Mean Girl Schadenfreude

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Means girls marry fat, ugly, bald law firm partners and have bratty children who go to private schools. They are forced to starve themselves and work out incessantly to keep their rich husbands. At 50 the husbands dump them anyway and then they have to get jobs at Neimans or Saks.
Revenge enough?

OP here. I grew up in Bethesda. I see the pics of the mean girls on Facebook often, and all of them still look like they are ready to lead cheers in bikinis at the HS reunion.

I guess wealthy, privileged, mean girls don't end up stuck in small towns, growing cankles and becoming has beens. These women all appear to have went on to great schools, have these big careers and equally gorgeous husbands, so I don't think any of them will end up spritzing perfume at Neimans or becoming realtors. Sadly, for my own schadenfreude fantasy, I think this is more the arena of Michaele Salahi ( aka Missy Holt, Oakton High).

That said, maybe I need to look them up on Facebook in my 50's....

Or maybe, as other have said, you need to get the fuck over it. If you're not happy with your life now, try to fix it. Try to make things the best you can for your daughter. But stop focusing on the past, and looking for others' misfortune to make you feel good about yourself (that's pretty sick, by the way).

[Anonymous]

Can someone tell me if those mean girls ever have a child that gets bullied at school?
I cannot help but wonder how they would react.

Oh,at my school it was the son of a prominent and highly respected politician who had the need to show the class that he knows how to kick a girl. He found out that the mean girls were mean to me and wanted to join the fun.
That boy is somewhat of a local celebrity. But I really do not care. I have lived a good life, lived in 3 countries, speak 4 languages, have a wonderful man and healthy children, and earthly blessings do not get better than this. Only thing is, I think they would never have guessed it at the time.
Some people just have lower morals and do not see anything wrong with their behavior. Let it go and find new people. I did and it was wonderful to know that the world is not full of their kind

[Anonymous]

mean school girls/boys is one thing. resentful targets who wish them ill many years later seems a much bigger issue. P, I'm so sorry for your pain as a child. Your reaction all these years later seems pathological. I can understand remembering old hurts and feeling bad about them. But what you're doing with these memories is hurting you. Is this your revenge on your former bullies - to become a psychologically stunted adult? Some revenge.

I'm lucky in that I wasn't bullied by classmates, but my family's bullying has been horrendous. I feel sad about it sometimes, it's painful, but wish them ill? No. Just no. Their bad behavior is their problem. When you wish people ill, that's when you make it your big, character-disorder-ish, happiness-obliterating problem. The obliteration of your happiness, not theirs.

[Anonymous]

Basic advice:

(1) Help her notice what she likes about herself. Not what the popular girls seem to have. Not what the boys sseem to like. Not even what you like about her. Help her notice what she likes about herself.

One fun way to do this is to make it a game/bedtime ritual. Call it the "Like Game." You could even do it together. Each night, you and your DD could each share one thing you "liked" about your day, and one thing you "liked" about yourself that day. Or you could call it "one good thing" -- one about the day, and one about her/you.

(2) Make sure she has at least ONE friend who likes and accepts her for who she is. I can't remember where I read it, but there was a great article saying that having one trusted friend is enough to get most kids through even the worst mean girl / bullying crap at school.

(3) Encourage her to read. My childhood and teen years were full of books, and I couldn't help but notice the variety and diversity in the different characters. I think I somehow absorbed the message that there's not one mold -- there are so many ways to be likeable, good and happy in life. I also realized there's a big, huge world out there, far beyond my narrow junior high and high school. It helped me think big and look beyond the day-to-day of the popularity game.

(4) Shift the focus AWAY from the other girls. I'm sure you mom meant well by saying they were unhappy/insecure/jealous etc., but all that guessing about what might be going on in their heads and hearts can sometimes be a distraction from helping your DD notice what's going on in hers.

(5) Finally, encourage her to take the high road. Always. If she spends her childhood and teen years learning how to be the best version of herself under ALL circumstances -- easy and challenging, alike -- she will be so well prepared to soar as an adult.

