Film Analysis: Mean Girls

A majority of the population was ugly even though the idealistic standard of beauty was far above the average person living there. Instead of tall, muscular, light, and carefree people, most ended up being dark, small, and unattractive. This relates largely in the current society because magazines portray thin to be beautiful, and until the last decade has this beauty standard started to change. When things as simple as a beauty standard are different from the current world, it allows readers to think upon the idea of living in a different

Even though teenagers aspire to become “beautiful” like the people displayed throughout the world, society needs to realize imperfections make everyone unique and beautiful. As presented by The Denver Post, “As we seek to defy the limits of natural beauty, Hawthorne’s admonition about obsessing over natural imperfections is even more pertinent today than it was 150 years ago. His tale describes the destructiveness of trying to achieve physical perfection through operations. The protagonist realizes too late the need to accept, rather than erase, minor beauty flaws” (16). Despite the fact that everyone desires to have the perfect body, hair, and face, nobody is capable of looking this perfect.

Although many years have passed, some aspects of the sense of womanhood have still maintained to be the same. Since there are a lot of aspects of beauty that still play a role within the twentieth century, many women are still struggling to find a way to stand up for what they believe is right within the beauty industry alone. By having cosmetic surgeries constantly available to women of any economic status, there are a lot of women spending thousands of dollars in order to make themselves more “acceptable” towards today’s society. Another economic problem occurs within the cosmetic industry is that they are constantly receiving more money and allowing for women to live with their insecurities and transfer them into something fake. From the perspective of many individuals, there have been a lot of inspiring role models within the African American society that have had the opportunity to attempt to influence other women to love who they are and for them to embrace their hair, skin, and who they are.

The pinnacle of the lesbian identity is the taboo connotation that follows women’s identities in same-sex relationships transcending history and culture. Initially, the term “lesbian” is used to refer to women in homosexual, romantic relationships. However, because of our heterosexual society, over time, the term “lesbian” is hurled as an insult towards lesbians and straight women in order to ridicule their identities. In the movie, Mean Girls, directed by Mark Waters, the term “lesbian” is often used as a slur to perpetuate the notion that to be romantically attracted to women is something to be ashamed of. The portrayal of lesbianism in this movie serves as a reflection of our society’s views on lesbianism, as it is something to be ridiculed

All of a sudden, I found myself thinking sociologically when I was watching the movie “Mean Girls,” because it reminded me of the cliques and peer groups that were in my old high school. The movie is about a teenage girl who ends up becoming a part of this clique full of mean girls and after an incident she sets out to try and ruin the leader of the clique’s life. It was the cliques and peer groups that made me start thinking sociologically, because it made me look back and see how much I have changed since I came to the University of Kentucky, and left my old clique or peer group behind. In my sociology class I learned that a peer group is a “group of individuals who are often around the same age and are linked by common interests and orientations.”

The film Mean Girls, produced by Lorne Michaels and directed by Mark Waters in 2004 focuses on a teenage girl, Cady Heron, who experiences the drastic change of living and being home schooled in Africa to moving to America and attending a regular high school. While attempting to sabotage the plastics, the girls who hold the most popularity in the school, Cady unknowingly turns into one of them, leaving aspects of her old personality behind. By analyzing the film through sociological perspectives, the deeper meaning of the film can be revealed. Socialization Socialization is the process of connecting individuals to their community allowing individuals to experience new attitudes and perspectives.

because of a situation about a burn book, and the first thing that comes out of her mouth is words of manipulation towards the principle saying” I don’t think my father, the inventor of toaster strudel, would be too happy to hear about this.” Gretchen believes that she is in a higher class than other people and that with her parent’s wealth and fame she could get herself out of trouble no matter what she does. The conflict theory states that there is always tension between groups of people because there is one group wanting to run and rule over the other. In Mean Girls, we see this happen with the Plastics, which we could compare to the bourgeoisie during Karl Marx 's time. The movie explains perfectly what some people in a higher class compared to a lower class believes that everything revolves around them and the other students that are considered lower class needs to obey their every single command.

