Mean Girls

Being popular in high school can truly be a struggle. Mean Girls is a teen comedy film loosely based on the self-help book titled Queen Bees and Wannabes. The main character is a high school student named Cady that just moved from Africa and has been homeschooled her whole life. The American culture and society she is introduced to is embodied by the Plastics, who are the most popular girls at North Shore High: Regina, Gretchen, and Karen. Mean Girls criticizes the idea that women can only be popular and desirable if they are conventionally attractive, thin, and hyper-feminine. If a character is not one of these things, it is often meant to be humorous.
Consider the scene when Cady first goes to Regina’s house, closer to the beginning of the …show more content…
Cady convinced Regina that Kalteen bars burn calories, when in reality they did the opposite. This of course caused Regina to gain weight and all that fit her were sweatpants, which, in their group, were against the rules. As she got up and left the table, she ran into another student, who responded with, “Watch where you’re going, fatass!”. This is incongruous, as the person she bumped into was clearly much larger than herself. It is unusual that a fat person would be the one to refer to her that way, as it seems like they would be most likely to see her as being thin. A person insulting someone by calling them fat when they are skinnier than themselves is unexpected, because they would in turn be insulting themselves as well. This scene can also be explained with Rappoport’s superiority theory, because Regina is meant to be the most “perfect” character in the entire movie, and seeing her being insulted and embarrassed is generally gratifying. The entire cafeteria laughed at her misfortune for the same reason viewers of the movie do: it makes them feel superior. Considering the fact that Regina is of a high social status in the school, it is especially enjoyable as it causes what Rappoport describes as “sudden glory”. While Regina is being excluded from her group, tensions rise as the characters become more angry with each other. Without the comment from the person Regina …show more content…
Taking away what made her body “perfect” is what destroyed her image. Regina’s weight gain is a main plot point of this film, meant to make her no longer desirable: once she is no longer skinny, she is immediately excluded and laughed at by her peers. This emphasizes the idea that being thin is a requirement to be popular in this society, and that being anything but thin is a joke. It seems at first that there are only two options: skinny and popular or fat and alone. Later in the film, it is resolved that being yourself is more beneficial and that popularity simply isn’t worth