I really worry about people like that. Not only because they are so extremely immature, but also because I can never know exactly how far they will go.
easy child 2/difficult child 2 polarises people - they either love her or hate her. Mostly, they like her. But a couple of girls in town really took a dislike to her, and they are the spiteful kind. easy child 2/difficult child 2 could think of no reason for these girls to suddenly start being mean - she had never done or said anything mean to them that she could recall. Plus, I've long been good friends with their mother, especially when the girls were much younger. BUT - the family is NOT rich. They are what I suspect could be labelled "poor white trash" not because of their skin colour or anything, but their lifestyle in general. They buy the latest fashions, what they can afford, but they buy lots of really cheap knock-offs that quickly can look shabby, then wear stuff not because it makes them look good, but because they're showing off that they are wearing THE latest, even if it looks really awful.
We're not rich either. Where fashion is concerned, easy child 2/difficult child 2 invents her own, often with home-made things. easy child 2/difficult child 2 invented her own fashion line and would discuss designs with her friends on the school ferry. Her stuff was mostly black, sometimes with black lace or a bit of scarlet or emerald. Sometimes with safety pins. While these two girls would wear stretch lycra fluorescent tops over low-slung jeans (also stretch). While this was in all the latest catalogues, the models in those photos were super-thin. These two girls are not. Anything but - it comes back to the family lifestyle again. Lots of fast food, high fat, high salt. Plus the family members in general have large, solid frames like their mother. She does look after herself and isn't too overweight, but her two daughters are, I suspect, comfort eaters.
I suspect the two sisters' loathing of easy child 2/difficult child 2 has stemmed from the fact that she IS an individual who looks good in anything she wears, even the really bizarre outlandish stuff she invented herself. Also, easy child 2/difficult child 2 has the figure of a model (flat-chested model, maybe) and looks good in anything. While the two sisters, poor darlings - obese. Unhealthily so. But even this shouldn't have stopped them looking good, there are many ways for a girl with a larger frame and a bit too much weight around the middle, to still look fashionable, without spending a fortune. easy child 2/difficult child 2 was talking about this with me as she was wondering why these two girls were always rude to her or mean in other ways (such as vandalising her car). easy child 2/difficult child 2 said that if only she could approach these girls, she would love to go shopping with them and show them some clothes that would make them look fantastic. But it wouldn't work - these two seem to be so desperate to look slim that they will use lycra to try to re-shape their bodies. Doesn't work. I know they really want to look good, but it's almost as if they are choosing to wear fashion that highlights their extra kilos. Wearing low-slung tight jeans with a hot pink lycra crop top several sizes too small, allowing the "muffin top" to balloon out underneath - not good. When you've also got vibrant red hair (messy, unbrushed) that clashes with the hot pink - not good.
The only reason we can think for the hatred, is that these girls know that they don't look good, and they take easy child 2/difficult child 2's good looks as a personal insult. It's sad, really. These girls could actually look good - that red hair is striking. But it's as if they keep throwing themselves against a brick wall, trying to be something they're not (tall, slim, tanned, brunette) purely by force of will. And when it doesn't work - they take it out on easy child 2/difficult child 2, who seems to make no effort at all (she does - she just makes it LOOK as if she's made little effort) and looks great.
As for how they are as people, personality-wise - I'm much more distant from them now than I was when they were younger. But I do remember, they always had a big chip on their shoulders about how they looked. I do have more to do with their little brother - again, chubby and 'big-boned' with the result that he unfairly gets labelled a bully. But he's very kind, especially to difficult child 3.
So I don't know - sometimes this is just the way some people are. They try really hard to be what they want to be (because we're always told that we can be whatever we want to be) but they try the wrong way, or have a different approach that just doesn't work - then they find some way to 'justify' their failure, including blaming other people for something that often is not a blame situation.
So maybe easy child's mother is like this? Insecure, wanting to change things about herself but at the same time in denial that there is a problem with HER (it's got to be everyone else).
If that is it, AND she is jealous - then the best thing you can do (not easy) is try to stay below her radar and not leave yourself too vulnerable.
The line about the shorts is tempting, but I suspect you'd never see those shorts again. Or they'd come back, but with a big blob of grease or nail polish somewhere obvious.
Since she seems so self-destructive, what about "Kamikaze" as her nickname? Or how about the name of the world's oldest living kamikaze pilot? "Chicken" Teriyaki!
(old joke)
Marg