Socialization In Mean Girls

Many concepts of socialization are found throughout films which allow these concepts to be further demonstrated and studied. In the film Mean Girls, the main character Cady Heron is an individual who has been home schooled her entire life until her junior year of high school. Her expectations of high school are met with a harsh reality of the underlying social concepts of the other students. Cady is essentially in two different cliques which allows her to have alternate identities, and as a result ends up causing conflict between both groups. However, amid all of the drama, the educators in the school aid these “mean” high school girls into resolving their issues and making up with one another. Furthermore, persuasion by Regina George is evident …show more content…
The scene at the beginning of the film portrays these group schemas by the stereotyping of social groups at high school. Janice explains to Cady the different tables at the cafeteria and who sits at these tables by using the concept group schemas. To be specific, Janice goes on to tell Cady that at each table there is a different type of social group, such as the “jocks”, “burnouts”, “girls who eat their feelings”, “the plastics”, etc. By categorizing these social groups, it allows Cady to make her decision as to where to sit at lunch. According to the text, group schemas or stereotypes are defined as “a set of characteristics attributed to all members of some specified group or social category” (DeLamater et al., 2015, p.216-217). Janice’s categorization of the different people in the cafeteria can be described as a group schema. Janice is evidently attributing a characteristic of a certain group of people to all members. To go into depth, Janice refers to the one lunch table as “the jocks”, this exemplifies the attribution of sports and the connotation of a jock to all members of that table regardless of who they are as an individual. The textbook goes in further detail to describe group schemas by saying “rather than encouraging us to treat each member of a group individually, stereotypes encourage us to think about and treat all politicians, welfare recipients, or jocks the same way.” (DeLamater et al., 2015, p.217). The treatment of social groups in the cafeteria by Janice reveals her use of the concept of group schemas. Janice effectively treats each social group the exact same way which allows her to believe they are in some way all the same, this use of group stereotyping affect Cady. Cady now believes the high school is separated into groups based on their stereotypes, and as the movie progresses Cady associates herself with Janice and Damian, as well as “the