Mean Girls: 1) Choose Your Seat and 2) Scribble in the Burn Book
Friday, April 25, 2014 at 4:01PM Two comment party questions for you this lovely Friday.
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THE CAFETERIA
I love how detailed the North Shore High's social structure is and that Janis & Damian ('the coolest people you will ever meet') make a map for Cady.
1. Was your High School as regimented? And which table would we have found you sitting at? My table was more "the brains" but I don't see that here so I definitely would have been with seated at either of the "Band Geek" tables (all my friends were in band), sexually active and otherwise.
THE BURN BOOK
it seems kind of unsanitary to leave lip prints all over a book.
2. What would people have written about you in high school? Or were you one of the mean girls who did the writing?
JANIS: What does it say about me?
CADY: You weren't in it.
JANIS: Those bitches!
Reader Comments (21)
Cool Asians. Ok, fine, Asian Nerds, but they ARE next to each other and I do know people in both groups.
Not having been educated in America, the first part of the question doesn't really apply, I guess. Still, if I had to find my way to a table, I'd be right at home with the "girls who eat their feelings".
As far as the second question, I was very well behaved as a high school kid, but for two years I was the setter of the volleyball team and, for a while, there were rumors of inappropriate behavior with another player in the restroom one time after training. So I assume my burn entry would address that.
Carmen -- but Carmen were the rumors true? ("it was just once!")
Kin -- you are flee to flit back and forth between tables as I could with the band geeks
"the coolest people you will ever meet"... this reminds me that THAT moment was my pick for HMWYBS four years ago. You should re-post those picks this week or do a Visual Index post!
As far as I can remember, my school was nowhere near that regimented. Because of that, I've always thought of a work that brings up regimented seating as operating on some sort of cartoon logic, even if that's probably not accurate.
ryan t -- good call.
I moved back and forth, sometimes on a daily basis, between the Preps and the Burnouts. The former, to see who got the highest grade on their English essay and lorde it over the others. The latter, to laugh and love.
I was pretty socially oblivious in high school, but there was still some social stratification that I picked up on vaguely. I was at the Theater Kids table, which in retrospect was a misnomer because the majority of us weren't actually heavily involved in theater. We had to distinguish ourselves from the other AP students some way, I suppose.
As for my burn book entry, let's just say Janis and I had a few rumors in common.
I feel like my school was more eclectic and permeable in its formations, owing at least in part perhaps to and benefitting from a Southern California outdoors eating arrangement/lack of formal cafeteria: people just shifted to different sunny spots all over the school. I think a lot of groups would have been characterized as some variation of preppy/college bound/soulless trolls, with me occasionally flitting around with the choir or (definitely distinct from) drama groups. And I was most certainly a burn book-style author. Multiple years of cataloging all of the kids I hated in my diaries. I didn't share it with any like-minded bitches, though, probably because I most frequently complained about my friends...(this is sounding awfully familiar)
I couldn't make my mind up in high school. Freshmen and Sophmore year I sat with the JV Jocks since I thought being in the football team was cool. Then I realized I didn't really like football so I quit and I started hanging out with the Badass Drama kids who got stoned all the time. And by Senior year I was all over the damn place.
BTW, love the whole cast in this movie, especially Lohan and McAdams.
I went to a boarding school with two dining halls and seating was regimented but fluid (at least it seemed that way to me) because of people's dorm affiliation, ethnicity and extracurricular activities. You would have found me with the black kids, the theater kids, the brains, the pre-gays, the stoners or my housemates, depending on the day.
I had very idiosyncratic fashion sense back then—oh wait, I still do—so that would probably have been noted by the burn boook bitches.
Not quite that stratified - there were quite a few tables that would not have been easy to categorize. At one point, I sat at the band geek table, and then I also sat at what could only be described as the "anime obsessed" table which included both nerdy, high achieving people and total slackers - maybe the burn outs?. I was neither in band nor into anime. It became much easier once I was a junior and we were allowed to leave for lunch.
I think I would have ever been described as a total brown noser/ teacher's pet.
The American High School education system am I not familiar with, but if I have to choose, I would be the Jocks. Former soccer team captain player u know
The second question I don't know. Though I was team captain at the time, I also kept being by myself, read books and read about movies and watch lots 70s and 80s movies when I had the time
I was the back table, with all the 'freaks' in grunge attire - long dyed hair, flannel shirts, baggy jeans. Mostly though I hung out on the arts floor during free periods with all the choir nerds that my older sister made fun of.
Uh and once someone who had been my best friend in middle school told someone that I paid some guy to go out with me, which was weird because I hadn't even gone out with anyone at the time.
Well first, I went to school in the UK, so things were a little bit different.
I don't know where I'd be if I had to pick a table from the image, I didn't have any of these particular cliques when I was in school. When I was in school however, I was constantly called an 'emo' (this was the most common one because of how I dressed - with black and then luminescent yellows, greens and pinks somewhere on the outfit. I also had thick black eyeliner when in my second school (my first we couldn't wear makeup)), 'chav' (this was because I didn't have the best, most expensive clothes you could get. The bullies sort of missed the point on name calling here with me) and 'tart' (though those times it was because a boy would fancy me over another girl (which I didn't know until the name calling began) and that girl would call me a tart because he did). I would probably say, if I had to choose one...maybe the 'Burnouts'? I don't know.
I definitely wouldn't be one of the people writing in the Burn Book, I'd be somewhere in it. It would probably say something along the lines of being a slut, tart or sleeping around. Also of being a bitch, though all of these things are WAY off my personality and how my life was back then, I was a good girl, never slept around and painfully shy. I would never say anything horrible about anyone but I would stand up for myself hence the 'bitch'.
'Oh school, thou is a heartless beast.' - Sorry, I copied off something I read on the internet! (:
I went to North Shore High School! In Slidell, Louisiana, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans!
However, i would not have had a table to eat at, as I was Ally Sheedy mixed with Anthony Micheal Hall in High School. (I went to high school in the 80's, so don't you forget about me!)
forever -- well both of those tables would have been better than Emilio Estevez's table, you know?
harriett -- i guess you'd be at the Goth table which is not in Mean Girls. in the 80s that table would be the New Wavers with the hairdos and the black clothing
manuel -- i love that jocks exist that love movies as much as you do. well done.
anne marie -- i kind of wanted to be at the theater kids table, I longed for it but most of the time it was the brains or the band geeks (but actually a combo of both)... i did log a bit of time with the new wavers but they were all either older than me or younger so they weren't my crew.
1) I went to a private catholic high school and we were approximately 150 students. The cafeteria was rather small and my group and I used to have lunch behind the principal's office... I don't know in which table we would have seated.
2) As for the Burn Book, there used to be a rumor about me and my best friend being "the gay couple" (it made him drop out of school), so I think maybe that.
nathaniel r made out with a hot dog
that was one time!
1. Art Freaks. I had no real clique. I was one who bounced around.
2. They would have written I was loud mouthed and annoying and probably used homophobic slur (I'm not gay but love and support gays).