Here's the plot, in a nutshell: a new girl arrives in town, and is taken under the rather uncomfortable wing of the queen bee. She learns the ABCs of popularity, and quickly becomes popular herself. Soon enough, the student eclipses the master; the queen bee is disturbed and seeks vengeance (which then backfires on her). The upstart triumphs in the end, and the social order is ultimately shaken up. End of story.
Sound familiar? Well, since this
is a guide on "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," we certainly hope it does. However, even if you haven't read the story yet, it might ring some mental bells if you've seen
Mean Girls. Yep, that's right – if you think about it, the two plotlines are really pretty close.
Now, we're not accusing screenwriter
Tina Fey of ripping off what's essentially one of the oldest stories in the book of adolescent life; we heart Tina Fey. Instead, we'd like to focus on the
reason for these uncanny similarities – the simple fact that girl culture has operated in a certain way for a long time, and will, in all likelihood, continue to do so for ages to come.
Both
Fitzgerald and Fey touch upon some of the central themes of youth – think jealousy and competition – and use them to remind us of how savage we're all capable of being, despite our big talk about being civilized, modern citizens of an advanced world. Sure, we may have invented some pretty complicated social structures for ourselves (in Fitzgerald's story, the social hierarchy of a small town; in
Mean Girls, the convoluted maze of relationships that is adolescence), but fundamental human nature never changes: we're capable of being competitive, vicious beasts on the inside.
Both "Bernice" and
Mean Girls point to the particular viciousness of female competition. The concept of femininity is central to both works; they ask us to question our expectations of girls and girlhood, and to reevaluate what makes women the way they are. The conclusion (spoken in
Mean Girls, unspoken in "Bernice") is that no strict definition of femininity can do any good – any concept of an ideal woman causes nothing but competition, jealousy, and flat-out trouble, regardless of how you define it. "Bernice" doesn't offer us any solution to this; we're not sure what happens to our short-haired newly-minted flapper friend after the last line of the story, and honestly, we're a little nervous for her. However, we can take some consolation in the moral of
Mean Girls – hopefully, all of the diverse definitions of womanhood will someday be equally accepted, and will be able coexist peacefully.