Mean Girls, starring Lindsey Lohan and Rachel McAdams, took over worldwide box office sales in 2004 making it a staple in pop culture today. The movie is about a young girl named Cady who lived in Africa with her family and moved to a new town in the suburbs of Illinois. Cady gets a taste of what real public school is like and unfortunately it’s a rude awakening. The film portrays many stereotypical gender roles that society has created for females, males, and the LGBT community. This essay will seek to explore how the film Mean Girls portrays gendered pressures from peers, parental modeling, and the gendered expectations and pressures facing female students. Moving to a new school, especially high school, in itself is a very daunting and …show more content…
George, mother of Regina George can be seen as a true definition of a parenting model. As stated in Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender and Culture by Julia T. Wood, “once children have gender constancy, they actively look for role models for their sex and use those models to develop masculine or feminine qualities” (Wood, 151). Mrs. George is a mom who is stuck in her high school days and enjoys living through all or Regina’s drama and life experiences. At one point in the movie, Mrs. George says to Regina and the Plastics, “I just want you to know, if you ever need anything, don 't be shy, Ok? There are no rules in the house. I 'm not like a “regular” mom, I 'm a “cool” mom” (Michaels). Mrs. George can be seen as a permissive-indulgent parent who wants to be very involved with Regina’s life but also does not want to control what she does. Due to the fact that Mrs. George was not a very mature parent throughout Regina’s early years, Regina ultimately conformed into the type of woman that her mom modeled her to act and behave. Mrs. George continuously models what she believes a feminine woman act and dress like throughout the film. A great example of this would be how Mrs. George almost encourages her daughter to be sexually active with her partner. Mrs. George says to Regina and her partner, “Can I get you guys anything? Some snacks? A condom? Let me know! Oh, God love ya” (Michaels). Julia T. Wood mentions, “by observing parents, children often learn the roles …show more content…
In our case, Cady is faced with the biases and pressures that occur in at her school, North Shore High. Towards the beginning of the film, Cady continuously knows every answer to the equations that her math, Ms. Norbury puts on the board. Cady soon gets offered to be a part of the North Shore Mathletes, who would ultimately be the only girl on the team. However, being a female who was very good in math was something that Cady ultimately felt wouldn’t seem cool. As mentioned in Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender and Culture by Julia T. Wood, “as females pass through puberty and become more aware of themselves as gendered and sexed beings, many young women shy away from being geeky or seeming overly smart” (Wood, 169). As Cady becomes influenced by her new friend group called the Plastics, the more she feels she cannot act smart around the men she finds attractive. For example, in one scene of the movie, Cady pretends to be totally lost during a class lecture. She asks the boy she likes for help and pretends to act like she has no idea how to do the math equations. After Ms. Norbury realizes that Cady is dumbing herself down to impress a boy she explains to Cady, “I know that having a boyfriend may seem like the most important thing in the world. But you don’t have to dumb yourself down to get guys to like you” (Michaels). Julia T. Wood writes, “Because cultural stereotypes of femininity do not include
Cady has always been homeschooled, so she did not really know what it was like to communicate with others and make friends. She thought that her actions are what she should be doing in order to make friends. As Cady gets closer to The Plastics, she starts to develop feelings for Regina’s ex-boyfriend, Aaron Samuels. Later on in the movie Cady has to make a choice whether she wants to be officially part of the group or to continue sabotaging it. Eventually she decides to be part of the group, which disappoints Janis; since Cady basically betrayed her. Cady starts developing into a whole new person; she became a Plastic. Cady illustrates different types of interpersonal communication as she tries to make everything right again in her life. Throughout this movie, the girls show how their relationships consists of: social exchange theory, communication privacy management theory, unproductive conflict, and productive
Mean Girls is a comedy film aired in 2004 this film captures the influences on lifespan development during adolescence. The main character Cady Heron was home schooled in Africa and now she must transition into high school where she is tested in different areas of her development. Throughout the film she becomes known as the new girl who is trying to figure out her self-identity. Cady integrates herself into a clique of girls known as the Plastics, soon enough Cady understands why they are known for their name. The Plastics run the school by the norms they have created and must always be followed otherwise it will lead into exclusion from the group. In order to be socially accepted social norms determining attitude, behavior, and status must
