Mean Girls : Film Analysis : Mean Girls

Even though media vaunts an iridescent image of what every girl should look like, the simple fact is just, it is impossible. It is because the pictures in the media are not true—they all have gone through lots of Photoshop. Only 5 percent of women have the body type seen in almost all advertisements. Besides, most of fashion models are thinner than 98 percent of American women. However, women still continue to do whatever they can in order to fit into that idea of ‘perfection’. Eating disorders have harassed who want to feel like they are ‘beautiful’, for years. Women are willing to do anything even though it can cause harm to their own self due to low self-esteem. Do you want your sister, friends or girl friends always feel depressed and doing harm to themselves, as they feel dissatisfied about their

There are beauty standards all over the world, but America has one of the most highest and unreachable standard of the all. In the article “Whose Body is This,” the author Katherine Haines reflects the issue on how narrow-minded society, magazine and the rest of media is depicting the perfect body. The ideal body in America is established as skinny, tall, perfect skin, tight body are characteristics that destroyed majority of woman’s self esteem (172). As girls get older and into their teen years, they have been brainwashed to need to look like the unrealistic, and photoshopped models in magazines and advertisements. Girls don’t feel comfortable to be in their own skin, because they were not taught to love themselves for who they are right in the beginning.

Tragedy and comedy are used in the film Mean Girls to allow viewers to learn a new meaning about the characters and the plot of the film.

Mean girls is a movie about a teenage girl going into public school as a junior in high school for the first time, after being homeschooled for her entire life up until. She is discovering herself and where she wants to fit in with her peers. She is pulled many times to the middle of ongoing rivalries and trying to make the decision as to what side she wants to take in the rivalry and what peer group she wants to be part of, the groups that interest her and the groups she is already knowledgeable about. It is hard for her being that public school in America is completely different than home schooling in Africa, she has to learn and adapt to new customs, new pressures, and new acceptance by others. I will be discussing the Influences on Identify Formation that is reflected in this movie.

Societal pressure also comes in the form of body shaming, which is defined as the criticism of another person’s body shape or appearance. According to a 2016 study, there is correlation between body shaming, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorders, all of which happen to be most prevalent in young women (Mustapic p. 447). In recent years, body shaming has become a huge problem due to the popularity of social media platforms. Women of all shapes and sizes are ridiculed on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and other sites for not conforming to societal normalities. The 2016 study also assessed eating disorders in relation to age and body mass index (BMI) of participants (Mustapic p. 449). Age did not have much effect on the data, which is unsurprising due to the fact that all participants were close in age. What is more surprising, however, is that BMI also had little effect on the data. One would think that women with greater BMIs would

The movie Mean Girls is set in a high school setting. The movie starts with a new girl coming to the school as a first time public school student. Cady, the new student, is immediately accepted into a group of friends, but later invited to another. The first clique she joins pushes her to become friends with the second group. This subsequently led to a typical high school drama scene. The ways these high school students go about their normal life seem very alike to the “typical” high school. Even though the movie Mean Girls by Mark Waters, uses humor to portray some questionable realism, it effectively depicts characteristics of ordinary high school life and uses realistic characters.

In the movie, Mean Girls, Mark Waters uses key elements, such as plot, to express the different themes in the film.

The main group that will be focused on in this paper is adolescent girls. The inspiration behind this is the fact that teen girl behavior is so fascinating that it gets made into movies. There have been many movies in history and in recent years that focus and accurately portray the sometimes-catty behavior of adolescent girls. One movie in particular that comes to mind when looking at adolescent girls is ‘Mean Girls’. The movie ‘Mean Girls’ shows bullying, specifically relation aggression between girls.

The production companies, Paramount Pictures, Broadway Video and SNL studios, all came together to release the infamous teen comedy movie, Mean Girls which premiered on April 30, 2004. This movie was written by Tina Fey and was directed by Mark Waters. It grasped the attention of a wide audience because the issues that the characters encountered are relatable. The rules of high school are applicable to many life situations. This movie sheds light on real sociological issues including bullying, obsessions over physical appearance and peer pressure.

