Part 2 - Discussion
Teenage Girls Representation of Relationships
The way the media represents teenage girls relationships is often seen as “bitchy” between girls and girls “submissive” between girls and boys and “manipulative” between girls and parents and combinations can be woven within each of the relationships. These representations and stereotypes have been easily created by the media.
As we look into the media we can see that the hidden connotations cause negative effects to both teen girls and society. The effect towards teenage girls can range from being small changes to extreme drastic effects upon how they behave and present.
Representation is a huge factor produced by the media that defines society. The relationships
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What the world didn’t know was that the film would so negatively impact teenage girls and how society looks upon them. The representation of teenage girls is often “egotistical, bitchy gossipers” These stereotypes are a protuberant theme/idea in the film Mean Girls. We have two differently represented females in the movie. Regina George, head of the plastics “Queen Bee”. Everyone either wants to date her or be her. Regina George holds a great deal of coercive power over her fellow plastics friends and Cady Heron, another represented female in the movie. At the beginning of the film Cady is portrayed as an independent teenager and very level headed, but as soon as she begins high school, meets Regina George, and hangs out with her to try and plot to take her down with her other less popular friends, Cady gets engulfed into the “plastic world” and her own self-perception becomes quite interdependent. Regina is presented towards the audience to use a lot of gossip and social aggression towards her peers and even though she’s a massive gossip and makes everyone feel intimidated, everyone still wants to be her friend, and Cady is the main suspect. The target audience of this is teenage girls and when this is presented to them this is how they aspire to be. Popular plastics that everyone wants to be friends with, and the way to become like this is to be the stereotypical socially aggressive type. Bitchy gossip. Self obsessed. Everyone wanting to be you. And this is a huge reasoning as to why the media keeps presenting the social aggression aspect to the viewers, a partial part of the uses and gratifications theory. It sells. It’s the type of product that get people to purchase to watch these types of things. provides the target audience with a feeling of identity. It gives teenage girls an example of how they should act with their fellow peers. And it also affects people's perceptions of teenage girls. It provides a source of