Mean Girls: A Celebration Of Femininity Or Sexism?

Throughout the movie female characters are presented as stereotypical with being materialistic, image-obsessed, competitive, obsessive over their social status…

The movie came out in 2004 and became immensely popular. This reductionist and stereotypical representation is often mistaken as being a “celebration of femininity”, some say the movie is actually critical of “bullying” and “social stereotypes”. Even if this movie is considered a satirical movie that makes fun of stereotypes, it has not gone beyond being the same as any sexist movie in terms of its understanding of womanhood.

In this movie, at the beginning “Cady” is a homeschooled girl who’s started at a new school and joins a friend group called “plastics”. The "plastics" are presented with their stylish clothing, popularity, codependency, and shallow worldview.

“Regina George” became a symbol of being a material girl.

"Get in loser, we're going shopping!" – Regina George.

We see a stereotypical narrative, women wearing pink, they fight over a guy, they sabotage each other for popularity etc.

At the end of the movie, we see they all settled in peace and Regina actually turned into someone sensible and relatable.

However, we should ask: Are women really that way in real life? How often do we come across “Regina Georges”? Are these kinds of movies “satirical” or do they just reproduce stereotypes?

Even the women who are so-called “shallow” are complex human beings with different backgrounds. How come friendship and solidarity are overshadowed by meaningless competition and a quarrel over social status? Is this satire or a reproduction of gender norms and stereotypes? The movie's emphasis on the destructiveness of competition between women can clear this film from the "sexism" accusations.

It is not wrong to say that Mean Girls reproduces stereotypes about how a woman should be and it is twisting reality.

It can be said that the movie represents the world of teenage girls exaggeratedly and unrealistically and that can be considered as “sexist”.

The most accurate opinion about this movie is that while it criticizes gender roles and competition between women, it does so by reproducing stereotypes.