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“You can’t break up the unholy trinity.”
Regina George, Gretchen Wieners, and Karen Smith are one of girl world’s
most iconic cliques — a terrible trio of personality types that,
when put together, have the power to lord over
all other teens at North Shore High.
“If North Shore was US Weekly, they would always be on the cover.”
In fact, variations on the terrible trio have long dominated cinema’s and
TV’s fictional high school hallways — so what is it about this rule of three
and these particular recurring character types that add up
to the perfect recipe for high-school popularity and oppression?
Looking back further to frightening female triads in Greek mythology
and Shakespeare,
like the Three Fates or Furies and Macbeth’s Weird sisters,
we might argue this trio actually taps into our society’s fear
of feminine power.
“We know everything!” “Past,”
“present,” “and future.”
Here’s our Take on why the terrible trio rules,
the forms it still takes, and what each of these three characters
captures about female power.
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Each of the terrible trio brings a distinct personality or ability
to the group that helps sustain their status as rulers.
The alpha female or leader stands unquestioned at the top
of the trio’s hierarchy, effectively acting as a dictator.
“She’s the queen bee, the star,
those other two are just her little workers.”
She possesses a specific vision
that defines what the group should stand for.
Every detail of the group’s image and lifestyle is determined by the #1
— from what they wear to who they like
— cultivating a distinct, prestigious look that visually separates the trio
and creating a cult of personality around the group.
“They got nose jobs.
When they heal, they'll be just like Gigi's!”
An evil genius, the leader is strategic and manipulative,
“You need to be cold to be queen.”
and she exploits the fact that she’s often beautiful and wealthy
(or at least can project that she is)
to keep the rest of the student body in a constant state of envy and awe.
The Blair Waldorf’s, Ruby Matthews’, and Regina George’s of the world
also grasp that in high school, rejection can be key to worship:
so the leader crafts her trio to be both extremely appealing and
extremely exclusive to maintain
public interest and leverage over others.
“They categorize girls into two groups: projects and victims.
Girls who have the potential to be Blair-ites become projects.
And total losers, and the girls
who have the potential to threaten social order become victims.”
Since the entire social hierarchy is built around protecting and reinforcing
the Queen Bee’s will, dethroning her means
dismantling the entire system.
If this hierarchy is built on the myth of the alpha female’s perfection
and God-like status,
“Regina George is flawless.”
The trio’s number two is crucial in perpetuating that myth.
The second-in-command makes sure all
aspects of the leader’s vision are being enforced.
“Now if you break any of these rules, you can’t sit with us at lunch.
I mean not just you, like, any of us.”
Number twos like Gretchen Wieners, Sex Education’s Olivia Hanan,
Heather McNamara and Jawbreaker's Marcie Fox
are utterly, blindly obedient, the “follower” personality type
taken to an extreme.
“If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?”
“Probably.”
“l was watching ‘Oprah’ today. It was ‘ls Your Child a Follower?’
l was deeply concerned because, yes, my child is a follower.”
Like the henchman to a Bond villain,
she’s unquestioningly loyal and more willing
to do the leader’s dirty work, even when she’s mistreated in return.
“The meaner Regina was to her,
the more Gretchen tried to win Regina back”
Whether carrying out a secret plan,
enforcing the trio’s strict outfit policies,
“Didn’t you tell him
we’re not allowed to wear beige or brown?”
acting as the leader’s confidante, or collecting useful information,
“So have you seen any guys that you think are cute yet?”
the second in command is key in legitimizing the leader’s intentions,
providing a buffer to make the leader seem “above it all,”
and framing her rules as matter-of-fact laws.
So her unwavering commitment to the group is crucial to maintaining
its efficacy and sense of valid authority
— which also means that if her faith in the leader is threatened,
that can lead to their whole regime falling apart.
“We gotta crack Gretchen Wieners.
We crack Gretchen,
and then we crack the lock on Regina’s whole dirty history.”
Number three is the group’s pretty face, with an outward beauty and kind manner
that help paper over the group's true terrible nature
and make them feel like a more palatable posse.
“The leggy one with pigtails is Julie,
doomed to be popular because of that face.”
Her pretty, nice girl facade further legitimizes the trio’s rule,
making the student body feel that they may actually like the trio
and not just fear them.
This token nice girl is somewhat exploited by this terrible trio
for her looks, innocence, and often ignorance,
whether it’s actual obliviousness,
“She is one of the dumbest girls you will ever meet,”
or a willful desire not to acknowledge that, in choosing popularity,
she’s probably chosen not to be a great person.
Although they orbit as a unanimous force,
each member brings something distinct and essential to keep the group together
and in control.
