High school is a complete reflection of pop culture. The movie Mean Girls depicts what high school life is like for many teens in America. Mean Girls is all about high school cliques interacting with each other and how the more popular cliques usually consist of girls who aren’t very intelligent and wear short skirts to attract guys. However, the movie goes on to show that girls in these cliques don’t always have everything their way and that a girl can get a guy to like her without degrading her value and trying to enhance her appearance.
In the movie, Lindsey Lohan plays the role of Cady Heron. Cady is an exchange student from Africa and is not familiar with the teen pop culture that she is exposed to in America. She is a math geek and doesn’t have a very good eye for fashion. Rachel McAdams plays the role of Regina George. Regina is the “queen bee” of a clique on campus known as the Plastics. The Plastics is the school’s most exclusive clique. Everyone at school is intimidated by the Plastics because of their perfect appearances and reputation of being very judgmental.
Hanging out with the Plastics begins to change Cady. She begins following stereotypes and loses her own individual personality. She dresses like all of the other Plastic girls and also gains an attitude. The Plastics were first embarrassed to be seen with Cady when she wore her own baggy clothing. Once they influence her to change her outfits and get her wearing short skirts and more revealing outfits they are satisfied with Cady’s addition to their clique. Along with changing her appearance, Cady’s geeky side becomes hidden and she pretends to be bad at math just to attract a boy in her math class. Regina tells Cady that being good at math is too geeky for guys and isn’t very attractive. To get a guy to like you it is important let him dominate and be better than you in subjects like math and science.
The Plastics are greatly influenced by the standards that pop culture has set for teen girls and follow those standards like puppets. This prevents them from developing their own personalities and educational interests. Maintaining this look also causes the Plastics to hold emotional burdens as they are pressured to be the best looking girls on campus and to go out with the best looking football players at their high school. They are secretly unhappy inside as they are limited to what friends they have and are forced to segregate themselves from anyone who doesn’t follow their standards.
No comments:
Post a Comment