Mean Girls

The movie Mean Girls takes everything we have learned this year and adds some laughter to it.  It takes one girl, Cady Heron, out of her media-free life in Africa and enters her into girl world.  Throughout the movie Cady learns what its like to be one of the Plastics.  We also see the dynamic between girls in the movie and how they can relate to literature we have read this year.

In one of the earliest scenes of the movie, Cady and the Plastics (Regina, Gretchen and Karen) walk into Regina's room.  Regina, Gretchen and  Karen immediately walk to the mirror and begin criticizing themselves saying things such as "I have man shoulders", "my nail beds suck", and "my pores are huge". The three girls stare at Cady and wait for her to criticize herself.  Cady, a very confused girl responds saying, "I have really bad breath in the morning" and then thinks to herself how she didn't think there was anything more than skinny or fat.  This directly relates to The Beauty Myth and shows how women expect other women to think poorly of themselves.  In reality, when girls think negatively of themselves, all it does it point out flaws to everyone else.  If everyone could be confident with themselves, maybe everyone would start being nicer to each other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWMtOxlKFRw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUFT35S7Jb4&feature=related

These two scenes in Mean Girls relate to the The Vagina Monologues.  While both these scenes are clearly in this movie for the purpose of humor, it also shows how women may be scared to speak up because of what others will think about them.  I guess women don't talk about certain things for the same reasons they don't like to talk about their vaginas: "I was worried about what we would think about vaginas, and even more worried about that we don't think about them" (3).  Just like the girls in Mean Girls, once the women Eve Ensler began talking, they could not stop, "They were a little shy. But once they got going, you couldn't stop them". (5).  Women can benefit from talking about things that are uncomfortable.  The girls in Mean Girls opened up and found peace after talking about things that were once secrets, just as the women in The Vagina Monologues were empowered by talking about their vaginas.