The trumpets blare announcing her entry. She holds up her hand and the crowd goes silent. The masses before her make way as the princess parades down the aisle.
Oh, wait — this is High School.
A scene where the Alpha Bitch approaches her target in a school hallway full of students. The students, immediately acknowledging her presence, will move out of the way for her, creating a clean path right through the middle of the crowd. When the Alpha Bitch is finished chewing out her victim, she will exit, and the path behind her will close up as quickly as it appeared. It's almost like she's parting the Red Sea herself.
Often combined with a Supermodel Strut, to really get the point across. If she has her Girl Posse with her doing the same, it can double as a Team Power Walk.
Occurs in a lot of shows with middle/high school as the main setting, where social hierarchy is king, and the Alpha Bitch is next in line.
Compare Bitch Alert for the usual non-High School version.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Kaguya and Shirogane pull this off in the first real scene of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War as they head towards the Student Council room while resident Fangirls Karen and Erika provide commentary. This scene would later be recreated in the first Gender Flip chapter of the Official Doujin.
- On Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, when the girls are forced to root out a ghost in a high school, the Alpha Bitch Barbie makes her entrance this way. It fails to impress Panty and Stocking.
- Princess Sarah: Lavinia eats, drinks, and breathes this trope. With a vengeance. Her ambition is even to be the closest thing to royalty in her homeland, the United States - First Lady.
- This signals Felicity's first appearance in Mail Order Ninja.
- Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl: Sayaka expects this when she visits Yawara's school, planning to challenge Yawara. However, she gets hit on and has to show her stuff.
Film
- In the beginning of 13 Going on 30, all of the kids in the hall get out of the way so that Lucy and her "Six Chicks" posse can pass through.
- In Harriet the Spy, Marion Hawthorne, the school's Rich Bitch, likes to do this in front of the titular character.
- High School Musical: After seeing the call-backs for the school's musical, the character Sharpay storms off in a rampage. The students jump out of the way for her, one even mentioning that she's an "Ice Queen".
- Mean Girls: Parodied and subverted. Cady stumbles into a trash can while accompanying the Plastics.
- Shelby and her Girl Posse from A Cinderella Story. They snap at people to move aside as they walked.
- Jawbreaker, complete with slow motion and soundtrack.
- Not Another Teen Movie: Parodies Jawbreaker, complete with original soundtrack.
- The Craft: The main four girls get to do this once when they really start getting into their powers. It's even in slow-motion and set to some Awesome Music. Played with in that they're actually the school's outcasts and it's possible that people move out of the way to avoid them.
- Done by Leena and the newly undead cheerleaders on the first day of school in All Cheerleaders Die. Featuring stunned reactions from the bystanders, and done in slow motion to catch every swish of the cheerleaders' skirts.
- When Heather, Bridget, and Kelli walk down the school corridor in The Final, all the students get out of their way while Dane and three nameless outcasts are making their plans about them...
- After uniting the three most popular girls, Tanner and the three of them get a scene like this in G.B.F..
- This is Frankie's character introduction in The Hole.
- Averted in Wild Child. Poppy seems to expect this at first, only for Harriet to coldly inform her that Americans rank somewhere below vermin in the school pecking order.
Literature
- In Dork Diaries, Nikki nearly gets herself killed as she makes her way through the hallway to her locker. Just as she finally gets there, a path immediately clears for MacKenzie, as people shout out compliments to her. When MacKenzie walks up to the locker right next to Nikki's, Nikki immediately knows that she's going to have a bad school year.
- A non-High School version of this gets lampshaded and subverted (surprise, surprise) in Making Money. Pucci Lavish attempts to make an impressive entrance to rain on Moist von Lipwig's parade and Moist can clearly see what effect she's trying for, with her menacing bodyguards parting the crowd so she can sweep forward in her regal gown with her little dogs at her heel, but she's underestimated just how thick the crowd would be, and it's physically incapable of parting for her at the necessary speed for her to "sweep" in properly. It gets worse for her when Moist spectacularly turns the tables on her attempt to discredit him, and she ends up making a complete fool of herself while getting Moist a lot of free publicity. The encounter ends with her demonstrating that however untalented she may be when it comes to "majestically sweeping in", she more than makes up for it with her expertise in the "flouncing off in a huff" department.