One last thing, and I mean this in the nicest way possible: you need to find a way to let go of your childhood pain. Clearly the pain is still eating away at you, and you deserve to be happier. So whether it's therapy or some self-help with a really on-point book, do whatever you can to let it go. Until you move forward, you carry pain and risk passing problems on to your kids. (I say this as the daughter of a mom who did just that. Though her intentions with me were nothing but good, her advice on how to navigate social issues was so painfully wrong. I had to spend my 20s re-learning so much, including some of what I shared above.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Basic advice:

(1) Help her notice what she likes about herself. Not what the popular girls seem to have. Not what the boys sseem to like. Not even what you like about her. Help her notice what she likes about herself.

One fun way to do this is to make it a game/bedtime ritual. Call it the "Like Game." You could even do it together. Each night, you and your DD could each share one thing you "liked" about your day, and one thing you "liked" about yourself that day. Or you could call it "one good thing" -- one about the day, and one about her/you.

(2) Make sure she has at least ONE friend who likes and accepts her for who she is. I can't remember where I read it, but there was a great article saying that having one trusted friend is enough to get most kids through even the worst mean girl / bullying crap at school.

(3) Encourage her to read. My childhood and teen years were full of books, and I couldn't help but notice the variety and diversity in the different characters. I think I somehow absorbed the message that there's not one mold -- there are so many ways to be likeable, good and happy in life. I also realized there's a big, huge world out there, far beyond my narrow junior high and high school. It helped me think big and look beyond the day-to-day of the popularity game.

(4) Shift the focus AWAY from the other girls. I'm sure you mom meant well by saying they were unhappy/insecure/jealous etc., but all that guessing about what might be going on in their heads and hearts can sometimes be a distraction from helping your DD notice what's going on in hers.

(5) Finally, encourage her to take the high road. Always. If she spends her childhood and teen years learning how to be the best version of herself under ALL circumstances -- easy and challenging, alike -- she will be so well prepared to soar as an adult.

One last thing, and I mean this in the nicest way possible: you need to find a way to let go of your childhood pain. Clearly the pain is still eating away at you, and you deserve to be happier. So whether it's therapy or some self-help with a really on-point book, do whatever you can to let it go. Until you move forward, you carry pain and risk passing problems on to your kids. (I say this as the daughter of a mom who did just that. Though her intentions with me were nothing but good, her advice on how to navigate social issues was so painfully wrong. I had to spend my 20s re-learning so much, including some of what I shared above.)

Best post on this thread.

[Anonymous]

To be happy again is revenge
Admit it, they have to be quite pathetic to have carried on with that behavior and not think that it is not wrong
Get out and find the place that does have those people.

Schadenfreude is not wishing ill, just subtle joy when you hear they are going thru trouble.
But to be happy again, and to not make that into your life story, just something that happened, that is the way to go.

[Anonymous]

The Alpha girls when I was growing up seemed to have it all. Beauty queens, homecoming/prom queens, cheerleading squad, good grades, (you get the picture), the world was their oyster. I would not say they were "mean" but they seemed to travel in their own beautiful space.

But I recall being at a birthday party for one of them in 6th grade (before I wasn't cool enough to be friends with anymore LOL) and I was in the house looking for the bathroom when I overheard the mom berating the girl, really dressing her down for eating too much birthday cake. "I will not, I repeat NOT buy you a bigger size of clothing,, you are going to be FAT and then what will you do, you acted like a pig and if you are going to act like a pig you will be treated like a pig, you are going to tell your baton teacher what you did" (this girl was an amazing baton twirler, went on to twirl for her university band). I mean, really being mean to the girl. I (being all of 11 or 12 years old) high tailed it out of there... I never forgot that and I never looked at her life the same way again realizing that while she was little miss everything, she really lost out where it counts most.

The second alpha girl I did not know quite as well. She went to college, moved away, got married and had a couple of kids. Our moms were/are good friends. She wasn't mean to anyone, she just basically ignored everyone that was not in her circle.

My mom told me a few months ago that alpha girl, (now 48) just had her 3rd relapse of breast cancer. She underwent surgery again but it was not operable so they basically sewed her back up without doing much. Her mom told my mom she had months to live. Her 9yo and 13yo kids will not have their mom anymore. I wrote her a note just to tell her she and her family were in my thoughts and prayers. We've emailed a few times since.