The film Mean Girls is about a young girl, Cady Heron, born and raised in Africa by her zoologist parents, who were also her homeschool teachers for sixteen years. When Cady moves to the United States, she enrolls in a public school for the first time. Here she realizes that high school students have the same hierarchy as the animals she observed in Africa. The lowest ranking group in this high school hierarchy is the outcasts, who also happen to be Cady’s first friends in the U.S. The highest on the high school food chain are the “plastics”. The “plastics”, are the most popular girls in school. The plastic’s notice Cady’s charming personality and stunning good looks and invite her to join their clique. In order to avenge her first friends,
Running around barefoot, playing outside, and getting dirty were a few of my favorite things to do when I was younger; however, things have changed drastically since then. Now, at eighteen, all of the activities I used to enjoy make me want to cringe. Often, girls are encouraged to look and act a certain way based on what society’s expectations are at the time. Throughout adolescence girls tend to drift away from their old ways. Romances, body changes, and tensions with parents are all factors in this time of change. In Mary Pipher’s Saplings in the Storm, she claims that adolescents must adapt to stereotypical gender characteristics in American culture.
In Zhou, Li’s article “The Sexism of School Dress Codes,” she explains how the dress codes are diminishing children's self-esteem and, is mostly sexist towards girls as well as the LGBT community. To reach a wide audience including students, parents, and high school administrators, she relies on a wide variety of sources from high school students to highly credited professors. Zhou creates a strong argument against strict dress codes and encourages audience to take a stand against out of date dress codes that schools implement, using the rhetorical tools ethos, pathos, and logos to advance her argument.
Regina George is a junior in high school who is described as teen royalty. As the leader of her clique referred to as “The Plastics”, she rules the school with her best friends Gretchen Weiners and Karen Smith loyally at her side. The three girls feed off of tearing the other girls in the school down and diminishing them by writing awful rumors and secrets in the “Burn Book”. With her tall and skinny physique, bright blonde hair and good-looks, she uses her sex appeal and superiority to manipulate and victimize the people around her including her family. Regina easily controls her family members. Her mother worships the ground Regina walks on and desperately looks to her for acceptance. Her ability to make other girls at school feel inferior fuels her power, as queen bee Regina is seen as the “it” girl. Everyone wants to look like her, dress like her, and be just like her. She uses her sex appeal to get any guy she wants and dangles them around everyone else to make them jealous.
The movie main character is Cady Heron who is a homeschooled girl. Her and her family lived in Africa for 15 years. They return back to the states and place Cady into a public school for the first time. Cady meets her classmates and finds a few good friends the introduce her to a group of girls called the Plastics. She ends up joining the plastics with the motive of bring them down because her new friend don’t like them very much and thought it would be funny. However, she eventually gets assimilated into the group of three unkind girls and starts to be just like them.
Almost immediately we are faced with the conflict of everyday life for Brittany, and as she enters the main setting of the story and a place that should be a safe environment she is immediately besieged. The author, using simple diction, describes another morning at school for Brittany where we see how her classmates attack her verbally with derogatory terms such as “Dyke” and “Whore”(Erdly 253). Because of this and other more physical bullying we see a safe setting become a source of anxiety and fear, and instead of combating the problem the school district does nothing. In clearly understandable writing Erdely deciphers the situation and relates to us how the school district passed a regulation effectively stating that staff “shall remain neutral on matters regarding sexual orientation” (Erdely 264). Effectively preventing children in need of guidance and role models from reaching out. The author uses an easily relatable setting, common vernacular, a clear point of view and familiar events to highlight the issues in this essay. Those issues detail the conflict that LGBTQ children face from people that don’t empathize with them, and understand that just because of who they are doesn’t mean that they aren’t still children in
Her character and personality is a prime example of perfectionism. In the movie, she secures the title of “queen bee” within her group of friends. Regina controlled her friends on what to believe, what to say, and even what to wear. Showing no signs of sympathy, Regina refused to allow anyone below her standards of ideal into her small group of friends. Quickly, she mastered superiority making not only her friends feel inferior but also other peers. Annoyed at Regina’s manipulating, controlling, and self-centered ways, Regina’s group of friends turn their back to her. In the end, Regina loses her friends and becomes hated as a result of her perfectionism. Regina’s perfectionism leads to her social
In the film “Tootsie” staring David Hoffman, we see many ways that gender, gender roles and gender stereotypes are applied, as they often are in the real world. In this essay I will be discussing how the film “does gender”, the different categories of gender stereotypes and examples of each type in the storyline, and how feminism is represented throughout the movie. I feel that this film does a great job of representing the topics we have been talking about in class in a realistic and understandable manner.
