Gender Stereotypes In Mean Girls

Mean Girls is about a girl named Cady who joins an elite social group at her new school known as the Plastics. While socializing with the Plastics, Cady develops a new, mean girl, personality and ends up sabotaging the group’s leader, Regina, and becomes the new leader of the Plastics. Regina retaliates by spreading the burn book, a book the Plastics filled with insults and gossip about other students, around the school leading to a riot and Cady takes the blame. Cady realizes that her new personality is wrong and apologizes to the school, makes amends with her old friends, and forms a truce with Plastics who disband and become regular students (Mean Girls, 2004).

Mean Girls was a movie about a girl named Cady entering a new culture. Cady is from South Africa, her family moved to the United States and she is going to start high school. When she started school it was a very big culture shock. There were new social norms Cady had to follow. The movie Mean Girls it showed may different issues of societies such as changing yourself to be accepted by a group of people and also women being treated like objects.

The teen comedy Mean Girls, directed by Mark Waters, welcomes the protagonist (Cady Heron) into the stereotypical high school setting after being raised in Africa for all of her educational path. Cady, never being in a public-school setting, comes across the Plastics: Regina George (unspoken leader), Gretchen Wieners (gossip queen), and Karen Smith (the stupid, clueless one), who are at the top of the social pyramid. Befriended by the girls, Cady is left to decide whether or not she belongs in this clique or if her place exists in a different one. The use of satirist and comedic scenes throughout the film show the different sexist lenses and stereotypes that women are viewed with.

As Cady gets to know the plastics they begin to introduce her to The Burn Book. This book is a perfect example of prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice is hostile or negative feelings about people based on their membership in a certain group. Discrimination is behavior directed against persons because of their membership in a particular group. The Burn Book was a book that singled out anyone in their school whether it was fellow students or even faculty members, and would basically list things that were wrong with that person. For example, they stated in the book that one of their newly divorced female teachers was selling drugs on the side and that certain girls were fat and ugly. Some examples would also stereotype because of a part of sports team or group those students were part of. For example, the students that were part of a more man like sports team such as lacrosse or field hockey was considered “lesbians” or “dykes”.

The story begins when Cady meets two friends, Janis and Damien, who show Cady the ways of high school. This is a very normal way in reality and most would not think much of it. Unconsciously, Freud would say, that there is some sort of motive behind this behavior and that there is no possible way that there doing it just to be nice. But as the story goes on we do find out that Janis used to be best friends with Regina (queen bee of “the plastics”) and that their friendship ended due to Regina spreading a rumor that Janis was a lesbian. When Cady is asked by Regina to hang out she is very hesitant to do so and tells Janis what is happening. Janis gets overly excited and instantly her id, the pleasure seeking principle, of her behavior jumps into play causing her to completely ignore

The movie Mean Girls is about this new girl Cady Heron who becomes friends with The Plastics. Cady befriends this group of clique as a way to spy on them with the help of her friends Damian and Janis. In the Plastics Regina George can be seen as the Alpha of the group, Gretchen Wieners can be seen as an insecure person and Karen Smith was portrayed as an airhead. In the movie Cady begins to have a crush on Regina’s-ex boyfriend, Aaron Samuels, Regina finding out about this Kisses Aaron Samuels and become his girlfriend again purposely hurting Cady. Throughout the movie Regina can be seen doing mean things or saying mean things to other. According to the DSM-5 Histrionic Personality Disorder is categorized as a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionally and attention seeking, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts.

Cady is used to living in a society, or a group of people that share the same beliefs and values as her, where adults trusted her, and she had the freedom to do almost anything she wanted. When she switched from homeschool to public high school, she was met with a new set of norms, or the behaviors that are expected by teachers and peers. Cady could not go to the restroom whenever she want; she

What they didn’t see coming was that Cady would conform and actually become a plastic. Its clear to see that Cady’s personal behavior and morals values start to go down hill when she sees Regina kiss Aaron Samuels, the boy she has a crush on. After feeling devastated and heart broken, Cady decides to get revenge on Regina with the help of Janice and Damian. They accomplish this by giving her face cream that is actually foot cream, feeding her Kalteen bars that actually make you gain weight instead of loose weight, and ultimately get Regina’s friends to turn their backs on her after a nasty three-way call. Regina was then over ruled and kicked out of The Plastics leaving an opening for new Queen Bee Cady. Regina George now furious about loosing her leadership plans revenge against Cady by writing a burn about her self in her own “Burn Book.” The Burn Book is a book that Regina and her friends created to write multiple insulting comments about people from their school. Regina then makes photocopies of the pages from the Burn Book, including the one about her self, and throws them around the school for everyone to