Researchers have discovered that “ongoing exposure to certain ideas can shape and distort our perceptions on reality.” (Mintz 2007) Because young girls are subjected to a constant display of beautiful people in the media, they have developed a negative body image of themselves. Those who have a negative body image perceive their body as being unattractive or even hideous compared to others, while those with a positive body image will see themselves as attractive, or will at least accept themselves and be comfortable in their own skin. During adolescence, negative body image is especially harmful because of the quick changes both physically and mentally occurring during puberty. Also, young girls are becoming more and more exposed to the media and the media keeps getting more and more provocative. Young girls are looking to women with unrealistic body shapes as role models. It’s hard to find, in today’s media, a “normal” looking

Self-esteem plays a big part of body image. People have to feel good about themselves and be comfortable in their own skin to be happy. In today's world, it feels almost impossible to be happy, this generation is all about the media which makes having self-esteem 10x harder. Millions of pictures are posted of expectations of how women should look. In an article written by Pavica Sheldon, she states that ”The average American woman is 5’4 and 140 pounds, whereas the average female model portrayed in the media is 5’11 and 120 pounds”. Women are placed into a box telling them they have to look a certain way and if they don't they're simply not good enough. Besides being put into a category women numerously get called nasty names like slut or whore if they show too much. Piggy and fatty if they're overweight. Or “stick” if she's too skinny. Nothing is ever good enough is what it feels like. For example, Kylie Jenner, if you grew up watching “Keeping up with the Kardashians” you know how she looked before all the plastic surgery she got done, she now looks completely different. An account wrote, “What are they giving Kylie?” and someone quoted the tweet and said plastic. So even if women try to fix their imperfections they still get shamed down for it by calling them fake.

In life you will always have to faced many decisions that may impact your entire life. That is the case of Cady Heron, the main character of the movie “Mean Girls.'' Cady is influenced by Janis to destroy Regina George, the most popular girl in school. In order to destroy Regina, Cady and Janis make a plan on how to destroy Regina George. The three things on how Cady and Janis are going to destroy Regina are by having Regina boyfriend Aaron Samuels breakup with her then make Regina lose her hot body, and finally destroy her friendship with the plastics.

"Cold, shiny, hard, PLASTIC," said by Janice referring to a group of girls in the movie Mean Girls. Mean Girls is about an innocent, home-schooled girl, Cady who moves from Africa to the United States. Cady thinks she knows all about survival of the fittest. But the law of the jungle takes on a whole new meaning when she enters public high school and encounters psychological warfare and unwritten social rules that teen girls deal with today. Cady goes from a great friend of two "outcasts", Janice and Damien to a superficial friend of the "plastics", a group of girls that talks about everyone behind their back and thinks everyone loves them. Adolescent egocentrism and relationships with peers are obviously present throughout the film. I

The premise of both Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004) and Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008) is very similar: awkward girl moves to a new high school where she becomes popular. The construction of popularity in the films underlines a larger cultural understand of what popularity is. Both films create a similar narrative of what goes in to popularity: conventional attractiveness, whiteness, wealth. However, the films treatment of the actualities of being popular and the whether or not it’s a worthy goal are disparate. In Mean Girls, the narrative treats popularity as teachable or trainable quality, but one that is, in the end, insignificant to actual life and unreflective of a person’s self-worth. In Twilight, popularity is an innate quality that reflective of a person’s inner ‘specialness’. Further, despite these differences, popularity is shown in as a desirable construct in both films, even though both narratives attempt to undermine that belief.

Body-Shaming is known as criticizing or humiliating someone by making impolite comments on an individual's body shape or size. Body-shaming is a subject that has been recently brought to light with the use of social media; many celebrities have talked about body-shaming along with quite a few other individuals who have even went out to do social experiments. Generations and generations have passed and as the years go by, the problems only seems to get worse. Comments like “you should put more meat on your bones” and “you should go on a diet” are both equally demeaning and overused. It shouldn’t matter what someone’s body size or shape is to anyone as long as that person is happy and content with himself or herself. Almost everyone has