I guess OP, what I'm trying to say is just get over it. High school doesn't really matter. You are an adult and if you are obsessing over this stuff you probably need therapy. These women are just human beings with the same problems, issues, worries and vulnerabilities that we all have. I have/had zero joy at the notion of either of these people having troubles.

[Anonymous]

Lots of sympathy here for the bullies. Maybe most of the posters were mean.
Anyways, it was not your fault. You cannot control how someone behaves.
Be happy if you hear bad news. Chances are many others are also, so nothing to feel guilty about

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lots of sympathy here for the bullies. Maybe most of the posters were mean.
Anyways, it was not your fault. You cannot control how someone behaves.
Be happy if you hear bad news. Chances are many others are also, so nothing to feel guilty about

Maybe most of the posters have grown up and moved on from high school. That's a more likely scenario.

[Anonymous]

Since this is an anonymous forum, I freely admit I was one of the alpha girls, and I like my life now. I am by your FB voyeur viewing standards "successful." I had a really weird experience a while back when a girl I knew in high school claimed my circle of friends, including me, were very mean to her and made her feel left out. In all actuality, no, we did not. She was not in our friend group, and we were not in hers, so we did not interact. That was not "mean". It was simply high school. She probably left people out all the time, but thought nothing of it -- because she had decided we were the in circle, our leaving her out took on this whole new significance in her mind.

Bottom line, most people just aren't that cruel. They are simply caught up in their own lives and issues. Singling out someone and ridiculing them or standing by when it happens is wrong and awful. Not being your bestie, well, I mean, come on.

The reason most of the alpha girls I knew are still happy, pretty and successful now is because they were the alpha girls because everyone else envied their happy, lucky, in the moment way of living.

Read Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld -- she does a good job explaining this, I think, through the eyes of a left-out, underprivileged kid in a prep school.

[Anonymous]

Ok, alpha girls are not mean
So says an alpha girl
I think everyone knows by now that we are not talking about just being left out of the group, etc etc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Basic advice:

(1) Help her notice what she likes about herself. Not what the popular girls seem to have. Not what the boys sseem to like. Not even what you like about her. Help her notice what she likes about herself.

One fun way to do this is to make it a game/bedtime ritual. Call it the "Like Game." You could even do it together. Each night, you and your DD could each share one thing you "liked" about your day, and one thing you "liked" about yourself that day. Or you could call it "one good thing" -- one about the day, and one about her/you.

(2) Make sure she has at least ONE friend who likes and accepts her for who she is. I can't remember where I read it, but there was a great article saying that having one trusted friend is enough to get most kids through even the worst mean girl / bullying crap at school.

(3) Encourage her to read. My childhood and teen years were full of books, and I couldn't help but notice the variety and diversity in the different characters. I think I somehow absorbed the message that there's not one mold -- there are so many ways to be likeable, good and happy in life. I also realized there's a big, huge world out there, far beyond my narrow junior high and high school. It helped me think big and look beyond the day-to-day of the popularity game.

(4) Shift the focus AWAY from the other girls. I'm sure you mom meant well by saying they were unhappy/insecure/jealous etc., but all that guessing about what might be going on in their heads and hearts can sometimes be a distraction from helping your DD notice what's going on in hers.

(5) Finally, encourage her to take the high road. Always. If she spends her childhood and teen years learning how to be the best version of herself under ALL circumstances -- easy and challenging, alike -- she will be so well prepared to soar as an adult.

One last thing, and I mean this in the nicest way possible: you need to find a way to let go of your childhood pain. Clearly the pain is still eating away at you, and you deserve to be happier. So whether it's therapy or some self-help with a really on-point book, do whatever you can to let it go. Until you move forward, you carry pain and risk passing problems on to your kids. (I say this as the daughter of a mom who did just that. Though her intentions with me were nothing but good, her advice on how to navigate social issues was so painfully wrong. I had to spend my 20s re-learning so much, including some of what I shared above.)

OP here, thank you so much for your kind and helpful post.