Mean Girls: Post-Feminist Analysis

The film Mean Girls, produced by Lorne Michaels and directed by Mark Waters in 2004 focuses on a teenage girl, Cady Heron, who experiences the drastic change of living and being home schooled in Africa to moving to America and attending a regular high school. While attempting to sabotage the plastics, the girls who hold the most popularity in the school, Cady unknowingly turns into one of them, leaving aspects of her old personality behind. By analyzing the film through sociological perspectives, the deeper meaning of the film can be revealed.

By including young girls in the video, Greenfield successfully develops a feeling of guilt within the audience. Not only does she include multiple adolescent girls, but she also includes teenagers and young adults in order to provide additional perspectives on the effects of “like a girl.” Many humans feel a great amount of tenderness and understanding for girls, especially those who are young and self-conscious; knowing this, Greenfield makes sure to include multiple clips from young girls in order to remind the audience of the effects of their actions and comments. In so doing, Greenfield helps boost the confidence of women by generating feelings of regret and embarrassment in those who use “like a girl” in a negative way in an attempt to acquit their hostility. In other words, Greenfield reaches out to young girls in an attempt to build strength and convince them to continue doing what they love, despite what others say about

Many critics agree on one fact about Canadian author Alice Munro: one of her most notable qualities in regards to her work is the distinct use of realism in her writing. Her writing provides a strong sense of familiarity to the reader, while also containing stronger metaphorical meanings that one can note when they begin to closely look at her work. Her short story “Boys and Girls” portrays the socialization of a young girl, once very close to her father and unaware of any sort of gender bias within her society, into a young woman with a pessimistic view of femininity and her expected position in society. This story shows the socialization process in a way that makes it easy to recognize, illustrating circumstances that the reader can notice the blatant sexism and misogyny; however, its portrayal is extremely realistic, allowing the reader to recall how oblivious they may have been in the past during times that they have been impacted by social biases in our world. Critics of Munro typically agree on her overall theme of femininity and coming of age in her writings; “Boys and Girls” emphasizes the ways in which young girls are socialized into a seemingly natural understanding of the sexist expectations and gender roles.

The film Mean Girls is an American comedy movie for teens that illustrates the mainstream high school experience in the west. The main character, Cady Heron is a sixteen-year-old girl who is a new student at bob school in Illinois. Cady moved from being home-schooled in Africa, and therefore is unaware of the environment and lifestyle at a public high school. Cady then meets Daemon and Janis, who are part of an outcast group. Janis and Damien expose Cady to the norms of their school, talking her through cliques, and most importantly introducing her to “the plastics”, a group that Janis and Damian hated. “The plastics” were the leading group of the school, consisting of three popular, attractive girls, Regina, the leader of the group and two other girls, Karen, and Gretchen. “The Plastics” then scouted Cady since she had been attractive, and got the attention of popular boys, in which Janis and Damien originally supported in order to manipulate and plan to destroy “the plastics” through Cady. Cady’s exploration with social psychology is shown through her being unaware of everything at her new high school; social psychology concepts that are shown throughout this storyline are implicit personality theory, norms and group schemas, gender roles.

The film relates to the term sociological imagination. There is a divergent gap between looking attractive and not meeting those expectations of the image created. It is the willingness to see how one’s personal problem falls along with universal issues. Since women aren’t thin, have sizable boobs, and an admirable face it makes them less likely to be acknowledged by others because they aren’t model figures. Max Weber believed cultural relativism was extremely important, because of cultural relativism a woman’s behavior is based on the society in order to be recognized. This results in starvation, getting sick and feeling depressed since they aren’t replicated to the models on the magazines. Moreover, they lose massive money to get the surgery

It centers on females and how they act at that certain age. The four mean girls, Regina George, Gretchen Wieners, Karen Smith and Cady Heron represent the stereotypes of the popular girls of high school. The role of gender plays an important role in the movie. The movie discusses the aspects of how a “typical” teenage girl should be, in order for her to fit in.

