Yes, you read the title correctly. 10 years have passed since the hilarious and forever-quotable classic known as Mean Girls first made its rounds in theaters. Mean Girls is like, a cinematic rite of passage and not just for girls, because dudes totally love this movie too. It’s funny and entertaining, but it also exists as a crucial guide to getting through high school – I mean, where else would we have learned that you can’t just go around asking people why they’re white? And how else would we have known that if we have sex, we’ll get pregnant and die?! But seriously, Mean Girls is not your average high school rom-com about a clash amongst social groups with some moderately funny jokes and crude humor mixed in, it is so much more.
Teen comedies were a dime a dozen in the last few decades, so what makes Mean Girls so iconic? Well, let’s disregard the more obvious factors like its brilliant script, a wholesome Lindsay Lohan, and Amy Poehler as the funniest on-screen mom of all time, and think about the film as a whole. The fact that it – in a wonderfully hyperbolic way – so accurately reflected the mentality and lifestyle of a suburban high schooler circa 2004 is presumably why it was so well-liked, and why it will never be forgotten. It was funny because it was true.
The same can be said about its girl-gang predecessors, Heathers (1988) and Clueless (1995), which might be the only other two high school comedies that convey the same sentiment. Obviously, Heathers is dramatically darker than the other two, but it illustrates that truly excessive style and attitude that emerged (and somehow sustained life) in the 1980’s. Everything is so incredibly stylized, from the dialogue to the truly horrifying hair-do’s, and obviously the combination of Winona Ryder and Christian Slater was so very. Clueless did the same thing for the 1990’s: it showcased the culture of early MTV, seemingly non-existent existential crises, and amusing yet unnecessary things like feather pens, hats that resemble flower pots, and gum that coordinates with your outfit.
And then, of course, Mean Girls came along, with its 3-way calling blunders, the backstabbing and deceitfulness a la Regina’s I can talk to him for you! promises, and when Cady chooses to party with ‘The Plastics’ and a bunch of popular kids over her only true friends Janis and Damian, and ultimately upsets everyone, including herself. Oh, high school. Mean Girls truly strikes a cord. All of the malicious gossiping and betrayal is funny, for sure, but it’s also weirdly relatable –– the ideas of social politics and “girl world” should be fictitious but they’re definitely not because social pressure and bullying are obviously very real.
But one of the best things about this film is that it incorporates such amazing messages unlike most other teen-oriented films, thanks to its wonderful writer, Tina Fey (and on-screen, the lovely math teacher, Ms. Norbury). I was 16 when I saw this in theaters (after my mom dropped me off with my BFFL in our matching PacSun flare jeans) and when Ms. Norbury declared to all of the girls in the gym that, “You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores” because “It just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores,” I was blown away — not by what she was saying, but by the fact that it was such a simple concept that I had never thought about before, and soon after, I realized that it’s one of the most basic ideas of feminism. Or as Gretchen Weiners would say, “That’s just like, the rules of feminism!”
Additionally, when Cady realizes that, “Calling somebody else fat won’t make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter. And ruining Regina George’s life definitely didn’t make me any happier. All you can do in life is try to solve the problem in front of you,” another lightbulb went off in my teenage head. It’s funny, in high school it seems like by judging and talking about others, you’re putting yourself on this golden pedestal that puts you in a better situation than everyone else, but then you realize that there is literally no point because by playing into this nonsense, you’re contributing to a social structure that has a detrimental effect on everyone. Mean Girls is one of the only mainstream films in the last few decades that actually had some moral value. So between that, and the amazing characters and script, I think it’s safe to say that it will remain a classic for like, ever.
Review by Nicole Woszczyna. Follow her on Twitter @nicolewozc.