Mom’s Note Calls Out 3 ‘Mean Girls’ in the Kindest Way Possible
Michelle Icard, a parenting expert and mom of two, was grabbing her usual cup of tea at Starbucks on Monday when she overheard three teen girls at the next table trash-talking a girl they knew.
“They were bashing her over what was clearly a popularity issue – and they were talking about gifts they’d received and how tacky they were,” Icard, who is the author of Middle School Makeover, told People. “They were so loud, and I was crawling out of my skin – I was so physically bothered by what they were saying. I kept thinking, This is going to stop; one of them will say something to redeem themselves. But it never happened.”
Icard struggled over whether she should say something. Eventually she left the coffee shop to do her grocery shopping. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the incident. As she drove home from the supermarket, she saw the girls were still at Starbucks. So she dashed home, wrote them a note, and went back to the coffee shop. Icard even ordered the girls three mini Frappuccinos, handed them the note, and left. She wrote about the entire incident on her blog and shared it on her Facebook page.
“I sat near you today in Starbucks and listened as you talked,” Icard wrote in her letter to the teens. “You three are obviously pretty and hardworking. I wish your kindness matched your pretty exteriors. I heard you talk about a girl who sang a song about being lonely in the talent show – and you laughed. About a girl who couldn’t be lead singer because you got all the votes, about crappy presents other people have given you … and you sounded so mean and petty. You are smart and you are pretty. It would take nothing from you to also be kind.”
Normally, Icard said she wouldn’t focus on a girl’s appearance, but she wanted to “speak their language” to make her point. “I also wanted to point out that having a ‘pretty card’ only hides bad behavior for so long before people see past it,” she wrote. “In high school, being pretty is still high value, and I wanted to call attention to that.”
Icard also purposefully chose to write a note rather than confront them in person because that would be publicly humiliating and would put them on the defensive. “I didn’t want to do that, but I did want them to take a moment to think about how their public behavior and loud conversation could impact people around them and also impact how they are perceived,” Icard tells Yahoo Beauty. “I’m reluctant to call them ‘mean girls’ because I think that’s a hard label to overcome, and any of us could be on either side of this equation during our lives. I wanted them to have the opportunity to reflect on how their behavior matters.”
She didn’t stick around long enough to know whether the girls laughed off her note or if it gave them pause, but Icard feels good about her decision to go back and say something. “Perhaps it’s true that I overstepped my bounds, but I have to believe that there is still room in our village for lessons from strangers with good intentions in their heart,” she wrote on her blog. “I didn’t want to shame them out loud or put them on the spot. But my hope is that maybe, just one of them was only going along with the others, and tonight she will think about that in a meaningful way as she’s falling asleep.”
Icard received several positive responses to her post, praising her decision to take the high road while still speaking up. Some even shared their memories of being on the receiving end of mean-girl behavior. “Thank you for making the effort to educate these girls,” one commenter wrote. “You were kinder than I might have been. I was that girl in school who would never get to be the lead in the school show, or get chosen for the basketball team after going to weeks of practice, and those girls were the ones who would stop me in the hall to say, ‘You don’t need to check the list; you know you didn’t get picked’ (40 years later, I still remember it like it was yesterday).”
Another commenter wrote: “I am 49 years old and still vividly recall the wounds of being talked about and made fun of because I just didn’t fit in with the popular girls. I missed out on a lot of things hiding shamefully in their shadows. It took me way beyond my high school years to stop seeking approval and acceptance from girls (and women) like those you stood up to. Thank you for being a voice for so many girls out there whose lives are scarred by the Mean Girls of all generations.”
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