Examples Of Individualism In Mean Girls

In class we watched the movies Pariah, The breakfast club and Mean girls to see how they present expressive individualism. Bulman defined expressive individualism as “that strain of American individualism that values not material achievements, but the discovery of one’s unique identity and the freedom of individual self-expression” (Bulman, 2005).

In the movie “Mean Girls” it’s about a girl named Cady who is new in a suburban high school.

She moved there from Africa and has now the problem of facing the inequalities by social classes which are noticeable by expressive individualism. In the school are different groups which expressive themselves with different behavior. The best example for that is the cafeteria scene, where she gets the

In this group we have people who present different types like the kid Brian who has to be really good in school because he has a lot of grade pressure from his dad. The rich girl Claire, who can’t escape from the group pressure of her friends. The athlete Andrew, who has problems with the expectation pressure of his dad. The rebel John who has a violent father and the black dressed girl Allison who is said because her personality isn’t accepted from her parents. So all this kids coming from a different background and all of them have their own problems and secrets. The only thing that united them is to make the day as hard as possible for the authority person Mr. Vernon. After a while Brian asked if they are still friends when school starts on Monday. All the kids are a little bit confused and unsure because they shared secrets and information’s and don’t know how to act when they see each other while being in their old behavior and groups again. That is really sad because that movie showed how expressive individualism should be, everyone has a different background and different problems but they treat each other as equals. But also it showed us that this behavior will not continue and that the most people are caught in their clichés. It is normal that people behave different in small groups instead of big groups. On the one hand the movie confirms expressive individualism on the other hand there is a point where it fights it, because in the makeover scene the movie let us belief “that women must conform to standard measures of beauty in order to attract men” ( Bulmen, 2005). Claire does Allison’s make up and she also dressed in white clothes instead of black clothes and suddenly Andrew sees her in a complete different