In a recent conversation with friends, a comment was made that gave me pause. Actually, the conversation started out a discussion of characters in the movie, Grease. As my friends and I laughed about the scene where Rizzo dons a blonde wig and mercilessly teases perennial goody-goody Sandy (hearing her sing, "Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee...") we characterized each character in one word bites...Rizzo, bitch; Marty ("Marachino...like the cherry"), slut; Frenchie, ding-bat; and the other girl with the black hair, whose name we couldn't remember, fugly. (Fugly, for those of you who haven't been around a teenager or who didn't see Mean Girls is a blend of the words f***ing and ugly.) I commented that I couldn't see how no-name girl was fly enough to be a Pink Lady, and one friend reminded me, (and I quote) "There's always a fugly one." To which the other friend quickly quipped, "I'm not claiming that. I wasn't the fugly one."
Hmmmm...
The Pink Ladies were a high school clique, a clique that has been replicated in various forms to various degrees over and over. They dated the hot, bad boys (The T-Birds, in Grease). In high school, I belonged to a clique, too. There was a tall one, a youngster with the body of a fully developed woman. There was a model, who discovered her own beauty rather late in the game. There was the one who seemed to always have a guy chasing after her, though she rarely deigned to give any of them her full attention. There was a serial monogamer. Of course, we had a bad-ass, boss-bitch that organized us and directed the social calendar. And last but not least there was a smart and sarcastic girl with high expectations for boys, often so high that she was mostly single. If, as my friend so aptly pointed out, there is always a fugly one, then one of us was unwittingly pulling double duty.
I wish I could say that there were more moments when I didn't believe it was me. After all, being the one of your clique that rarely had a steady boyfriend and was constantly being relegated to the friend-zone doesn't do a lot for your overall self-esteem. (So, now you know which member of the clique I was!) Yeah, I had the brains (and to be fair, we were all pretty smart), but I lacked the self-confidence to go out and take what I wanted. I watched as my friends got the attention from the boys I liked. I was severely admonished if ever the social order was disrupted because I had the audacity to draw attention from a boy that one of them liked first. (Tsk-tsk at the high school girl rules!) One of the members of my clique actually called me a "jealous bitch" in front of the rest of the group (my personal Gretchen Weiners moment!), and we were still friends afterwards. WOW! Why didn't I slap the shit of her as soon as the words left her mouth? I don't know. Maybe because I realized even then, that her comfort level with my place in the clique was dependent on me never realizing that I could change that place (though, I feel that I eventually did). Plus, I had other things she didn't. I knew that she was projecting her own jealousy of my stable home-life, car at 16, and general outlook on life.
For the record, the conversation that spurred this post was had between me, the bad-ass/boss-bitch and someone who would've been in the clique had she not been six years younger than me. The person who called me a "jealous bitch" was the one who always had guys chasing after her--usually other people's boyfriends. Sadly, karma is a bigger bitch than I ever was. We don't talk as much today. I am still good friends with the tall one, the serial monogamer, and the aforementioned bad-ass/boss-bitch. And while this conundrum of "the fugly one" stills plays itself out in my adult life sometimes when I am overlooked, referred to as so-and-so's friend (as though my name isn't/wasn't worth knowing or remembering), or remembered only in reference/confused with someone else I can't help but laugh. Fugly is a state of mind, and to that end I was never that one!
Food for thought: Which one were you?
