Mean Girls Summary
To those not familiar with Mean Girls, it’s a movie about a teenage girl named Cady Heron who enters high school for the first time. She’s been home-schooled her whole life and grew up in Africa due to her parents’ having a career as zoologists.
Cady enters high school with the mindset of it being something she can handle with no problems. However, she immediately experiences culture shock and realizes that high school, or as she calls it, “Girl World,” is entirely different than growing up in the jungle. And apparently, the new surroundings that Cady Heron has inhabited have no vacancy for mean girls, hence the movie’s title.
Cady does become friends with Janis and Damian on her second day of school, two students who claim to be “The greatest people you will ever meet.” Later on, come lunchtime that day, Cady encounters a jock, where the mean girls, a.k.a The Plastics, intervene and invite Cady to have lunch with them.
In the process of learning about “Girl World,” Cady befriends The Plastics: Regina George, viewed as the Queen Bee, and her two sidekicks, Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith.
Cady joins the Plastics eventually. The original plan was to get information on Regina, Gretchen, and Karen and pretend to be friends to gain intel and expose them to the mean girls they really are. Cady sees them as really lovely and has no idea how mean they are; however, all changes when Cady falls for Regina’s ex-boyfriend, Aaron Samuels. Regina learns about Cady’s crush on her ex, and she gets humiliated at the Halloween party when she begins making out with him in front of her.
From that point on throughout the movie, Cady goes to great lengths to ruin Regina George’s life with help from Janis and Damian. They do so in hilarious ways, like giving her some foot cream that Cady says is a face wash, cutting holes in her shirt where her breasts would be, and giving her Kalteen bars to make her gain weight. Eventually, Cady becomes a mean girl herself compared to the girl she was at the beginning of the movie.
A series of events occur once Cady has changed, such as convincing Aaron to break up with Regina and a massive catfight throughout North Shore High School, leading to an “attitude makeover” in the auditorium because of the Burn Book the Plastics showed Cady earlier in the film. Students also accuse Cady of pushing Regina in front of a moving school bus, and Cady also faces punishment to join the mathletes. All the issues that seem to be the forefronts of “Girl World” soon dissolve to where it becomes a peaceful place to be who you are on the inside.
To this day, Mean Girls is a classic teen movie filled with humor and drama. I think it’s a classic because it has a lot of relevance to real-life issues teenagers and young adults tend to face when growing up in high school and trying to find their place in that setting and its surroundings.
Mean Girls Trailer
Mean Girls & Real-Life Relevance
I remember being 12 years old when this movie came out in theatres, and I remember seeing it the weekend it came out. I was a preteen, and I remember thinking how funny the movie was. As I have watched this movie throughout the years, I realized its relevance to high school in real life.
High school has its share of mean girls in real life. However, some guys can be bullies as well. When you’re a teenager, you go to school every day with other kids who are different individuals and come from diverse backgrounds. These kids can be anything from the head cheerleader, member of the school band, overachiever, punk rocker, star athlete, even a loner.
Along with different types of kids in high school, some can be considered bullies. They can be mean girls, and there can be guys who can be bullies too. High school can be a tough place to go to every day. I know because I remember being in high school and getting bullied constantly. I remember being myself, and I constantly got bullied over something no matter what I did.
So when I watch Mean Girls, I’m constantly reminded that there are kids in high school somewhere that can be bullies. And someone is also being bullied in high school as well. This movie does an excellent job at depicting life in high school because it does happen in real life where kids go to school every day, and they’re part of cliques, they get bullied, or they happen to be bullies themselves.
Staying Positive
Staying positive is a great thing to do when dealing with the downsides of being a teenager in high school. It may seem complicated at times, but it’s essential to look at them a lot more than looking at the negatives. Doing that can impact that could be very beneficial in the long run.
I say this because when you go to school every day, the only time you usually interact with your classmates is at school. You probably don’t see them outside of school at their homes unless they’re your friends and you hang out with them regularly.
When kids get bullied, they probably wouldn’t see their tormentors living their lives at home. And there’s no way to know why someone becomes a bully in the first place. The mean girls and guys in school could be coming from difficult home life, and they could feel like they are constantly bullied all the time themselves. And they probably become a bully to someone who appears to have a happy life away from school to make them feel the same way they do. There’s no telling what a kid in high school can be dealing with at their homes because their peers at school usually see them.
I mentioned earlier that I got bullied in high school a lot. I don’t know why I got bullied every day, but I do know that I kept my head up, and I did my best to be myself and to stay positive and look at the bright side of things every day. And I did so by doing things that brought me solace, as I mentioned in my About Page. If you do something that you love to do, like binge-watch your favorite movies, read your favorite books, or play your favorite sport, any of that will help you to stay positive.
And by doing that, you’ll feel better when the positives you’re experiencing make the negatives decrease.
Related to Mean Girls Article
When watching movies, I love to learn about the facts and trivia behind making a film, and you can find them on IMDB.
Also, if you want to read something about fitting in, check out this post from Sun and Salt Life.
