The other day I came across a video on my Twitter feed, of a conversation between two high school girls standing outside their school. One girl was holding the camera, and the other (a pretty brunette) was featured on screen. At the beginning of the video they are chatting casually, but when a third character (a tall blonde girl) emerges from the door of the school, the girl holding the camera abruptly gets the attention of her brunette friend—“Abby, Abby, Abby,”—and motions for her to turn around. The brunette, Abby, turns and greets the blonde with a wave and a bright, “Hey Katie!” As blonde Katie continues to walk by, she replies with a kind, “Hey, you look so cute today!” But Abby quickly turns her back, completely ignoring Katie’s response. Looking at the camera with a sneaky smile, she sneers, “I hate that b****.”

Now I don’t know the full story about the beef between those two girls, but I think it’s safe to say that Abby’s fake kindness and abrupt 180 was immature and uncalled for. Watching the video, I cringed with disgust. The scene was atrocious, and a gross display of how mean people can be sometimes. But I had another issue with the video, which had nothing to do with the content. I had an issue with the title of the video.

The video was curtly captioned, “girls.”

I have HUGE beef with this caption, as it is yet another broad generalization that ALL girls are mean girls. Women are constantly falsely and unfairly labeled as malicious, fake, and petty, when more often than not, the opposite is true. We see these stereotypes in the media (Regina George, anyone?), hear them in conversation, and sometimes, women even apply them to each other. Ladies, have you ever met a girl who for some reason just looks intimidating, and put your guard up because you’re afraid she’ll scoff if you do or say the wrong thing? I’m definitely guilty of that.

These consequences of this labeling appear in many forms, and they are obstructive and limiting. They affect our day to day interactions with other girls--we constantly feel the need to out-nice ourselves in order to prove that they’re not one of the nasty ones. I also find it tragic when I hear about girls having a guy-only friendship policy. I can’t count the times I’ve heard a girl say, “I only hang out with guys. Girls are just too much drama.”

Again, this statement wrongfully labels ALL girls as being nothing but petty drama. I think if you’re surrounded by girls who are dishing you nothing but pettiness, you need to seek out better female friends. They DO exist. I’m surrounded by women who encourage, support, and love me on the daily. Women shouldn’t get a bad rap just because of the occasional mean girl—we should be avoiding those girls instead.

It's time to take the mean label off of the female gender. It's false advertising, and it just gets in our way. I’m not saying that there aren’t cruel, unpleasant girls out there—there definitely are. But there are some guys who are, too. Being unkind isn’t a girl thing: it’s a human thing. Quit assuming that girls are mean, and start getting to know them instead. Connections > false assumptions.