Mean girls, queen bees and the absence of others

Through an analysis of Rosalind Wiseman's popular text Queen Bees and Wannabes, this chapter explores the way that adolescent girls' friendships are positioned through a lens of the 'mean girl'. It questions the heteronormative discourse through which girls' friendships tend to be framed, and suggests that this discourse subscribes to what Rubin (2006) describes as the 'traffic' in women. Questioning how this discourse renders absent girls' friendships as passionate sites of intimate friendship, same-sex desire, the positives of girls' relationships of passionate love for girl friends, this chapter suggests female homosociality as a potential alternative to the limitation of the heteronormative lens.