“No offense, but your hair looks awful today.” “No offense, but that skirt is really out of style.” “No offense, but your boyfriend is ugly.” Let’s face it: When girls say “no offense” before a statement, they are usually saying something offensive. Some girls are mean. It is a fact. Some girls chose to intentionally hurt other girls.

For me, this meanness goes back to when I was five years old. I was in kindergarten and I had Cinderella valentines. I was really excited, so I told the girl next to me. She gave me a repulsed look and said, “I hate Cinderella.” I was a crushed little kindergartner. When I was in about 5th grade, a girl in the clique I was in said in front of me, “Danielle just hangs out with us because she has no one else to hang out with …” In junior high, I ran into one of the supposed “popular” girls in the hallway (I always wondered why everyone thought she was so popular because she only would speak with a small number of people that were the only people worthy of her presence. I thought popular meant that you had a lot of friends)? She said insolently, “Move.” I timidly ran away. I wish I would have had the guts to stand up to her. What makes her any better than I am? When a girl says to you, “Ooh, I like your dress, where did you get it …” What the girl really wants to know is “How much did you spend on it. Did you get it at an ‘in’ store or just Target?” I have been asked that question a multitude of times.

The truth is that we girls act exactly like the girls in Mean Girls. In the movie, Regina says to Cady, “You are really pretty.” “Thanks,” Cady says. “So you agree, you think you are really pretty.” Regina concludes. This dialogue seems like an overstatement, but in reality is not.

I think every girl has experienced how it feels when some girl is having a huge party and leaves you out. My friend Sophie felt this way when one girl on her softball team had a sleepover party inviting the whole team except for a couple girls. The girls came to the game the next day wearing make-up from their party, huddled together talking loudly about their fantastic get-together. The few uninvited girls felt separate from the team and hurt. Girls should not have to invite everyone to their parties; however, they should try to have them surreptitiously without hurting feelings. Mail your invitations instead of handing them out at school. Girls who give their invitations out at school almost desire to make people hurt or jealous.

So how do you deal with the mean girls in high school? Avoid them. Find friends you can rely on. Do not let the girls that think the world revolves around them affect your high school years. Stay confident and true to who you are. Think about it, if the only way they can feel good about themselves is making fun of you, their self esteem must be extremely low. It hurts when mean girls treat you this way, but you may not be the only one who is hurting; in fact, they are hurting more than you are.

If you are upset, control your emotions and do not take them out on an innocent bystander in your life like mean girls do. Displacement is a defense mechanism that teenage girls use frequently. Displacement is the redirection of an emotion or impulse from its original object to another. For example, a mean girl may be angry that her parents are going through a divorce and take that anger out on you.

Boys make great friends because they do not play girl games. Some of my best friends are guys. If my friends Bradley and Andrew think I am in an obnoxious mood, they will just be blunt and tell me. Boys sometimes make more loyal friends than girls do. My brother Taylor says that when he gets into arguments with his friends, they wrestle a bit, and they end up being friends afterwards. No gossip, no talking about each other behind each others’ backs … boys are like an entirely different species that all of us girls could learn from!