You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and gender discrimination.

This chapter covers the cultural touchstone of the movie Mean Girls, which premiered in 2004. The movie addresses the elaborate and often brutal ways in which high school girls leverage gossip to create and maintain power amongst themselves. Within the world of the film, the Burn Book gains particular prominence; it is a large book in which the most popular girls, or “the “Plastics,” write both true and unfounded rumors about fellow students and even teachers.

Mean Girls is based on a nonfiction parenting book titled Queen Bees & Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman. A former teacher, Wiseman draws on personal experiences in her advice to parents but also indulges in stereotyping teenage girls, and she casts gossipers and popular girls as one-dimensional villains who are simply “power-hungry, intimidating, and very good at manipulating others” (56). Wiseman’s only example of a good stereotype for a teenage girl is one who fights against gossip at every turn, befriends everybody, and stands up for people who are the targets of gossip. McKinney asserts that Wiseman not only “incorrectly frames refraining from gossip as a personal virtue” (60) but also fails to acknowledge that gossip can also be a form of protection.