Thoughts on Love 4: Cool Kids

“See, that is the thing with you Plastics: you think that everybody is in love with you, when actually, everybody hates you.”

Mean Girls (2004)

Thanks to *drew on Wikipedia for the image, which remains
© 2004 by Paramount Pictures, all rights reserved.

Do Mean Girls’ Plastics really think everybody is in love with them? I’m not so sure. Recall, if you will, the end credits of Disney Pixar’s most recent masterpiece, Inside Out, when, having spent the vast majority of the film focussing on the mind of protagonist Riley, we are now entertained by a series of glimpses into the thought processes of various minor characters.¹ What struck me most was that, in the brain of the girl who had earlier so intimidated Riley with her eyeshadow-wearing coolness, the dominant emotion, the one heading up operations from the centre of the control panel, is Fear. “We’re a total fraud!” she panics. “Do you think they can see through us?”

Similarly, in Mean Girls, being a Plastic is all about the cultivation of an exterior image. It’s not just about wearing pink on Wednesdays: the main character, Cady, gets to a point where she deliberately lies, deceives, and manipulates in order that others will think about her in a particular way. “I had learned how to control everyone around me,” she monologues in voiceover.² What Cady believes isn’t that she’s so amazing that everybody must be in love with her, but that, if she plans her actions carefully, she can portray herself in such a way as to manoeuvre others into a position where they think well of her.

It isn’t an attitude reserved only for Plastics, mean girls, and other cool-kid types, either. Don’t we all deliberately put ourselves across to others in such a way as to gain their approval? Isn’t that blindingly obvious, in fact? To be admired, I must be admirable; to be valued, I must be valuable; to be loved, I must be lovable. Surely that’s just basic, undeniable logic?

However, those of you with good memories may remember that, last week, I concluded that love has far more to do with the lover being loving than the beloved being lovable – and, in God’s case, this was undeniably proven when Jesus gave his life for the sake of his enemies. God is going to love me whatever state I’m in. I don’t have to lie, deceive, manipulate, or wear pink on Wednesdays to make that happen, and, indeed, he would see right through me if I tried.

But what about other people?

The trouble is, other people aren’t like God. They don’t have his omniscience or his glorious depths of mercy, and I simply can’t rely on them to love me whatever happens. Still, I might just be able to coerce them into offering me something that at least looks like love by portraying myself as some kind of desirable asset. In fact, doing so is the only measure of control I have when it comes to others’ opinions of me – and, as ever, I have a tendency to cling resolutely to any form of control I have, because a lack of control is frightening. Like Cady, I do whatever I can to control the people around me, and like the cool girl from Inside Out, I do it out of fear. I do it every time I allow my actions to be governed by a desire that other people will think well of me. And, in all honesty, that’s very frequently indeed.

But here’s the thing: if love is dependent on the lover, not the beloved, then anything I obtain as a result of portraying myself in as lovable a fashion as possible isn’t really love at all. It’s not even ‘luvvou’, or φιλέω.³ It is, at best, peanut-butter-milkshake love: appreciation of something which brings benefit. It’s the kind of love Cady obtains from the general populus at her high school with her deceit and manipulation. If real love – the ͗αγαπάω kind – is unaffected by its object’s failings, then it wins me no love, it does me no good at all, to make any kind of grand effort to be lovable.

Now, that isn’t to say I shouldn’t have concern for the way my actions affect other people – quite the opposite, in fact. My actions should not be dictated by wanting to be loved by other people, but rather by wanting to love other people. “A new commandment now I give you,” said Jesus, as recorded by John in the thirty-fourth verse of the thirteenth chapter of his biography of him, “that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” Later in the same conversation, he said it again: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”⁴ I think we can be pretty clear on the fact that Jesus definitely wants us to love one another – but more than that, he wants us to love one another as he has loved us. That means deeply, furiously, and entirely unaffected by the flaws and failures and irritating habits of those we love.

In other words, we are to love in such a way that those we love know that they don’t have to put on a front and behave in a certain way and appear as lovable as possible in order to manipulate us into displaying love towards them. We are to do our best to rid them of that fear. And we are to do it as a response and a signpost to the all-surpassing love of our God, who did the same for us.

Footnotes

¹ If you’d like a reminder, or haven’t got round to seeing Inside Out yet (it did only come out this summer, after all), you can watch the scene here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMQT-Mv92x0.

² Some kindly soul has made a complete transcript of the film available here: http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/mean-girls-movie-transcript.html. This one I’m assuming you’ve managed to see at some point in the decade since it was released. If not, do please see it at the next available opportunity, if only so you’ll understand references like, “She doesn’t even go here!” and, “You go, Glen Coco!”

³ See my post from two weeks ago for context here. Or just watch Series 3 of Miranda and stick the Greek into the Perseus Digital Library Word Study Tool, either works.

⁴ All right, so I gave you the full reference for the first time he said it, but I’m sending you on a treasure hunt for the second. Hint: it’s somewhere in the book of John, after 13:34. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2013&version=ESV.