Friend Don't Let Their Friend Be Mean

Friends don’t let their friends be mean girls. In today’s society a cruel pecking order takes place amongst high school girls. Mean girls is a movie that shows people what it is like in modern society for teenagers, the movie shows how people can get peer pressured into doing things that they don’t want to do in order for people to like them and the movie shows how belittling it can feel to be judged by your peers. Towards the end of the movie Cady has taught us not to let popularity contests divide us, and it taught us not to be afraid to branch out from our cliques.

The movie Mean Girls Cady Heron is a 15 year old girl who lived in Africa being homeschooled by her parents who were zoologists. Cady coming from this type of cultural background where the community as a whole relied on one another to achieve their societal needs was in no way prepared for what she was expecting when she found herself having to attend a suburban high school. Immediately Cady knew that she was in for a rude awakening when the students were the least bit welcoming. Cady finds herself receiving a crash course lesson by Janis and Damien who categorized themselves as “Normal Human Beings”. Janis and Damien were Cady’s first friends at North Shore High School, they told Cady of all of the cliques that were known in North shore; The art freaks, Band geeks, Asian nerds, burnouts, cheerleaders, cool Asians, jocks, the Plastics, and many more cliques. Janis specifically warned Cady about the Plastics, the cold shiny hard Plastics. As you can see by the names of the cliques that North Shore High school has a very stereotypical outlook on their peers. Throughout the Mean girls you can see that there is a huge cultural barrier from simple conversations and scenarios that Cady ends up in. When Regina, Karen, and Gretchen were looking in the mirror critiquing their own bodies saying “I’ve got man shoulders”, “My pores are so huge”, they turn to Cady to see what Cady has to say about herself and Cady says amongst her-self “I thought there was just fat and skinny”. This shows how in Africa people weren’t worried about their hair, clothes, makeup, or structure of their body all they were worried about was maintaining weight and staying healthy. Another example of their cultural barrier within the English language was when Cady mentions to Regina that she had just moved to America from Africa and Regina says “shut up” to Cady and Cady says “I didn’t say anything”. Cady didn’t realized that shut up didn’t always necessarily mean shut up, while its rude the saying is often used in America when people are told something that is shocking to them. Throughout the movie you don’t just see the difference in language barriers but you see the difference in how people act in suburban America opposed to Africa for example when Cady was invited to a suburban Halloween party Cady knew that her costume had to be clever and scary so she showed up as a zombie bride, however Cady was shocked to see that when she showed up to the party everyone was wearing lingerie with some form of animal ears. This shows that the difference in societal morals between Africa and suburbanized America, What is normal to us is foreign to her.

Perception of power; what makes you popular? The Plastics are the clique who leads the school the clique is formed of Regina and her group of gorgeous wealthy and snooty friends. Regina is the Queen Bee of North Shore high school what gives her the power of manipulating others so well is her beauty and social intelligence in which Regina uses her parents money and her car for leverage against her friends Karen and Gretchen. In the movie Mean Girls Cady came in to the school as a blank slate nobody knew her and it was up to Cady to create who she wanted to be. Janis and Damien were not considered popular at all according to the Plastics. However Cady didn’t care they were the first people to have reached out to Cady with welcome arms. Cady would have loved to spend her high school