- Playing
- Confessions of a Mean Girl
- From
- Susan Barrett Price
As women we wonder why we publicly profess sisterhood, then secretly undercut one another. Maybe the wickedness comes naturally, emerging from the agony of adolescence. Anyway, it's a good thing my mother was keeping track of this smart, well-behaved young lady.
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
As women we wonder why we publicly profess sisterhood, then secretly undercut one another. Maybe the wickedness comes naturally, emerging from the agony of adolescence. Anyway, it's a good thing my mother was keeping track of this smart, well-behaved young lady.
Broadcast History
:Vocalo
Transcript
This is a confession. I was a mean girl. It was in high school ? a Catholic girls? school ? no boys to distract us from total female bitchiness. I thought of my friends as ?smart-but-not-ugly? distinct from the group of ?smart-ugly? girls I avoided in grade school. The difference was subtle, since I myself wore glasses, was too tall, had fat calves and no idea what to do with my hair.
Anyway, one of those smart-ugly girls followed me to high school. Ugh. Acne. Oily hair. And her parents. Her parents turned her into a misfit by not owning a television and by insisting that their children play musical instruments and sing together. No matter how many times I blubbered over "The Sound of Music," I didn't want a pal who thought she was one of the Trapp family singers. It was creepy. The parents also had opinions about things like justice, which were apparently shared in actual mealtime con...
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Larissa Zhou
Posted on March 03, 2008 at 08:18 AM | Permalink
Review of Confessions of a Mean Girl
Susan B. Price delivers a sarcasm-tinged confession of a mean girl.
It is not a very comfortable piece to listen to. The piece smacks just a little too near the truth, especially for someone who hasn't left teenage-hood very far behind. She details the off-kilter world of teenage girls very well, describing, in succinct terms, the dogged pursuit of being cool. We rarely hear personal pieces that reveal the not-so-positive truth, and this piece is valuable on this account. Price's revelatory tone is refreshing. Yet at the same time, it's almost disturbing how much she relished (or still relishes) that meanness. And what about her friend Marjorie? It didn't sound as if the Mother actually ended the meanness. She merely ended the club. The constant reverb effect adds to the weird (slightly demented?) tone of the speaker, but it feels a bit much towards the end.