The visionary, the enforcer, and the spokesperson create
an impenetrable power dynamic, focus the conversation on who’s in
the clique and who’s not, and make sure other girls’ importance is measured
in terms of their proximity to this power center.
Because each of these roles is so important,
and the hierarchy is so fragile, when any member of the group stops
acting according to type, the order breaks down.
And as we see in Mean Girls, adding a fourth member can mess up
the stability of the triad’s completeness
— adding competition for favor
with the leader or threatening to replace them,
and stirring up resentment
over whether this power structure is actually fair.
“And when did it become okay for one person to be the boss of everybody?
Because that’s not what Rome is about. We should totally just stab Caesar!”
Since a single mean girl could easily be overthrown,
a duo would compete,
and a quartet is too tricky to rule effectively,
three mean girls is the optimum number for achieving stable power.
But before we get into the history of the Mean Girl trio, I want to talk
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“I'm Lana!” “Anna!”
“Fontana!”
The rule of three — a narrative device that delivers plot points or characters
in threes in order to establish a pattern audiences can latch on to —
is widely believed to be one of the most perfect foundations for storytelling.
Because threes make a pattern but not an overly complicated one,
they help us remember plot details and make sense of complex ideas.
"Three is interesting because it’s the most basic pattern that there is
and our brains love patterns."
Like plots that fit the rule of three, characters who come in trios are
memorable, with a pleasing symmetry and completeness.
Greek mythology included (among others)
the three Fates and three Furies —
in charge of human destiny and vengeance respectively,
and honored by a public that feared angering them.
“Just let me know the instant the Fates arrive.”
“Oh, they’re here.” “What?!
The Fates are here and you didn’t tell me?!”
Supernatural sisters also have taken the form of witches, most famously
in Shakespeare’s Macbeth,
as well as, later, in iconic movies
whose witches came in threes.
“We’re just three kindly, old spinster ladies.”
The Furies, Weird Sisters and the Plastics are all antagonized trios
of women who are scary because they have knowledge and insights
that mortals don’t fully understand.
If a hero stumbles on the Fates, Furies or Weird Sisters,
they likely face a test of their will and ability to remain true
to themselves — just as we see when still-innocent Cady
meets Regina and the Plastics
and is manipulated into becoming one of them.
The hero is forced to confront who they are through meeting
the terrible trio,
and their personal growth or doom is a result of what the group forces
them to face about their inner nature and place in the world.
“Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter.
And ruining Regina George’s life definitely didn’t make me any happier.”
The modern teen version of this trio projects an appealing,
almost seductive aura through lavish cars, glamorous looks
and fashionable clothing that tempt the protagonist into joining them —
a callback to the alluring power of the supernatural sisters’ magical ability.
Popularity is also one of their tempting draws —
while most of the student body may dislike or privately dismiss the trio,
publicly they accept the group's rule because they fear the trio’s punishment
“You can’t make people love you, but you can make them fear you.”
or hope to absorb some small piece of their power and prestige.
“The weird thing about hanging out with Regina was that I could hate her,
and at the same time, I still wanted her to like me.”
Rather than prophecy, the modern terrible trio’s “knowledge and insight”
that their peers don’t possess is a savvy realism about how their
social world at large operates, both in high school and beyond.
“You're an awful person.”
“Maybe, but I'm rich and I’m pretty, so it doesn't really matter.”
The leader (if not the whole group) is aware of the zero-sum hierarchy
they’re part of — and the way they’ve set up their power
structure reflects an understanding of how unjust societies outside
the high school lunchroom work.
We can blame terrible trios for acting
terrible all we want, but really,
they're just teenagers projecting learned behaviors,
acting out what they read about and see happen in the adult world.
Strikingly, the traditional rule of three rarely applies to powerful
male characters on screen.
In teen movies, the student body typically pines after a single popular
guy who stands at the top of the pecking order,
“That’s Edward Cullen. He’s totally gorgeous, obviously.”
and whose status as ruler isn’t as questioned or vilified.
“Well he’s very popular, Ed.
The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids,
dweebies, dickheads. They all adore him.”
A lone girl wielding the same kind of uncontested power over her high-school
peers is much rarer on screen.
This reflects a society in which numbers validate female power.
In politics or media, too, a single woman’s voice tends to not quickly be
held in high regard until a larger group of both women and men support her,
especially when that voice goes against long-held views.
“What people have described as the Weinstein effect … has led people to
understand that they can speak and that there’s strength in numbers
that they didn't know existed before.”
Once the Plastics are separated through Cady’s and Janis’ sabotage,
their individual members are pretty ineffective,
easily swept aside, villainized
and even ridiculed by their peers.
