Brief Summary Of The Book 'Mean Girls' By Cady Heron

Mean Girls Cady Heron grew up homeschooled in Africa, but when her family decides to move to Illinois, she is presented with the opportunity to experience a mainstream high school: “a jungle in itself”. On the first day, she becomes friends with two “out crowd” students, Damian and Janis, but soon later meets the Plastics, the schools most popular group. Damian and Janis convince Cady to accept the invite when she is asked to join the Plastics. They introduce Cady to the burn book, the group’s most prestigious notebook filled with rumors and secrets. Soon enough however, Cady reveals her crush on Aaron Samuels, Regina’s ex-boyfriend. When Regina catches wind of this, she seeks revenge. In defense, Cady unites with Damian and Janis destroy

Regina creates a fake page in the burn book and spreads the contents around school. Principle Duvall requires all girls at the high school to report to the auditorium where Ms. Norbury leads an extended apology and confession intervention. Cady, takes blame for the book realizing she has lost all her friends. After winning the “mathletes” completion for her team, she is elected the Spring Fling Queen but insists everyone is deserving of the honor and distributes pieces of the crown to everyone in attendance. Cady finally amends her friendship with Damian and Janis and calls for a truce with the Plastics. According to the reading, peers at school act as influences in the socialization process. Peer group structures allow children flexibility in choosing what groups to join and which to distance themselves from. Research shows children join one of four kinds of friendship groups depending on their relative status. The first group, the popular clique, has the most control over peer’s social cultures and in defining what is “cool”. These students have both active social lives and the greatest number of

This was a life event in Allie’s life. Life events are “any experiences that cause significant change in the course of our lives” (158). These events do not occur in a vacuum, but rather we experience them through important social institutions such as family. Prior to being forced to leave and move away from Noah, Allie thought she had found the love of her life. She did not put thought into finding someone of equal status and wealth as her but rather strived to find someone that she loved for their personality. But, once she experiences this life event, the way in which she views finding love and a husband changes. In this case, her mom was an agent of socialization, which is defined as the most influential in teaching children the norms and values of a culture (158). Allie’s mom influenced her to change her focus to finding someone just like her: a wealthy, well brought up city girl. Additionally, this can be viewed as a turning point in Allie’s life because the normal trajectory of her life was interrupted and she went from being on-time to being off-time. After being forced to break off her relationship with Noah, she had now fallen behind the socially expected time to get married for this particular time period. During this historical time, it was a norm for individuals to marry at young ages, which Allie