Mean Girls 2024: Stanley Cups are So Fetch!

Tina Fey's 2004 movie Mean Girls is considered a classic for its authenticity of teen culture, specifically teen girl culture. It astutely examined the rigid social hierarchy of secondary school filled with cliques, drama, and competition while giving us memorable lines like "that was so fetch"—Gretchen Weiners, "If you’re from Africa, why are you white?”—Karen Smith, and "...you're, like, really pretty. So, you agree? You think you're really pretty?"—Regina George. For many girls, life—at least for a time (perhaps more?)—is all about "Queen Bees and Wannabees".

Now, The Cut reports middle schools across the U.S. have been overtaken by Stanley Cup fever; and your status in the intricate social hierarchy of tween/teen girls is being dictated by whether or not you own an overpriced ($45-$55) 40z water bottle. Made by a 110-year old Seattle-based company, the Stanley Quencher has gone mega viral and is bringing overnight lines and mayhem to stores like Targets and Walmart. The sudden fame has turned the company that was generating about $70 million a year in revenue in 2019 into a $750 million business.  

When Stanleys are suddenly so fetch, they are a must-have. “Every day when I get into school at like 7:45 a.m., everybody comes over to me like, ‘Oh my God, I like your Stanley!’ or ‘It’s so cool, I want a Stanley just like yours!’” [said Dahlia], who is in eighth grade...“It makes me feel like I’m famous and being swarmed by paparazzi.”

On the other hand, you can be mercilessly banished to the Out Krowd if you have the wrong drinking receptacle. In a viral TikTok a mom said her daughter was made fun of for having a Walmart dupe. Another woman said her niece was "bullied by her classmates for bringing an off-brand version of the cup...basically the exact same product, minus the Stanley logo."

Of course, such dynamics aren't new. Studies find Mean Girls to be a distinct youth subculture with marked roles and positions: Queen, sidekick, banker, torn bystander, wannabees, and target. Particularly among girls, it can be characterized by social or relational aggressive behavior: back-biting and manipulation that can often be quite vicious. As protagonist Cady Hebron famously observes in the movie "in girl world, all fighting had to be sneaky." Such behaviors induce anxiety and stress that can take a significant toll on teenagers' mental health, with the CDC reporting 1 in 5 students feeling being bullied last year.   

What ya gonna do? To quote the Girl Who Doesn't Go to North Shore “I wish we could all get along...bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy.” More realistically, we will just have to shell out $50 for something our kids don't really need to keep them happy.  

Is Behavioral Science Too WEIRD?

What is normal behavior? Understanding and contextualizing human actions has important implications for a wide range of disciplines, including biology, medicine, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, etc. Yet, as the paper "The Weirdest People in the World?" points out, behavioral scientists "routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world’s top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies." As example, analyses of the top journals in psychology, including the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, revealed that 68% of subjects came from the U.S., and a full 96% of subjects were from Western industrialized countries. Subject pools in experimental economics and decision science are similarly dominated by Westerners, particularly college undergraduates. Worse, despite sampling from a very narrow pool of subjects, researchers basically assume that "either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population." Huh? Well, you know that what they say about people who assume.

The paper's authors, Messrs. Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan, reviewed studies on visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. They find that not only are WEIRD subjects not drawn from near the center of human distribution but they are frequently outliers with respect to the rest of the species! Which means that they are probably the least representative populations "one could find for generalizing about humans." Comedian Ronny Chieng understands, as he pointedly skewers Western ethnocentrism and sample bias.   

(We recommend the whole set)

It's also worth noting that the U.S.-based behavioral scientists conducting the majority of research are themselves (not surprisingly) drawn from a similarly thin slice of humanity. (Interestingly enough, there seems to be significant gender and pay equity in behavioral sciences...but that's neither here nor there). So, if behavioral science really is that biased it could undercut many findings that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior. You'd think Henrich et al's findings (published in 2010) would have spurred much needed change...umm, not so much. Despite researchers being more aware of sampling biases, significant challenges remain. Kudos at least to the BBC which has a dedicated website, Weird West, tackling what really is "normal" from hygiene habits to child rearing practices. 

Man or Woman?

Science says male and female brains are different (duh!). The chart below highlights some of the key structural differences between our brains. (Of course, everyone's brain is unique, and there'll be degrees of variations from one person to the next)

Now psychologists have apparently devised a simple optical illusion to identify the type of brain you have based on what you see first in the below picture:

Is the man running towards you or away from you? Neurologists say that because the of the varying ways information is received and processed by male and female brains, we decipher ambiguous images differently. 

If your first impression was that the man was approaching you, then you have more of a male brain. "You try to solve your problems and pass life’s difficult obstacles using your spot-on analytical skills and good reason." You're tend to apply great focus to one task at a time...in other words, you're not a great multi-tasker.

Conversely, if your first impression was that the man was running away from you, then you probably have more of a female brain. You are creative and rely on your senses and reasoning, not rushing to make a decision. You’re a great multi-tasker and have an amazing memory (of course!).

Seems consistent with what the above chart says about our different brains. But psychologists or neurologists are just saying what we intuitively knew all along:

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus...

The metaphor is apt in more ways than author John Gray probably thought when he titled his best-selling book. Room temperature has long been a common cause of arguments among couples, may even the most common. Now scientists at Tel Aviv University have discovered that female members of species are naturally drawn to warmer temperatures and men cooler temperatures because of an in-built 'evolutionary difference'...leading to physical distance between them at certain times of the year. Co-authors Dr. Eran Levin and Dr. Tali Magory Cohen hypothesize that differences in the heat-sensitive mechanisms of women and men evolved "to keep offspring away from aggressive males and to reduce competition for food."  

Oh, and going to back to our titular analogy, Mars has a surface temperature of -81 F, while Venus has a normal temperature of 847 F. Makes sense... 

Making Weekends Last Longer

Even though many of us are still working from home and days of the week can sometimes meld into one another, the weekend still seems to (and perhaps more so, because of it) fly by. 

Well science says there's a simple hack to slow down time or at least our perception of it: avoid a routine. According to this article from the Cut, if you want to make your days off to pass more slowly, the key "is to seek out newness— new settings, new activities." As Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman explains, “when you go and experience something novel, it seems to have lasted longer...because you’re more focused on collecting the unfamiliar information into a memory. It’s why time seems to fly by so much faster as an adult then it did when you were young...[when] you’re a kid, everything is novel and you’re laying down new memories about it. So when you look back at the end of a childhood summer, it seems to have taken a long time because you remember this and that, this new thing, learning that, experiencing that.” 

"The same thing holds when you consider a much smaller stretch of time...a weekend getaway, for example, will seem much longer than a weekend spent at home. A weekend spent at home, if you spend it exploring new neighborhoods or trying new restaurants, will seem longer than one where you hole up in your apartment with a book, [and so on]."

"A caveat, though...this is only true in hindsight...Come Monday, you’ll remember a novelty-packed weekend as feeling like more time. But in the present, you’ll feel like it’s going by too fast — time really does fly when you’re having fun, and it really does seem to crawl when you’re bored." Yup, we how that is; when you have nothing to distract your brain logs every tick of the clock. 

So, try new things on the weekend and stick to schedules at the start of the week to make the Mondays and Tuesdays easier.

Separately, sweating is really good for heart health...and you can't get a runner's high just by relaxing in a sauna.