As of last weekend, the last in the group of my high school Mean Girls got married. It was a small affair – a few hundred guests; upscale hotel; fourteen-person wedding party; bridesmaid gifts from Harry Winston, of course – and documented liberally on Facebook. All the Mean Girls were wedding attendants, and, designer gowns aside, the photos looked eerily similar to their senior-year cheerleading yearbook photo, taken five years before.
I remember gazing with resentment at those yearbook photos, probably eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and thinking: “They peaked in high school.”
Didn’t everyone think that phrase at one point or another? “They peaked in high school.” Lord only knows how that mean-hearted bromide got so ubiquitous. I imagine it was concocted by parents trying to quell the inconsolable hurricane of adolescence.
“Becca bought a Dolce & Gabbana prom dress and your gay best friend refused to take you to the dance? Don’t worry about those girls, honey. This is the best part of their lives. They peaked in high school.”
Tell you what, though, if Facebook’s any indication, the pretty girls are still sitting prettier than ever. All five of my personal Mean Girls are in law school now, married to doctors and bankers (one to a professional basketball player), and own their own homes. At the age of 24. They’ve even developed their own girlish wedding ritual: something old (vintage engagement bands); something new (designer dress); something blue (Louboutins). For the something borrowed, I’m sure they just call up the Queen Mother and request the crown jewels for a weekend.
All five Mean Girls are not only happy and successful, but blonder, thinner and prettier than they were at eighteen. And come to think of it, they weren’t ever all that mean, either.
Meanwhile, I’m a receptionist in a bad part of town and spend a sizable portion of my nights sitting on my bathroom sink in my underwear, picking at my zits. My Roomba is probably my best friend, and he tried to kill me the other night.
For just a moment, looking through the wedding pictures, I found myself fantasizing about their long-prophesied unhappiness. Their post-high school burnout. But you know? I’m glad they’re doing well.
How did we fall into this habit, anyway, of being so stingy with other people’s happiness? So often, we treat happiness or success as a zero-sum game: if someone I don’t like lives a good life, then there’s less happiness in the pot for me! It doesn’t make sense.
And while high school’s the pettiest time of our lives (I would hope, at least), I feel myself and see people around me trying to detract from others’ happiness every night. Don’t we all sometimes look at our successful acquaintances or that golden boy in the office and secretly hope they go home and cry every night? God, though, how grim that would be if it were true.
Henceforth, I am declaring a personal moratorium on declaring people already peaked. Wishing for someone else’s fall won’t hurry your own ascent through life, so why fill yourself with bile?
I, for one, hope my high-school Mean Girls haven’t peaked yet. Heck, I hope their lives are everlasting crescendos. Just like I hope anyone who’s met me in this long, strange journey so far would only wish the same for me.
That said, dudes, I need to go take some pictures of me looking super successful so everyone else on Facebook can see how awesome I am now! I’ll just crop the Roomba out of them.
Photo Credit
“Mean Girls: the Movie”
Recent That Kind Of Girl Articles:
- The Commander-In-Chief of Your Heart
- How To Make Someone You Love Stop Doing Something You Hate
- Trial By Ice
- In Defense of the Hostess
- Putting Down the Imaginary Dog
Yeah, I think it’s true. We didn’t really have ‘mean girls’ but the bitchier prettier ones are swimming along just like the rest of us, and hopefully, like most of us, have realised that life is just better if you’re nice to people.