Long before “Mean Girls,” I wanted to write about the fabulous Miss Katie Davis, the Evanston sister of a friend of mine. I don’t throw “fabulous” around casually: Katie is an extremely smart, articulate, cute, athletic and sassy eighth-grader at North Shore Country Day School in Winnetka. She has a raging Chicago accent and a Von Dutch trucker hat. Katie’s older sister, Caroline, and I frequently joke about Katie’s dual life — as a popular middle school heartbreaker by day and as a smart, slightly nerdy, level-headed pre-teen who can talk about things other than boys and lip gloss by night (or any time her peers are nowhere in sight).

And then there was “Mean Girls,” and for a few different reasons (e.g.: a whiny Daily article about North Shore residents’ disapproval, my inextinguishable personal desire to be Tina Fey) I realized that Katie, the coolest girl in school, probably knew a few things about just how realistic “Mean Girls” is. Not that I didn’t go to a big, affluent private school. Not that many NU students didn’t, but Katie’s there now. And designer jeans were not around at my school, I can tell you that.

So I asked Katie about “Mean Girls.” She thought the movie was “really good” and relatively realistic, adding, “I don’t think anybody is that mean.” OK, a good start, but I know you gossip with your friends, Katie. “We do talk about people behind their backs,” she said. “But I think they talk about us, too.” Also a good point, also included in the movie –Cady gets caught up with the Plastics (the popular girls in the movie) through an outsider’s plan to gain access to their circle.

Does Cady’s social environment look anything like Katie’s? “I think it’s exaggerated,” she told me. “There are a lot of cliques, and a lot of them can be pretty exclusive, depending on the school and the girls. But that’s something you can never get away from.” Katie’s probably right. Even in the movie, the “unpopular” kids had a clique of their own.

Though I asked Katie these questions from a seemingly removed perspective, the truth obviously is that, try as we might, we college students aren’t much older than high schoolers. We have the same insecurities and the same issues about the same things (jobs, relationships, school, parents, life), and we could stand to step back and look at our preoccupations.

The good news is that Katie and probably a lot of other teens see what my mom would call “the big picture.” “A lot of what we talk about is very superficial,” Katie said. “(Some people) don’t really realize it because they grew up very privileged, how they do all these things that normal 14-year-olds don’t do.” Katie cited vacation resorts and the popular E Street Denim boutique in Highland Park as examples of “superficial” things that she never talked about before she attended private school, but which are common conversation topics among her friends.

If both Cady and Katie see the big picture, does it matter that the mall in the movie isn’t really Old O? No. Could we all stand to chill out about our jobs, our jeans, our honors credit and our iPods, even though we’re not bitchy teens? Yes.