She helped inspire ‘Mean Girls.’ Her daughter just became a tween. (2024)

Davis, 38, was on the fence about it, but middle school was looming for Layla, and her mom knew how difficult and disorienting those years could be.

After all, it was Davis’s own experiences being bullied at a private Rockville K-8 school that led her to open up to a youth advocate by the name of Rosalind Wiseman, who took Davis’s stories — and those of thousands of other girls — and compiled them into “Queen Bees and Wannabes,” the best-selling 2002 book that inspired “Mean Girls.”

“I definitely felt like, if I’m going to share this with her, it needs to be something that is a learning moment for both of us, not just, like, a fun movie,” Davis said of her decision to watch both versions with her daughter.

When the original “Mean Girls” was released, it was something of a tonic. The raunchy and male-centric “American Pie” had already completed its third installment, and “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen” presented a somewhat silly and whimsical vision of teen girlhood.

“Mean Girls” was witty and, ostensibly, based on the realities of female friendships — following the trials and missteps of Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) as she navigates the relationship minefields of high school. Tina Fey, who wrote and acted in the film, plucked inspiration from Wiseman’s book, which was written as a self-help guide for unaware or overwhelmed parents of teenage girls.

Wiseman, then a D.C.-based youth educator, had traveled around schools in the D.C. metro area for years, hosting workshops to help teen girls better understand — and combat — the tribalism and ostracism they encountered. “Queen Bees and Wannabes” was born out of those encounters, offering a detailed taxonomy of “Girl World,” a complex ecosystem where power was sometimes exerted through manipulation, exclusion and gossip.

During that period, Wiseman became a mentor to Davis, who first met the educator during one of the most tender and cruel periods of her childhood: middle school.

Davis had already dealt with years of bullying over her weight, her unique name, her curly hair and the fact that she lived in an apartment, not a house. But in middle school, the anxiety and self-loathing ratcheted up.

Davis told Wiseman about three-way calls in which she listened in as two friends took turns insulting her, referring to her as “ugly.” She later told her about her first week at a public high school, when, after not receiving any invitations from her classmates to sit with them at lunch, she retreated with a bag of Pop-Tarts to a bathroom stall.

“I didn’t want anybody to think I didn’t have a place to sit,” she said.

Davis eventually joined Wiseman’s Empower Program and became a member of the group’s Girls’ Advisory Board. She hoped that sharing her stories would prompt change, that if people could see how hurtful these experiences could be, parents might be able to support their kids, or help eliminate those behaviors altogether.

Then came “Mean Girls.”

The movie, which came out when Davis was 18, was undoubtedly funny, Davis said, but it left her wanting. She was disappointed in the cafeteria scene, not because it hit close to home, but because of the way it confidently stereotyped groups of people, including “the girls who eat their feelings and the girls who don’t eat at all,” she said. She wasn’t thrilled with how race was approached in the film, either. And there never seemed to be a “full-circle” moment that drove home why so many girls had shared those stories with Wiseman in the first place.

“In their essence, [these] were painful stories that either myself or other girls had shared in an effort to combat bullying,” Davis said.

When Davis pulled up the original movie on her home TV this week, she felt excited. Here was an opportunity to share this part of her childhood with her daughter — and, hopefully, turn it into a “learning moment” for the two of them.

So she explained the phenomenon of three-way calling, and how it could be used to hurt people. When Fey’s character conducts a “very GAB-like workshop” in the school gymnasium, Davis and Layla raised their hands with the rest of the characters. (Had they ever had a girl say something bad about them behind their back? Yes. Had they ever talked about a girl behind her back? Also yes.) And when Cady finally shares her troubles with her parents, Davis leaned into Layla: “Sometimes you just got to talk to your mom and dad.”

For her part, Layla wondered why all the mathletes were boys, found all the romantic scenes “cringe,” and theatrically slid off the couch and thunked her head on the floor after a scene of Regina and Cady coming to blows. (Though “dumb,” the fight scenes were her favorite, Layla said.)

After the movie, with the scent of microwaved butter popcorn still hanging in the air, the pair launched into a deeper discussion. Layla had noticed that there was no social media in the movie — something that plays a big part in friendships now.

“It’s like, never check your comments, ’cause they’re really bad,” she said, knowingly. She also noted how stereotypical the “Mean Girls” groups were, and how they — in age and character — didn’t really seem like today’s high school kids.

Davis went to bed that night feeling good about the discussion. She knew Layla had already had some exposure to these more adult concepts and words, and she wanted to be the one to guide her child through them. Though imperfect, the film had opened a door to future conversations, she thought.

The next day, Davis and Layla hit the main event: The new “Mean Girls” film. The movie’s tagline — “This isn’t your mother’s ‘Mean Girls’” — suggested that girls of Layla’s generation were the prime targets. Davis crossed her fingers that the new version would improve on the faults of the old one — less othering, more empathy.

The new film was different, and in all the ways Davis had hoped. It was more diverse and centered less on stereotypes. Despite the characters bursting into song in the middle of scenes, they felt more real to her and Layla (though Layla did wish there was more talking and less singing). As soon as the film ended, Layla turned to her mom: “I liked that one better!” she said.

As they walked out of the theater and through the dark, misty parking lot to their car, Layla turned the conversation toward more personal matters: She wanted to talk about school and the ways friends were changing, how she had started to notice cliques forming.

Davis was sure she would remember this moment forever, she said afterward. She marveled at the little girl, now a “young lady,” holding her hand.

Here it finally was, Davis realized, that “full-circle” moment. She couldn’t wait to see what was next.