So, with a sexist societal script working against them,
the female power trio stands together and maintains a harsh front
as a defense mechanism — arguably becoming terrible
out of necessity.
They may actually be frustrated with the society we live in,
“I had to get a nose job and
go on a crazy diet to walk around this school like I owned it.”
but they adapt and figure out how to thrive in hostile conditions.
“We’re not servants to our emotions, we can control them, suppress them,
stomp them out like bugs.”
Sex Education — a show celebrated for the way it unpacks and complicates
classic high school tropes —
of course has its own terrible trio, led by the typically fashionable,
brutal, and calculating “mean girl” antagonist.
But while Ruby Matthews and her Untouchables consciously
echo the Plastics,
“You are having lunch with us, and remember, we only drink Coke Zero.”
we also see behind the curtain at how Ruby’s meanness is a front hiding
a private, guarded person who selflessly cares for her father and fears her peers
finding out that (unlike archetypal mean, popular girls)
she comes from a modest background.
“My house is shit, okay? People assume I live in a big,
fancy house, but I don’t, okay? So I don’t invite people over.”
We actually feel bad for her when (for the first time ever)
she makes herself vulnerable with Otis,
and her feelings aren’t reciprocated..
We also see why it makes total sense, in her social position,
that she feels she has to spin the story in a different light.
“Did you hear about Ruby?”
“I know. Can you imagine getting dumped by Otis Milburn?”
“After all, I did break his heart.” “Oh, that would make a lot more sense, actually.”
The Untouchables include a male member,
Anwar Bakshi,
who may be rude and arrogant, but is shown to be pushing others away
because he is insecure and fears intimacy.
“People think you’re mean but you’re actually so sweet.”
“Okay, thanks. Alright, see you, bye.”
Olivia Hanan, who takes on the role of loyal enforcer,
can also be pretty empathetic,
“I always felt safe before, and now I don't.
It probably sounds stupid.” “It doesn’t sound stupid.”
and struggles not just with her dynamic with Ruby but also with plenty of
complex issues involving family and relationships.
And Aimee,
the “nice” and pretty one who fits the Karen/girl number three mold,
leaves the Untouchables early on and challenges herself to put more
thought into who she really is, growing through her friendship with
“alternative” Maeve and through newly discovered passions for both
baking and female anatomy.
“Free vulva cupcake?” “Ew, they’re so ugly.”
“I thought so, too, at first. But actually,
every vulva is unique and beautiful and deserves to be cherished.”
While the portrayal of the Untouchables reveals their reasons for feeling they
have to be mean, and their casting is more diverse and complex than that
of terrible trios of the past, they’re still terrible —
not because they’re bad people but because they understand
how power works.
The terrible trio can even be seen in reality television (and real life):
the Kardashians
(who began as a featured trio of sisters before expanding out into a dynasty),
aren’t necessarily villains, but to many they do personify our culture’s
wealth inequality and obsession with celebrity,
in a similar way to how the Plastics embody the “girl world” of Mean Girls.
“My diamond earring came off in the ocean and it’s gone.”
“Kim, there’s people that are dying.”
Like the students of North Shore High eagerly hoover up rumors about
and adopt any clothing style Regina George puts on,
many in the American public crave
information about the Kardashian clan, and find themselves mimicking
Kim’s or Kylie’s behavior or fashion sense.
“When I wear this I feel like Kim Kardashian,
and it feels so good.”
And like the Plastics, the Kardashian sisters find their power together,
often citing their sisterhood as the reason why they’re so strong.
“What inspires you?” “Every sister for a different reason.”
and so successful.
“Between Kim, Khloe, Kourtney, Kylie,
and Kendall there are 600 million Instagram followers for this family.”
The public’s simultaneous
fascination and scorn of the Kardashian’s
fame and influence shows us how we’re still looking to versions of
the Plastics in adulthood:
we may lust after the The Kardashian’s wealth, glamour and status,
but we’re also extremely quick to scapegoat them for the larger
materialism and vanity of our culture at large.
The terrible trio’s backstabbing, exclusivity, and cruelty does in part
reflect the real behaviour of teenagers, and adults.
They’ve managed to very cleverly perceive what their zero-sum world
rewards and penalizes,
all while giving us some of film and television’s most iconic
and beloved antagonists.
From influencer culture perpetuating the same awe and envy,
to Ivy League institutions relying
on rejection for prestige — our society is built on ingroups
and outgroups, winners and losers — and it is the trio’s clear-eyed
understanding of this, that makes them truly terrible.
“Life is a class system.”
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