On the second day when Jason tried to make fun of her, she did not know how to respond until Regina saved her. She did not know how to react in a situation like this. In the lecture, we discussed that peers allow us to make relations on our own. Peer interactions are spontaneous and non-structured. Peers can have an effect on our socialization and develop our sense of identity. When she entered high school, she was a nerd with good grades and did not know how to socialize. When Janice and Damien forced her to interact with the plastics and tell them what they talk about she agreed. At that time, she was not able to figure out that this is not good for her. Slowly her personality started changing and she became just like plastics. She started misbehaving with her parents, ditching Janice and Damien. She was getting used by people. She did not interact with peers before so she did not have the experience of it. But slowly she began to figure out that it is affecting who she is. In the beginning, Cady could not differentiate between her friends and enemies. Like the first 3 way call. Cady could not figure out about her real friends and she told Gretchen and Karen right away when she started liking Aron
One of the major conflicts is the intrapersonal conflict Cady has with herself. Cady goes from being home-schooled in Africa to entering the “girl-world” in high school. Throughout the movie, Cady is trying to fit in, become popular and to get the attention of her crush, Aaron Samuels. This causes Cady to ultimately lose herself in the process of becoming Plastic. In the effort to take revenge on Regina for taking Aaron back, Cady loses her own self by attempting to be Regina. This gets Janis to notice Cady’s transformation especially when Cady throws party the same night of Janis’s art show and doesn’t even show up to the art show. Janis came to Cady’s house tell her: “You think that everyone is in love with you, when actually, everyone hates you.” Cady then has to decide whether she wants to become a better person or become someone she’s
Starting high school is tough for some people. Moving to a new city is also tough for some people. Or me I had to deal with both. I can remember my very first day of high school, I was so nervous. I didn’t make any friends over the summer so I didn’t talk to anyone. I was pushed out of my comfort zone to talk to people and make new friends. A few months into school I received my first interim. It wasn't the greatest but , I blamed it on my transition to high school and promised that
"Cold, shiny, hard, PLASTIC," said by Janice referring to a group of girls in the movie Mean Girls. Mean Girls is about an innocent, home-schooled girl, Cady who moves from Africa to the United States. Cady thinks she knows all about survival of the fittest. But the law of the jungle takes on a whole new meaning when she enters public high school and encounters psychological warfare and unwritten social rules that teen girls deal with today. Cady goes from a great friend of two "outcasts", Janice and Damien to a superficial friend of the "plastics", a group of girls that talks about everyone behind their back and thinks everyone loves them. Adolescent egocentrism and relationships with peers are obviously present throughout the film. I also noticed self worth in relationships, parenting styles, and juvenile delinquency throughout Mean Girls.
Modern America, in accordance to course materials and personal experiences, overtly sexualizes people, specifically among the youth, engendering new versions of gender expectations, roles, relationships, and how society views people based on appearance, sexual promiscuity or supposed promiscuity, and so on. Easy A (2011) represents an example clarifying how gender socialization impacts today’s youth via several concepts such as slut shaming, slut glorification, challenging masculinity, dating/hooking up, gender expectations and social acceptance. This film primarily focuses on a female’s promiscuity. Olive, the main character, is automatically labeled slut, after a rumor she unintentionally sparked by a bathroom conversation. Soon, the rumor spread and Olive became “school slut” in minutes.