“Mean Girls” – Mean Film
The 2004 film, Mean Girls, was a smash hit, earning sixteen award nominations and seven wins. After watching Mean Girls in the context of race, gender and popular culture, I noted the ways in which the plot and characters perpetuate social inequality. Mean Girls upholds popular culture's oppression of gender, race, social class, disability and…
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The 2004 film, Mean Girls, was a smash hit, earning sixteen award nominations and seven wins. After watching Mean Girls in the context of race, gender and popular culture, I noted the ways in which the plot and characters perpetuate social inequality. Mean Girls upholds popular culture’s oppression of gender, race, social class, disability and sexuality.

Before I delve into an intersectional critique of Mean Girls, it is important to introduce the film’s plot. The story revolves around teenager Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan). Cady, a new high school student, is befriended by social outcasts, Janis and Damian. She is then invited to join The Plastics, the school’s A-list girl clique composed of Karen, Gretchen and Regina, the ringleader. Cady accepts the Plastics’s invitation in order to discover the group’s secrets and disclose them to Janis and Damian. Cady eventually becomes assimilated into the Plastics’ materialistic dynamic, adopting their values and transforming her physical and social identity. When Cady develops a crush on Regina’s ex-boyfriend, Aaron, Regina plots to bring Cady down, and the effort is reciprocated.

Mean Girls’s presentation of GENDER:

The Plastics in Mean Girls embrace the construction of gender. The exclusive clique notoriously wears pink, the socially constructed colour associated with girls (Burack, Tolmie), and they may only wear jeans or track pants on Fridays; every other day calls for short skirts and dresses. Regina, the Plastic Queen Bee personifies femininity in Mean Girls. Regina is thin, blonde, has large breasts and can get any man she wants. The film’s representation of (emphasized) femininity reflects the social construction of gender, beauty and ‘hotness’ in popular culture. Regina’s beauty earns her power and popularity. The following is a clip from the film that presents Regina as the “flawless” epitome of femininity that every girl aspires to emulate. http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J9T91r0p0E

Regina George

In terms of Mean Girls’s social construction of beauty and the ideal figure, the motif of weight is threaded throughout the film. Regina, who is already thin, counts calories and wants to lose weight, The Plastics constantly criticize their bodies, and overweight characters are mocked. When Regina eventually gains a bit of weight, her alpha status plummets, sending the message that thinness is essential to beauty, popularity and happiness. The following clips are examples of the body image motif in Mean Girls:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkvakGvvivU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8_POt2KlfQ

Mean Girls’s presentation of RACE:

All of Mean Girls’s main characters are strictly white. Coloured characters are referred to as “unfriendly black kids” and are inferior to the white Plastics. Aaron, the white alpha male is Cady’s ideal man, rather than Kevin, the strange, non-Caucasian ‘mathlete’. Racism is a visible domain of oppression in Mean Girls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8wrqe72YG4

Mean Girls’s presentation of SOCIAL CLASS:

The social hierarchy in Mean Girls is determined by class to a great extent. The elite group, The Plastics, are wealthy and spoiled who wear expensive clothes and live in large homes. Regina’s luxurious lifestyle contributes to her social superiority, and the film fails to challenge the problems of inequality associated with this reality.

Mean Girls’s presentation of DISABILITY:

Popular culture commonly underrepresents disabled individuals, and although Mean Girls includes physically disabled characters, the way in which the film presents them is disempowering (Gerschick). These characters are lack confidence and aspire to emulate Regina George, but could never become a part of The Plastics as a result of their physical conditions. The disabled “wannabee” characters are desperate to attain an unattainable popularity.

Mean Girls’s presentation of SEXUALITY:

Mean Girls is guilty of queercripping, the arbitrary separation of ‘normal’ and ‘defective’ in the domains of ‘crip’ theory (disability) and sexuality as well. The film exudes heterosexism (tutorial); those who do not fit the heterosexual social standard are social outcasts. Janis is rejected by her peers as she is (falsely) perceived as a lesbian, and Damian is a depicted as flamboyant, stereotypical homosexual that is “too gay to function”. Mean Girls implicitly reinforces traditional gender roles, as Janis only finds social acceptance at the end of the film when she begins dating Kevin, a boy. Mean Girls equates happiness and normalcy with heterosexuality.

Cady’s heterosexual relationship with Aaron is also worthy of mention. Cady becomes increasingly obsessed with Aaron throughout the plot and wins his heart in the end. The film suggests a dependence of women on men, as Cady’s happiness rests on Aaron’s acceptance of her. The patriarchal notion of female insecurity and dependence is exhibited by other characters as well, such as Gretchen and her fixation on Jason.

Some viewers consider Mean Girls to be an empowering film, as it highlights the overuse and misuse of words such as “slut” and “whore”, it shuns bullying and supports values such as friendship, kindness and honesty. However, these morals are overshadowed by the film’s reinforcement of multiple axes of oppression, or what Patricia Collins calls the “matrix of domination” (Eitzen et al.). Mean Girls destabilizes the feminist movement and furthers the presence of contemporary social inequalities by unveiling them in a comedic, unchallenged way.

– JB