The movie Mean Girls is a perfect example of many social-psychological principles. Three of the major principles that are seen in the film include: conformity, in-groups and out-groups and prejudice. Cady Herron, a naïve sixteen-year-old who has been homeschooled her entire life, is forced to start as a junior at North Shore High School because of her family’s job relocation. Throughout the movie, you see Cady struggling to maintain acceptance in the school’s in-group known as The Plastics.

However, she claims that because class was invisible in the girls ‘social life, the school blame their sexualized style, their rejection of prep’s values and their lack of school success for their class differences. Most important, Bettie claims that the lack of cultural capital also affected the working class girls because it intersected with their race and gender to influence their class futures. For example, Bettie argues how upwardly mobile girls had to performed whiteness and the school sanctioned femininity just to possessed the prep’s dominant cultural capital. At the same time, girls who didn’t possessed cultural capital were victims of generalizations and stereotypes that affected their class outcomes. As a result, many of the working class girls were destined to follow rough paths or the same low paying jobs as their

More specifically, gender’s role on women and their positions in the world. Being a young woman, I fall into the intended audience of the book. The rhetoric in the book appeals to the young girls around the same age of the main character

She employs many literary devices that support her specific claim in this passage as well as she provides many clear examples of how stereotypes have shaped young girls’ lives throughout the book. Through these examples she succeeds to use them as evidence so the audience does not conform to

The topic of self confidence is a subject that is heavily discussed when it comes to girls of all ages. Journalist, Stephanie Hanes, examines the current trend of sexualization amongst young girls. In the article “Little Girls or Little Women: The Disney Princess Effect”, Hanes examines the current trend of sexualization amongst girls. She addresses the issue of desiring to become a women too soon. Hanes develops her article by using the literary techniques of pathos and logos to describe the emotions young girls feel when they see images of women with unattainable features.

Youth culture can pertain to interests in styles, music, clothes and sports. It also pertains to behaviours, beliefs, and vocabulary; this refers to the ways that teenagers conduct their lives. The concept behind youth culture is that adolescents are a subculture with norms, morals, behaviours and values that differ from the main culture of older generations within society. For instance, young men and women, teenagers in this case, are mostly represented as unpredictable and not easy to understand. In the film, Mean Girls directed by Mark Waters (2004), adolescents are represented as bullies, who use manipulation to achieve what they want and are two-faced with the people around them; they are constantly stereotyped as a high social group like the plastics and a low social group like the mathletes; also they are presented as young people that fall under peer pressure, and are overly concerned about their appearance and about being socially accepted.

All of a sudden, I found myself thinking sociologically when I was watching the movie “Mean Girls,” because it reminded me of the cliques and peer groups that were in my old high school. The movie is about a teenage girl who ends up becoming a part of this clique full of mean girls and after an incident she sets out to try and ruin the leader of the clique’s life. It was the cliques and peer groups that made me start thinking sociologically, because it made me look back and see how much I have changed since I came to the University of Kentucky, and left my old clique or peer group behind.

Conformity is present in every group situation with adolescents. Adolescents are always looking to be a part of a group, usually conforming to the standards of the group. Adolescents often conform because they want to have the approval of the peers that are well liked or “popular”. A great example of adolescents and conformity is in the chick flick ‘Mean Girls’ through the different cliques in high school and how it affects the peers themselves. Caty, the main character, is faced with several difficult situations where she decides to conform with her high school peers getting her in trouble that becomes hard for her to escape. Caty begins the movie with a real genuine friendship with Janis and Damien, two individuals who struggled with popularity because they were considered the “outside” group. However, the popular girls, infamously called the “Plastics” try to recruit Caty into their popular group, but only because she is considered one of the prettier girls in the school. The ring leader, Regina George, of the Plastics is the most popular girl in school who is really hated by alot of peers because of her horrible attitude and how she

Movie Summary: In the movie Mean Girls, Cady Heron is experiencing her first year in school despite being 16 because her parents are research zoologists and homeschooled all her life since they were in Africa on an assignment. Consequently, she had very little contact with people her age let alone western culture and was not aware of the dealings of high school or adolescence in general. As can be expected it was hard for her to adjust to this new life where adults don’t trust her and she is restricted by unfamiliar rules. She feels lonely until she becomes friends with Janis and Damian, who guide her and teach her about all the cliques in the school.