Virginia Schmidt

Sometimes the shiniest treasure we have to share disguises itself in the shameful secret we most want to hide. 

In 2007, when I was a junior at Cody High School, the senior class compiled their traditional collection of disses aimed at underclassmen. I remember what one of the seniors wrote cut me to the core. He penned: “Virginia: You’re just like Lindsay Lohan in ‘Mean Girls.’” The movie had come out a few years prior. 

Back then, I didn’t understand how upsetting remarks people make about you can serve as guides that clearly indicate where you can most grow and heal. I felt nothing but humiliation at the senior boy’s comment about me. But I hid behind pride and bluffing like I didn’t care. 

It’s amazing to me that in watching “Mean Girls” back then, I didn’t wake up to how the character of Lindsay Lohan really was a startling depiction of my own journey in many ways, and thus could have provided a meaningful marker back to my real self. Instead I avoided authentic self analysis behind a facade of “popularity” in a way that degraded my true self, and a way that I know often truly was mean and demeaning to others. 

Thankfully I’m old enough now to recognize how this devolution of which I’ve always been ashamed can offer a redemptive story, similar to how Lindsay Lohan’s arc in “Mean Girls” does. I’d love for young girls to read this, though I’m unsure high school students read newspapers. I’m also aware that the game of trading our true self for what seems more marketable doesn’t stop in high school. So maybe some adults will find this relevant, too. 

In the movie, Lindsay Lohan goes from being an authentic, earnest, nerdily smart former homeschool girl who grew up in Africa to the most performative, “hot,” popular mean girl in school. She even pretends to be dumb to get a guy to like her.

I never fell prey to the last part (I thought boys would like me for being smarter than them), but the other parallels make the movie painful for me — in the kind of way that nudges one to pay attention — to watch. I went from being a frizzy-haired, braces wearing, reptile loving, trumpet playing, utterly outspoken, obsessively bookish tomboy to manipulating everything about myself to be what I thought would make me likable, especially to boys. 

Little by little, just like Lindsay Lohan in “Mean Girls,” I found myself using my natural wit with words less to tell inspiring stories or speak for others in a helpful way, and more to make quips that superficially lifted me up at the expense of putting others down. My style went from being dorkily me to whatever the latest Abercrombie release was. And I’d use my family’s wealth to buy such status symbols — again to try to lift myself up — never considering the opportunity I had to instead share my privilege to help others, or how it might feel to those who couldn’t afford nice clothes to see someone always getting to wear the newest things without a second thought. 

So what I want to do now, 18 years later, is touch my cap to that senior boy who I thought was being so mean to me by telling me I’d turned into a “Mean Girl.” Actually, he was telling me what I most needed to hear — the nicest thing anyone could say to me: The truth. I just wasn’t ready to listen. But hey, better late than never. 

Whatever gifts we’ve been given — like my way with words, athleticism or family’s privilege — aren’t meant to make us better than others. And when we use them that way (because we think it will make us better-liked), everybody loses, most of all ourselves. 

When we choose to give our natural gifts away to and for something bigger than ourselves in a way that’s genuine to our natural expression, everyone benefits, and we feel like the real us. Maybe not everyone wants to be us, but everyone who our lives touch feels like it’s enough to be themselves.