Abstract
Representations of mean girls who face the ultimate punishment for their “girl-on-girl crimes” abound in popular works such as Jennifer’s Body, Pretty Little Liars, and The Lying Game. While the death of the queen bee suggests the possibility of empowerment for her victims, I argue that the dead mean girl actually functions as a warning intended to police the interpersonal behaviors of all adolescent women. However, as works such as Lauren Oliver’s novel Before I Fall illustrate, we may be seeing the beginning of a productive shift in this formula that more clearly acknowledges the social systems that inform social aggression among young women.
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Day, S.K. (2017). Mean Girls End Up Dead: The Dismal Fate of Teen Queen Bees in Popular Culture. In: Chappell, J., Young, M. (eds) Bad Girls and Transgressive Women in Popular Television, Fiction, and Film. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47259-1_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47259-1_8
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47258-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47259-1
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