why Girls Are So Cruel To Each Other
Science Scribe Writes Masturbatory Missive About Human Penises

"For the last two years she has been going through torture and made to feel like she is worthless. She thinks she is ugly, fat and smells because that is what she hears at school," Nadia's mother, Lindsay Dorrington, tells the Daily Mail, "When I saw the video I was so angry and upset. It is a nasty, vicious attack. I was in shock and I properly realised how bad the bullying actually was." Three of her attackers have already been suspended for their role in the attack, and Debbie Godfrey-Phaure, the school's Headteacher, claims the school has "a zero tolerance policy about bullying at Avonbourne. We simply do not tolerate it.Every allegation of bullying in this case has been fully investigated but it is only now with this video clip that we have the evidence we need."

The incident is reminiscent of the videotaped attack on a 16-year-old in Lakeland, Florida that occurred last year, when six cheerleaders beat a classmate so badly that she suffered a concussion, hearing, and vision loss. The cheerleaders taped the incident and proudly displayed it on YouTube. When they were arrested, one of the cheerleaders actually laughed about the incident, and, according to Polk County, Fla., Sheriff Grady Judd, showed little to no remorse: "When we had them arrested and in detention, they were laughing and joking, ‘Guess we're not going to go to the beach on this spring break.' One girl actually asked our detective, ‘Am I going to be released in time to go to cheerleading practice tomorrow?'"

A similar attack occurred in North Babylon, NY, in 2007: three girls beat a 13-year-old girl and posted the clip on several web sites. The fight was reportedly over a boy, and several students can be seen watching the fight without intervening, even as the victim screams for help. After the attack, the girls are seen "running away, then laughing and boasting about how easily they overcame the girl."

The level of brutality in these attacks, as well as the seeming sense of pride that the attackers display, even after they're punished for their crimes, are extremely disturbing reminders that we live in a world where the ability to disconnect is frighteningly easy. The girls seem more interested in achieving some sense of notoriety, or even fame, for being willing to kick the shit out of one of their peers: though this time of bullying is as old as the school system, the ability to share one's "victories" with others is still relatively new. This is a generation with very blurred boundaries between "real" life and an online identity: just as they share their favorite movies, songs, and quotes online, they share their fears, their flaws, and, apparently, the bleaker parts of their lives. A videotaped beating then becomes as ordinary as a video of a dance recital, or a party, or a goofy parody of some song. Life, as they know it, is meant to be documented, edited, and shared with the universe.

Though one hopes that these videos would provide insight into the bullying that girls face on a daily basis—both taped and untaped—and provide justice for the victims, as well as an eye-opener for any girls currently bullying their classmates, it seems that these taped beatings only normalize the process, as other girls hop on the bandwagon, consequences be damned. Being infamous, it seems, is the next best thing to being famous. And it doesn't matter who gets hurt along the way—as long as the rest of the world gets to see it.

3 Girls Arrested In Videotaped Beating [CBS]
Teens Videotape Revenge Beating [MSNBC]
Four Schoolgirls Suspended As Police Probe Vile YouTube Attack On Girl, 14, By Classmates [DailyMail]

At first, Lisa was leery, saying that if she joined a clique, she'd be the kind of person she hates, but after watching Homer test out the book's methods — "unsults" (insults disguised as compliments), "envytations," "hate hugs" — on his friends at Moe's with great success, she decided to try it out. The result: She made some Facebook friends! Clip at left.

You could tell that he was a fan of the show and saw every episode, and — like me — came away from it with really strong feelings concerning Ailea's despicable behavior (which included a lot of misdirected anger, crazy outbursts, and physically attacking her roommate, and kicking her while she was down on the ground). At the end of the show, she asked him for a hug, and he refused, telling her that he was serious when he said that she shouldn't touch him, and that he thinks she's disgusting. I never thought I'd be on his side regarding any topic, but he was totally right.

While in Mexico, some of the Bad Girls entered a "wet body contest" and became enraged after losing to a local woman. Most wanted to leave the club immediately, but one girl was still inside, dancing and having fun. This pissed them off even more, and they beat the shit out of her.

This show has a strange way of completely reeling me in emotionally. I mean, I love the trashiness and some of the drama, but the behaviors on display often truly disgust me. And I'm not talking about the drunkenness, or the sex, or the flashing, or the incorrect use of words. I'm talking about the cruelty inflicted by females on other females, whether those women are familiar roommates or strangers they encounter while out on the town.

Listen, I don't believe that all women have to get along - or even like - one another. But there needs to be some kind of rationale for so publicly (and violently) attacking another person. Not with these women: Their immaturity and cruelty CAME out in full force when they saw another female not only having a good time but rising above caring what others think. What's most disturbing to me is that not only did these abusers gloat about their actions the next day, some of them continue to do so, as evidenced by their Oxygen blogs.

The film, "inspired by recent events" will center around a grieving mother who "retaliates against those she feels were responsible for her daughter's death." So, not only is this movie a tasteless exploitation of the Meier family's tragedy, but it also entirely rewrites events vigilante-style! However, this is not the first time the Megan Meier case has "inspired" entertainment: an episode of Law & Order: SVU titled "Babes" featured a story line obviously ripped from the headlines of the MySpace Suicide case. There is no release date set yet for E-Venge. Who will play Lori Drew? [Cinema Blend]

Nothing says "life of privilege" like being miserable in a luxury box at a racetrack, and talking shit on people three feet away. Not surprisingly, Tamra (perhaps the only technical "housewife" on the show) made fun of the other women for being chubby. Surprisingly, though, she hated on fellow castmate Gretchen for being "attention seeking"... all while displaying two very large, fake breasts.