The media portrays these unrealistic standards to men and women of how women should look, which suggests that their natural face is not good enough. Unrealistic standards for beauty created by the media is detrimental to girls’ self-esteem because it makes women feel constant external pressure to achieve the “ideal look”, which indicates that their natural appearance is inadequate. There has been an increasing number of women that are dissatisfied with themselves due to constant external pressure to look perfect. YWCA’s “Beauty at Any Cost” discusses this in their article saying that, “The pressure to achieve unrealistic physical beauty is an undercurrent in the lives of virtually all women in the United States, and its steady drumbeat is wreaking havoc on women in ways that far exceed the bounds of their physical selves” (YWCA).

According to Britton (2012), last 2008, YWCA USA developed a report Beauty at Any Cost wherein they discuss the consequences of beauty obsession of every woman in America. It shows that beauty obsession results from a decrease in the level of self-esteem. It also gives a problem to the Americans because it’s also putting a dent in their pockets. It states that because of those cosmetics many people have decreased the level of self-esteem because of those cosmetics.

One of the categories in being the ideal woman is being conventionally beautiful because, according to the media, a significant portion of a woman’s self-worth rests in appearance. This can be seen through women’s magazines in particular, which promote altering one’s appearance leads to the significant improvement of one’s “love life and relationships, and ultimately, life in general” (Bazzini 199). Therefore, the media presents a direct relationship with beauty and success: the more attractive a woman is, the better her life will be. Thus, a woman must the take initiative to look beautiful in order to be successful. Through the repetitive exposure of the same type of image in the media, what society considers beautiful often resembles a definitive checklist.

The late 90’s and early 00s is the Golden Age of chick flicks, which is a movie genre that has women as the primary-targeted audience. There’s countless of iconic films from the perspective of teenage girls or young women as they navigate high school and real world. That’s the era of romantic comedies where the tone of the storytelling is sardonic and swoon worthy. Couples have meet-cute moments, high-school-dance scene where the hero sweep off the heroine’s in her feet. Mean Girls do fall into this genre’s convention.

Your decisions to comply with society’s view of “beauty” are no longer subconscious, but rather are more conscious-driven decisions. Barbie’s slender figure remains idolized; however, it has evolved from a plastic doll to a self-starving model that is photo-shopped on the pages of glossy magazines. You spend hours in front of a mirror adjusting and perfecting your robotic look while demanding your parents to spend an endless amount of money on cosmetics and harmful skin products to acquire a temporary version of beauty. Consider companies such as Maybelline, which have throughout the ages created problematic and infantilizing campaigns and products for women. More specifically consider the “Baby Lips” product as well as the company slogan, “maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline,” that reiterates the male notions of beauty to which women are subjected.

It can be contended that varying contemporary texts which have been created for both children and young adults endorse post-feministic values and the importance of adhering to a consumer culture. The text Pink by Lili Wilkinson (2009) can be viewed as promoting post-feminist ideals through the inferences of dialog between characters; specifically, through the protagonist Ava. Additionally, the film Mean Girls (2004) mirrors similar ideologies as Pink which portrays a post-feminist society, revealing issues which individuals face once gender equality has largely been achieved. Both of these texts have been created for a young audience and utilise various narrative strategies to convey their ideological position. Accordingly, this essay will

There are no images that feature the real skin, curves, or hair of a woman that has not been significantly altered. This retoucher wants people to realize that the ‘perfect’ models they see on the Internet or on magazine are far from perfect, but the industry has gone so off base that it does not matter anymore. They just redefine look and create images with their own idea of perfection (4) With that being said it makes it clearer as to why the standards of beauty is set at a very high bar as it is not even real. How can women want to compete with a standard of beauty that only came to be because of technology?

Society 's Beauty Standards Hawkins (2017) stated that the definition of beauty has been shaped by society 's standards instead of what people actually look like. It signifies that the society sets up expectations of how we define beauty by manipulating beliefs of people to recognize that body shape, skin color, race, ethnicity, or anglicized features are what makes a person distinguish their beauty instead of what people actually look like in reality. This makes people believe that the beauty that they see, especially in films, is something that they need to attain in order to be considered as attractive. Unrealistic beauty standards affects physical and mental health Vitelli (2013) stated that content analysis of female characters