Photo used under Creative Commons license from flickr.com user Leland Schneider
Last Thursday, a screening of the documentary “Finding Kind” was shown at Hoff Theater. The documentary is about two women, Lauren Parsekian and Molly Thompson, who traveled across the United States in 2009 to talk to people about why girls are so mean to each other. It is a part of a larger initiative called the “Kind Campaign,” that Parsekian and Thompson, who have both been affected by female bullying, started to help combat girl-against-girl crime in schools.
While I was watching the documentary, I kept forgetting it was made in 2009 because everything is still so relevant today. Stories told were about girls being mean to other girls because they weren’t skinny or pretty, wore braces or had a big nose. You know the drill. Parsekian and Thompson talked to people who had their best friends turn on them and a group of friends who were mean to each other because of jealousy. But sometimes girls were just mean to be well, mean.
At the camp I work at I see this all the time. A leader of the group is formed because she has the cutest clothes; still unsure why you bring cute clothes to camp but regardless, is cool because she wears makeup, and has already had boyfriends. Oh, I should tell you my campers are 12 and 13. If a girl doesn’t fit this “mold,” she struggles and it’s heartbreaking. I’ve had to give countless talks on self-confidence. I always tell my campers that it gets better, but while watching this documentary I wondered, does it really get better? Will girls ever really stop being mean to each other?
It doesn’t.
In college we still experience the same bitchiness that existed in high school. It’s all too competitive: boys, jobs, GPA, leadership positions, you name it. Everything is a competition. Be honest, we’re all jealous of the girl who is put together, has a 3.9 GPA, has a leadership position in at least three organizations and still has time for an internship. I think it’s because we all finally have confidence that we never had in high school, so now our confidence just gets the best of us.
As I said above, the documentary was filmed in 2009 and five years before that, our favorite movie was released, “Mean Girls,” which was based on the book, “Queen Bees and Wannabees,” which was written in 2002. You probably just said to yourself, “damn, I’m old,” because you just did the math and realized the greatest quotable movie came out 10 years ago. You also probably just realized that we haven’t progressed much.
What about when we’re older? “Finding Kind” featured interviews with women in their 40s who are still trapped in the vicious mean girl cycle and said that everything is still a competition for the biggest house, most expensive car and looking the youngest.
So how do we prevent our lives from being the College Park edition of Laguna Beach or The Real Housewives series? Well like one group of women in their 50s in the documentary do, is we can introduce our different friend groups to each other, so that we have a greater support system.
But the most important lesson I learned from “Finding Kind,” is that the most effective way to stop this cycle of mean girls is to remember: not everyone can be the prettiest, the smartest or the most athletic, but everyone can be kind to each other.
