Implicit Social Norms In Mean Girls

Mean Girls: implicit and explicit social norms, conformity, obedience Cady Heron’s life changed dramatically when she moved to a suburban area in Illinois, after living in Africa and being homeschooled her whole life. She started at North Shore High and quickly got sucked into the stereotypical girl drama. Prior to the drama, Cady met two of her best friends Damian and Janis, who were apart of the out-caste clique. The two compiled a map of North Shore High and how Cady will survive it. A big part of the map was the cafeteria and where all the different cliques sat. Cady was warned about a certain clique called “the Plastics”, she was told they are the worst people she would ever meet. The Plastics are the popular clique at Cady’s new

I learned that there are many different types of social norms, but the two depicted in Mean Girls are, implicit and explicit social norms. Implicit social norms are the behavior rules that are implied without anyone having to talk about them, while explicit social norms are stated clearly and there is no room left for confusion. These types of social norms are often seen in everyday life, and if you break the norms it can lead to you being shunned by others or all the way up to punishment with the law. Social norms are all around us. In the film Mean Girls, Cady moved from Africa and had to figure out both sides of the social norms. She had not experienced any of the social norms that everyone else lived by each day. Cady had to learn all the explicit and implicit rules of girl world. For example, when Cady first told Gretchen and Karen that she thought Aaron Samuels was cute they yelled at her and warned her that she could not like him. The reason she could not like Aaron was because he was Regina’s ex boyfriend and that breaks “girl code”. Cady had no idea about the girl code which is an example of implicit social norms. An example of explicit norms is the plastics burn book and when they write “Amber D’Alessio, she made out with a hotdog” they are shunning her for breaking the behavior