"You've got your freshmen, ROTC guys, preps, J.V. jocks, Asian nerds, cool Asians, varsity jocks, unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don't eat anything, desperate wannabes, burnouts, sexually active band geeks, the greatest people you will ever meet, and the worst. Beware of The Plastics" (IMDB Mean Girls, 1). High school is very much like a jungle, as portrayed in the movie Mean Girls. It is also the center of Girl World. Girl World is a vindictive, scary place to grow up in for a girl, because you never really know where you stand. The whole point is to try and reach the top where the popular reside, and they don't normally want you there. In the movie Mean Girls, all of Girl World's deepest secrets are revealed. In Girl World there is always a queen bee, otherwise known as Regina George. 
Regina is your stereotypical, blonde bombshell. She is vindictive, cunning, and completely untrustworthy. A queen bee isn't really anything without her minions though. 
Gretchen Weiners is the gossip queen. "Her hair's so big, because it's full of secrets" (IMDB Mean Girls, 1). She is horribly insecure and tries to make up for it with the secrets she gathers from others. 
Last, but not least, is Karen Smith, the source behind every dumb blonde joke ever written, who can shove her whole fist in her mouth and claims that her boobs can tell when it's raining. It's like she has "ESPN or something" (IMDB Mean Girls, 1). These girls are the rulers of Girl World. They can rise you up and then destroy you in the span of a few days. They are The Plastics.
There are girls like The Plastics in every school. Girl World isn't just something made up for this movie, it's quite real. "It is a scary concept stepping inside the mind of a girl. A world full of paranoia, vulnerability, conformity, pressure, manipulation - and this is just her friends!," vented Mikaela Ferguson. In society, we expect the boys to be the ones that have to deal with bullies the most. Aren't girls supposed to be made of ginger and spice and everything nice? Not quite. According to student.com, there are more and more cases of bullying amongst teenage girls every year, especially those within the ages of 12 and 15 years old. This type of bullying isn't the normal, aggresive, outward taunting and violence, it's more quiet and cunning. This is why so many bullying incidents among girls are ignored, because it doesn't even seem like they are truly being bullied.
In Mean Girls, The Plastics are the most popular girls in school, but at the same time they are also hated and frightening. Everyone knows that you just do not mess with Regina George. However, when Cady Herring is accepted into the group, we see that someone is finally going to step up to her. Any girl will know that the only reason Regina invites Cady in is because she recognizes her as a threat. Cady is pretty and intelligent, so therefore Regina must follow one of the age old rules of Girl World: "keep your enemies close to keep them on a short tether in case they start to creep up the social ladder before you" (Ferguson, 1). So she invites Cady in, but she must also show her her place. So she steals the boy that Cady likes. Unfortunatly for Regina this does not work to her advantage.
Girls rely on this type of bullying. They act like they are each others best friend and then turn around and stab each other in the back. This is why Mean Girls was such a huge hit. Yes it was an extremely funny movie, but it was also the truth. Girls liked this movie because they could relate to it. We all know a Regina or a Cady. We might even be them. We all want that sort of perfect ending too, for that girl we hate to get hit by a bus. Okay, so maybe we don't really want that. But we do want to be able to put our claws down and act like normal human beings. We do get tired of all the fighting and betrayal. Mean Girls is just a more realistic fairytale.
No comments:
Post a Comment