Mean Girls, Realism, and Young Adult Books

It took me years to watch Mean Girls, and let's just say it wasn't instant love or anything. So how I ended up watching some of Mean Girls 2... I have no idea. I'm going to blame it on the lack of baseball at the moment.

Even so, my mind somehow related the movie to writing. There was a scene where a girl got food splattered all over her, and everyone in the cafeteria pointed at her and laughed. Literally. Pointing fingers and many over-exaggerated chuckles and all.

The thing is, there was a two-week period in my junior year when the same friend of mine got hit by food at three different lunches. We weren't the "losers" or anything (my high school was surprisingly diverse and well-mannered). I'm 99% sure the food wasn't even aimed at our table, unless as a joke. And it always happened right at the end of lunch, so there was a lot of mayhem with everyone leaving and we couldn't figure out where it came from. One time it was a barbecue sauce type substance, one time it was some sort of jello that had something inside of it. We all used our thinking caps (AP students that we were), tracked down a spare shirt in one of our gym or dance lockers, and got her changed and to class relatively on time. (In fact, after she was late for the third time, our crazy Calculus teacher joked she should start wearing a raincoat to lunch.)

I am still convinced that the three occurrences in such a short time period and the fact that it always hit the same person even though we were in different seats was a mere coincidence. Frankly, we thought it was hilarious. And my whole point is, no one else really even noticed what happened, much less pointed and laughed.

I think high school is a very important period of life (no matter how desperate I was to move on to college), and that's a large part of why I write contemporary young adult. So many things that happen in high school are amplified in our minds, becoming the most important or disastrous or embarrassing thing that has ever happened. EVER. And that's what makes it so interesting.

High school is a terrifying time all on its own. But for some reason, movies like to amplify this. They make the universal cliques more distinct, the embarrassing moments ten times longer and more ridiculous, the teachers crazier, and on and on. The stories that are told about high school are important, but I believe they can be told realistically, too.

I think there's a quote saying something to effect that fiction has to be more realistic than real life, because it has to be believable. That makes perfect sense. And I think this is something that young adult books are better at than movies. I also think the importance of this shouldn't be overlooked. When something is the right amount of realistic, it's relatable. And, at least for me, when I can relate in even the smallest way, that's when something I read has the most effect.

So, digging into all the crazy and twisted things that assuredly happen in high school and how they affect people, I'm all for. But over-exaggerating events to the point they're hard to watch? Please, for the love of books, leave it to the movies.

Note: I am speaking specifically about contemporary/realistic books - not fantasy or sci-fi or the like, which each work in their own ways with their non-realistic elements :)