Mean Girls

Mean Girls- Directed by Mark Waters

Mean girls is film about a young female named Cady Heron that moves from being home-schooled in Africa to the thriving and intimidating life of American high-school. She has to battle social pressure and conformity, backstabbing frenemies, popularity issues, moral issues and above all winning over Aaron her crush. 

This film is a negative representation of teenage girls as it portrays teenage girls being conniving and selfish though a generalization.

The film represents teenage girl as being self obsessed and merciless. Cady's 'friends', the Plastics in particular are sneaky, backstabbing, beautiful/perfect and superficial.

A feature that establishes this representation of teenage girls in the film is dialogue. 

"But this was Girl World."

"And in Girl World,

all the fighting had to be sneaky"

This quote is said by Cady Heron describing to a simple but correct extent, the way girls fight by backstabbing, lying and black-mailing. Though a stereotype and somewhat exaggerated  it is a true representation of how girls fight and communicate. 

Another feature that establishes this representation is lighting.

In this shot, the back lighting is focused on the girls. This shows that the girls are the center of attention at the high school. This reinforces the idea of the girls being self obsessed. The rest of  the students in the hallway are left in the not lighted areas.This shows that they are inferior and reinforces the idea of popularity and how the girls are more popular.

Another feature that establishes this representation is Mise En Scene and in particular, costume.

The costume of the girls are feminine and revealing. The prominent colour that the girls wear is pink. Some negative connotations of the colour pink is over-emotional, lack of will power and self worth. The ties in to the character development of Cady. She in particular, loses her self worth throughout the entire movie. This is shown in the scene when she wears a revealing dress which indefinitely contrasts to the costume she wore on her first day to school which was jeans and a top. The costume tie in the main representation because revealing clothes are associated with girls with low self worth and are trying to become popular.

There is a difference between reality and the representation because many films, like mean girls, don't show the different types of teenage girls. It is very generalized.

The selection of actors reinforce the stereotypes of popular girl being modelesque. The girls playing the main characters have perfect skin and slim figures. This reinforces the idea of body image and how teenage girls tend to be obsessed with the way they look. Having the plastics looking like models enforces the idea of popular girls are put on a pedestal and are idolized by other other girls that may be less popular.

It is a fair and accurate representation of teenage girl. It was however exaggerated. Its is because in real life girls are self obsessed and liars but however to an extent but their is always a certain amount of influence (especially through media) on body image.

The possible effect is most likely negative. For body image, teenage girl have a pressure to be perfect. Diseases such as depression and bulimia etc are effects of the pressure from media and other sources. Society perception and attitude of teenage girls are also negative. In today's media, teenage girls are being portrayed and self important, revealing party girls.