Starting with the easiest to loom, judgment is used from beginning to end, being the base of the picture. The first to befriend Cady at her new school are Janis and Damien, the "unique art freaks", as others describe. They kindly show her around, and inform her of what is cool and what isn't. The Lunchroom is the most important, in that being where you sit is your social status, or your clique – they have the nerds, Asian nerds, jocks, varsity jocks, burn-outs, girls who eat their feelings, girls who eat nothing, sexually active band geeks, the Plastics, art freaks, and more. Just by reading the names of the different cliques, you can see emphases toward judgment and criticism that was used. If you are not in a certain clique, then you are not liked by or spoken to by that clique. Janis informs all of this to Cady the same day that the gorgeous Plastics, consisting of Regina- the Bratty Queen Bee- and the two princesses Gretchen and Karen, confront Cady and is asked by them to join them for lunch, because she is really pretty. Cady says that eating lunch with them is like leaving the real world and entering girl world, for example she is given a set of rules like only wearing jeans once a week, your hair can only be put back once a week, every Wednesday you have to wear pink, and so on. After lunch, when reunited with Janis and Damien, Janis insists that Cady keeps hanging

Damian. Janis is your average outcast teenager who loves to wear all black and Damian is flaming gay. One of the first scenes in the movie Janis gives Cady a map she drew of the lay out of the lunchroom. Each table is labeled according to the social group they identify themselves with. Some of the social groups she mentions include the “Asian nerds, varsity jocks, the unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, the burnouts, and the worst of them all, the Plastics” (2004). Janis and Damian challenge Cady to “become one of the Plastics” so she can obtain the infamous Burn Book. The Plastics are the most popular girls in the school and the hottest and meanest of them was Regina George. Regina befriends Cady and she finds herself trying to acquire the label as an official Plastic so she will no longer be the new girl. Cady notices her classmates accept her new status and she uses this recognition in her favor. It is important to recognize that the behaviors of the Plastics are deviant and challenge social norms. Although this is obvious to the audience of the movie, the student body at North Shore does not recognize this because they are too distracted by the Plastics status quo. Cady’s primary deviance is seen in the scene where Regina invites her over to her house to hang out with the other Plastics. While hanging out, Regina shows her the Burn Book where she comes across a picture of Janis and her friend from math club, Kevin. The Burn Book includes

The film that I chose to do was the movie Mean Girls. This movie is filled with many funny characters and an amusing plot, but even though this movie has earned the crown of being the official “chick flick” it has a lot of psychological concepts that people really do not realize. However, when you really think about it, the movie has a lot to relate with when it comes to teenagers going into a new school because every teen that enters high school goes though the emotional and social stages of development. In this paper we will be looking at parts of the movie that focus on Cady and her stages of development as she goes through high school and deals with the Plastics, and then the Plastics themselves as well as certain aspects and things that revolve around them throughout the movie.

This offense, along with the new level of morally acceptable behavior Cady formed once fully ingrained within The Plastics, finds revenge against Regina as reasonable. According to social identity theory, an individuals' behaviors are organized in terms of the social categories with which they identify, so that they are motivated to establish and maintain a positive self-image by viewing these categories as positive and distinct from alternative categories (Seta, Seta, & Hundt, 2001, p.19). As a Plastic, positive self-image is the ultimate goal, so an act of revenge as the result of an offense is considered rational and even expected within that social setting. Once Cady identifies herself as a Plastic, the idea of revenge no longer holds the stigma it once did when Cady could not follow through with Janice’s plan for revenge. Cady then follows through with an act of revenge, something she had previously found to be morally reprehensible in her previous social

The message of a film is what it revolves around, and what the filmmaker is trying to portray; a strong message makes for a successful film. Mean Girls and Bully have that in common. They correlate the message of not fitting in with a crowd, therefore the characters modify themselves in an attempt to please others. The Plastics initiate a conversation with Cady, where first they offer her an invite, followed by listing all the rules she needs to follow to be allowed to join the group. She goes along because it is for the purpose of the hoax that Janis plots (Waters 13:40). Cady is confined with how she dresses, who she is seen with and how she interacts, otherwise she is seen less as. It is unlike her personality to act so feminine and mean because she has a different taste. Even Gretchen is unhappy in the group, “She knew that it was better to be in The

For thousands of years, established gender roles have been a part of our society. Women are commonly known as sensitive, emotional, or passive. On the contrary, men are described as rational, competitive, independent, or aggressive. Believing women are more emotional than men is stereotyping. However, the stereotype is not entirely untrue. Development of gender roles is often conditioned more by environmental or cultural factors than by hereditary or biological factors. The development of gender roles between men and women involves the inference of peer community of each gender, the communication style of male and female and the intimacy or connection level of men and women.

In the teen comedy Mean Girls, directed by Mark Waters, the protagonist (Cady Heron) is welcomed into the stereotypical high school setting after being raised in Africa for all of her educational path. Cady, never being in a public-school setting, comes across the Plastics: Regina George (unspoken leader), Gretchen Wieners (gossip queen), and Karen Smith (the stupid, clueless one), who are at the top of the social pyramid. Befriended by the girls, Cady is left to decide whether or not she belongs in this clique or if her place exists in a different one. Throughout the film satirist and comedic scenes are used to show the different sexist lenses and stereotypes that women are viewed with.