Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what girls are made of — not these girls, though. Mean girls onscreen say their disturbingly inventive nasty quips with a sweet smile, have no friends but underlings, and seem to have no greater aim than destroying people’s lives and becoming the Prom Queen. So why is it that we love them so much?

In short, sometimes villains are far more interesting to watch than goody-two-shoes. Especially as they are often also incredibly intelligent, passionate, and determined. Yes, the trope of a mean girl is detrimental to how girls view themselves, with Hollywood villainizing hyper-femininity, simultaneously telling teens that liking fashion and pink lipstick is a mark of an empty-headed corrupted person and that girls who are ambitious and competitive quickly turn to the dark side. There is, however, a rising resentment for the sexist film trope of portraying angry women as villains on screen.

It seems that while men can express their anger or grief in violent ways, women can’t be angry, can’t lash out without ‘crossing boundaries.’ The message is that power corrupts women, so powerful women or, in this case, girls must be stopped. Viewers, on the other hand, often relate to overwhelming feelings of insecurity, rage, and passion that are brewing inside young women, thus feeling a certain protectiveness over them.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

8 Courtney Alice Shayne – Jawbreaker

     Sony Pictures Releasing

Jawbreaker follows three popular girls who accidentally kill a member of their own group while playing a prank on her. To buy the school’s resident nerd’s silence, they promise her a makeover and the place of the prematurely departed member. Appropriately to the premise, Courtney Alice Shayne is an absurdly villainous mean girl, proclaiming herself a God of the high school microcosm. For instance, to avoid appearing human, she never eats in public. It is refreshing to see such an unapologetic, preposterously wicked woman, one who does not put others’ needs before her own.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

7 Tracy Flick – Election

     Paramount Pictures

Reese Witherspoon gives an incredible performance as the overzealous know-it-all Tracy Flick in Election. She is a high-school movie avatar of Hillary Clinton, attempting to reclaim female ambition and showing just how different standards for men and women in politics are: when men are assertive and confident, women are arrogant and overeager. As girls grow up, their aggressive and competitive impulses become less socially acceptable, so to fit in, they must appear kind and approachable and express their negative emotions in under-the-table ways, by scheming, blackmailing, or psychological warfare.

6 Kathryn Merteuil – Cruel Intentions

     Columbia Pictures

Beautiful and an excellent student, the pride of the school, a girl who mothers set as an example to their daughters: who would have thought that the ideal Kathryn and the real Kathryn have nothing in common with each other! Seducing out of boredom, having sex out of revenge, corrupting for fun — this is how Kathryn from Cruel Intentions entertains herself.

As her brother Sebastian fulfills the terms of their bet, the unexpected happens: he falls in love. Kathryn hates it, as it means losing such a wonderful toy. At the end of the film, Katherine falls from ‘grace,’ and her fall is devastating.

5 Sharpay Evans – High School Musical

     Buena Vista Television

In recent years, audiences seem to have reclaimed the ‘mean girl,’ and the ‘love to hate her’ attitude turned to more sympathetic sentiments, sometimes even claiming that the mean girl was actually the victim of the story, as happened with Sharpay Evans from High School Musical. Her apologists ask: what is Sharpay’s crime, after all? Being incredibly dedicated to her craft and not letting amateurs take away her dream from her? She’s a catty diva but, to be honest, that sort of comes with being a theater kid. Her sparkly pink looks have become a fashion inspiration, and her campy performances are so much fun, making Sharpay more memorable and lovable in the long run.

4 Jennifer Check – Jennifer’s Body

     20th Century Fox

Jennifer Check appears as a quintessential mean girl, however, the feminist satire and underrated horror-comedy Jennifer’s Body goes about the trope in an interesting way. The titular Jennifer can’t change the system, so she decides to use the unfair circumstances and people’s preconceived perceptions of her to her advantage. As Mashable writes: “the feelings generated by the pressure placed on young women – anger, guilt, shame, fear, self-loathing – explode in a bloody fashion”.

There is an element of mystery to mean girls — why does this girl-who-has-everything hate the outcast girl so intensely? Well, Jennifer’s Body finally develops the powerful dynamics of female friendship and animosity and gives this intensity queer undertones.

3 Heather Chandler – Heathers

     New World Pictures

Heathers gave us the OG mean girl. The impact Heather Chandler had on pop culture in the short ten or so minutes she actually appeared on-screen cannot be overstated. The movie even predicted public obsession with her by showing how after her death her presence became stronger than ever. From the bold 80s fashion to the dark absurdist humor that inspired many of the following teen movies, Heathers is a classic and Heather Chandler pioneered a new, more complex look at the mean girl: someone who appears perfect, as demanded by society, but is broken and deeply flawed in reality.

2 Regina George – Mean Girls

If Heathers introduced a new look at the mean girl trope, then Mean Girls perfected it. Regina George encapsulates the in-universe paradox of the mean girls: people can hate her but at the same time they still want her to like them. She is an evil genius, a bully, and a manipulator, but stripped of glamour, she is just a really angry kid who had no boundaries or guidance. An amazing political satire, Mean Girls examined how fleeting popularity is, how meanness is a coping mechanism to fight deep inner insecurities, and how quickly anyone can be corrupted by power, a sweet nerd and a goth tomboy included.

1 Blair Waldorf — Gossip Girl

     Warner Bros. Television

Blair Waldorf, our favorite “95-pound, doe-eyed, bon mot-tossing, label-whoring package of girly evil” from Gossip Girl, is the ultimate mean girl. She won Prom Queen, became a real-life princess, and even managed to displace the ‘nice girl’ as the de facto main character. Blair is mean, but also incredibly witty, smart, and driven. She wants everything, but the charming thing is that she works tirelessly to earn it, battling very real problems like insecurities, self-sabotaging, eating disorders, toxic relationships, broken family, loss of a baby… Giving meanness (not an excuse but) an explanation makes Blair a delightfully nuanced and complex character, securing her teen show legacy that no remake can replicate.