When someone is being catty, it basically means they’re intentionally being cruel or spiteful. While this is a less-than-desirable trait, in a character, it can be quite interesting. Not all of them are rotten to the core, but even if they are, there’s something about them that is just so hard to hate, just like the characters below.
Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada
Does she even need an explanation? She can’t keep a personal assistant for long due to her cruel and abusive treatment, and she doesn’t care much for others at all. She’s manipulative and not above hurting others for her own sake. But she’s still so confident and fashionable, and it’s interesting to see how she fulfills her ambitions.
Betty Rizzo from Grease
The leader of the Pink Ladies is straightforward, brash, and sometimes mean. She mocks Sandy with a song at a sleepover — and Sandy is just in the next room — and says sarcastic, unkind things to people throughout the plot. Of course, that isn’t all there is to her, and she is a nice, and insecure, person deep down. The image she projects, however, is enough to land her on this list.
Sharpay Evans from High School Musical
She’s fabulous, fashionable, and fierce — and definitely catty. Sure, Gabriella came along and stole the lead that Sharpay worked so hard for, and that’s definitely hard to handle. But she was still cruel, not just to Gabriella but also to others, such as Kelsi by changing the composition of her song, and Ryan by bailing on him at the talent show at their parents’ resort. But in her few redeeming moments throughout the franchise, we see she does have good parts of her personality…buried deep down.
Regina George from Mean Girls
We can’t forget about the queen of North Shore High School. Regina will use whatever methods she can to get what she wants, no matter how cruel they are. She has no qualms about hurting strangers and even friends and family. Yet there’s something magnetizing about her, something that makes us want to keep watching her to see what she does next.
Edward Rochester from Jane Eyre
Does he need an explanation? He abused and locked up his first wife in the attic, was purposely cruel to Jane for the first half of the novel, and then never told her about his wife even as they were preparing to say their vows. He’s catty and cruel with very few — if any — redeemable traits. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Jane’s naive love, it would be impossible to stomach the guy.
Jacob Black from Twilight
Vampires and werewolves don’t get along, but that was no reason to treat Bella the way he did after she chose Edward instead of him. He indirectly tells Edward she died when he knew she was alive, tried to manipulate her to be with him, and so much more. Bella wasn’t exactly a saint and she made lots of mistakes, though that in no way justified Jacob’s behavior. But he’s handsome — and can literally turn into a giant wolf — so…
Daniel Hillard from Mrs. Doubtfire
He disguised himself as an elderly woman so he could be a nanny to his kids after his ex-wife got full custody. He loved his kids and wanted to be around them, and he took this chance to prove he could be a good parent, but this was still horrible. He was horrible to his former wife, and he knowingly lied and manipulated her to her face. Things luckily worked out for them all in the end,
Without characters like these, stories would be rather dull and simplistic. They had just a bit of spark that can’t be replicated.
Click here for an article on literary mean girls.
Check out our Bookstr Team Recs shelf on Bookstr’s Bookshop page.
