The Mean Girls have had their day. Welcome to the new Machiavellians

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/21/mean-girls-have-had-their-day-welcome-to-the-new-machiavellians

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Fifteen years after the release of Tina Fey’s cult film Mean Girls, where Lindsay Lohan’s central character battled her peers, the all-powerful Plastics, is it time to move on from the Mean Girls caricature?

Researchers at Florida Atlantic University found that, far from being ostracised, Mean Girl types are the most popular social group. FAU followed more than 560 pupils aged around 13 for two years, placing popular adolescents into three categories: “prosocial (outgoing) popular”, “aggressive popular” and the “bistrategic popular”, or “Machiavellian”, with this latter group noted for being feared and loved. All very intriguing and it’s good to see the Machiavellian label covering both sexes, perhaps finally putting the Mean Girl where she belongs – on a dusty shelf with other oversold pop-culture relics.

I loved Fey’s witty, brutal film – the characters were older than the adolescents in the Florida research and were inspired in part by the academic study of US high school behaviour, Queen Bees and Wannabes. However, all these years later, the MG stereotype has mutated far beyond the film and there seems something a little bit off, sexist and disturbing about it. After all, doesn’t it amount to cultural permission to call a young girl a bitch? Certainly, it seems a gross distortion and over-simplification of the truth of what it is to be an adolescent girl.

Of course, these days, anyone, of any age or sex, could get themselves labelled a Mean Girl. However, applied to girls, it becomes a reductive, inappropriate cliche, a way to dehumanise and trivialise adolescent females, often with an added sexualisation that verges on pornographic. However, my biggest problem with the Mean Girl is that, in her invulnerability, she’s a dangerous, one-dimensional lie.

There will always be young people conforming to stereotypes (to show off, to fit in, to hide), and good luck to them. However, in my experience, even when teenagers try to be MGs, it quickly becomes obvious that they’re a lot more complicated, both in terms of behaviour and the reasons for that behaviour. In reality, many more adolescent personality types exist than is convenient for films or TV shows. This was true in my day, and from what I’ve seen of my daughters and their friends, true now.

Moreover, the Mean Girl stereotype obscures the real issue, which is that the major problem with many young girls today is lack of confidence, not overconfidence. Their inner MG may exist, but only in passing moments. The rest of the time, they’re just teenagers, as vulnerable, complicated, lost, brilliant, hopeless and inspired as all the others.

Put like that, it starts to feel weird and grotty, not to mention sexist and dated, to be casually flinging around a label like Mean Girl – that sly, somehow socially acceptable excuse to brand young females asirredeemably cold, manipulative and vicious. At least if we go with the term Machiavellians, the boys can share the dark teenage load.

Oh Madonna, don’t be such a misery – let fans film you

Madonna is banning mobile phones from her Madame X world tour. Who does she think she is – Madonna or something? The ban will make her 15-date residency at the London Palladium the UK’s first big mobile-free concert. Audience members will put their phones into lockable fabric cases, which can only be opened by a magnetic device.

Stars such as Jack White and Alicia Keys have also banned mobiles in the US, while Adele ticked off a fan for filming her performance instead of watching it. The aim of mobile bans is to promote greater intimacy at gigs (also – psst! – sales of tour DVDs are falling). However, while there’s something to be said for experiencing things in the moment, rather than via screens, there’s also fan-economics to consider.

Shows at this level are expensive – add travel, refreshments, merchandise and accommodation and it easily runs into hundreds of pounds. If fans have shelled out, then they should be allowed to snap away or film if they like. Besides, if it’s intimacy you’re after, listen to music with headphones on. Live, the audience is as much part of the performance as what’s happening on stage. At these prices, the customer is always right, even if they are waving their phones, yelling: “Over here, Madge!” during your heartrending ballad.

It seems Boris Johnson knows sweet FA about sugar taxes

Brace yourselves for the shocking revelation that a sugar tax, forcing food companies to, you know, “do stuff”, tends to get a better result than merely requesting that food companies put their houses in order – but only if they feel like it. Some were suspicious that No 10 was delaying the publication of an “embarrassing” Public Health England report showing how a sugar tax has been far more effective than just asking manufacturers (pretty please) to make food healthier. A compulsory levy on fizzy drinks reduced sugar 10 times faster than requesting companies to de-sweeten products voluntarily. While sugar consumption in England has risen, the sugar sold in soft drinks has decreased by 21.6%.

Interesting, as was the mysterious delay in releasing this information. The report has been ready for a while, but requests for publication were rebuffed by No 10. The same No 10 that houses Boris Johnson, who’s rather partial to railing against “sin taxes” and the “growing creep of the nanny state”.

Could there possibly be a link? It was only when the delay was made public that the report very briskly made its way into the outside world, with Downing Street citing a “bureaucratic hold-up”. Well of course.

The PHE report makes a mockery of the Tory “anti-obesity” policy to “voluntarily challenge” companies to cut sugar in products such as cakes, sweets and biscuits by 20% over five years. Two years on, PHE feels that believes this target is unlikely to be met. Overall, sugar has been reduced by a mere 3%, with only breakfast cereals and yoghurts hitting the mark. The good news is that Johnson had previously argued that exercise was a “far, far better solution”, and demanded to see evidence that strategies such as sugar taxation “actually stops people from being so fat”. It would appear the PM now has all the evidence he needs.