Mean Girls Essay

504 Words3 Pages

The movie Mean Girls directed by Mark Waters, displays different cultural backgrounds, causing communication developments between almost every character shown in the movie. There are many specific stereotypical labels placed on diverse groups of people, starting in the order of popularity. Mean Girls is a movie that explores various elements of gender roles that can be demonstrated through characters, stereotypes, and identity. In the movie, the character of Cady Heron starts Midwest High School after living sixteen years of her life in Africa and being homeschooled by her parents. Undecided between her friendship with Janis who is an outsider and her so called friendship with the popular girls, also known as “The Plastic” Cady faces peer …show more content…

At the beginning of the movie, Cady is basically a clean slate, meaning she is free from the influence of gender norms since she was completely separated from American media. When we first meet her, she is what most people would consider a “tomboy” or girl with many masculine features. However, she was naturally attractive and was an excellent math student, who immediately took the invitation to join her high school’s “Mathlete” team. In the beginning of the movie, Cady’s identity is of a girl who makes her own decision and lives her life the way she wants to. However, towards the beginning she was lonely and felt isolated because she had no friends. We were even shown the footage of her eating lunch alone in a bathroom stall on her first day of school because she had no one to sit with during lunch. This condition demonstrates that the thought of being a free thinker in our society, they must be entirely distant from it. Social pressure is a powerful force, and it can be seen when an individual meets other human beings. Therefore, the consequences of not being removed by these social pressures, we can see within the character of Cady at the beginning of the film, when she is completely separated from the other students at the school. This is not what an individual wants their lifestyle to be like, they want the sense of belonging and acceptance by other human