- Daughters of the Moon: Happens in Into the Cold Fire when Morgan walks down the hallway, interrupting a moment between Serena and Zahi.
Live Action TV
- Occurs in an episode of Hannah Montana. Once the Alpha Bitch makes her grand exit out of the cafeteria, everyone else in the cafeteria thunders out after her.
- Alisha from Misfits gets one of these moments, only it's in a nightclub, not high school. Plus the scene was interspersed with shots of her having sex with several of the guys who step aside to let her pass.
- Sabrina the Teenage Witch
- In one episode, Sabrina enters Alpha Bitch Libby's dream to see her dreaming of students moving aside for her, including two boys lying down over a spill on the floor and letting Libby walk over their back. Sabrina then remarks that it happened that day at school, realising that "every day at school is a dream come true for Libby".
- In another episode, where Sabrina gets Libby's personality, she imagines herself in an actual princess dress walking through the school with students handing her plaques and awards.
- Happens in the Bones episode "The Girl with the Curl." The other girls in Briana Swanson's dance class act this way towards her (and hate her) because "Briana was the Queen."
- Kazashiro Miu in Kamen Rider Fourze even got her own leitmotif (based on Battle without Honor or Humanity!) to go with this. Until graduation from high school and Character Development set in.
- Parodied in Eureka episode Duck, Duck, Goose. The three princesses walking down the hall? The biggest science geeks at the school (a high school where 4.0 is a POOR GPA).
- My Family and Me: When Cynthia enters the room, everyone tries to stay out of her way without her getting upset.
- Smallville:
- Invoked in "Spell". Apparently this trope goes back to Margaret Isobel Thoreaux's time.
- We get the more traditional version in "Spirit". Yeah, you heard me, a Valley Girl in Kansas.
- Parodied and Discussed in Scream Queens (2015), when Chanel delivers a scathing eulogy at Chanel #2's funeral:
Chanel: Chanel #2 literally never had my back. Whenever I wanted to strut across campus or down a long hallway with the other Chanels, she'd always be like, "I have a colonic!" So instead of strutting across campus in a beautiful diamond formation, we were forced to strut across campus in a triad formation like a bunch of hobos, because #2 didn't think she should have to walk behind me.
- Subverted in Wednesday, whose first episode opens with Wednesday Addams doing this at her last "normal" high school. The other students are making way because they're scared of her, understandably so given that she's part of The Addams Family.
Theatre
- Wicked: In a college setting, Galinda's entrance to "Dear Old Shiz," complete with her own pause in the musical number. The book version wished she had one.
- Heathers: the Heathers make this kind of entrance in the song "Beautiful." After that, in the same song, the Heathers give Veronica a makeover and the four (the three Heathers and Veronica) make an entrance in the same manner.
Webcomics
- Falconhyrste: Queen bee and student council president, Gaia, likes to prance around like she owns the place (and she pretty much does).
- In Miss Guillotine, Hailey is accompanied by her mean Girl Posse at all times. No one will dare cross the most popular girl at school.
Web Original
- Played with in The Guild, season 2. Codex, Tinkerballa, and Clara attempt to do this at a party (also in Slow Motion), but have a few uncaring people walk across their path. The reactions on the girls' faces are more than amusing.
Western Animation
- As Told by Ginger: Courtney Gripling along with Miranda. In another episode, Ginger and her friends helped a girl named Hope become even more popular than Courtney for a bit, so she often indulged in this as well.
- Paulina from Danny Phantom. More specifically, she gets all the males distracted.
- The Fairly OddParents!... IN A SCHOOL BUS!
- Subverted in The Owl House episode "Wing it like Witches". Boscha is clearly expecting this to happen on the first day of the grudgby season, but all the other students are occupied with Willow showing off some tricks with her plant magic.
