Sociological Take on Mean Girls

Sociological Take on Mean Girls

The book Queenbees and Wannabees inspired Tina Fey to create a film which soon became Mean Girls. Fey called and pitched her idea to Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels who then contacted Paramount Pictures. Paramount Pictures then bought the rights to the book. Although the book was nonfiction Tina Fey wrote the plot based on her own high school experiences. As far as casting goes Lindsay Lohan first read for Regina George but feared that the "mean girl" would ruin her reputation and the producers also saw her better fit for the part of Cady. Rachel Adams was casted as Regina because Fey felt McAdams being "kind and polite" made her perfect for such an evil-spirited character. Amanda Seyfried also read for Regina, and the producers instead suggested her for Karen due to Seyfried's "spacey and daffy sense of humor". Mean Girls is a film based on a teenage girl named Cady Heron. Cady was raised by her scientist parents in Africa. She was homeschooled by her parents while living in Africa. Her family and her move to a suburb in Illinois. Unlike in Africa Cady goes to a public high school. Cady soon sees how popularity divides students into their cruel tightly knit cliques. She finds herself getting involved in one of the shallow cliques in her high school. Cady becomes a "Plastic" which is the cool girls in the school. It does not take her long to realize why her clique is known as the "Plastics" ("Mean Girls").

Throughout the movie I found that there were many different types of sociological perspectives. Including symbolic interaction, conflict perspective, and feminism/sexism. Symbolic interactionism is people's patterns of behavior, which are always changing. It is based on face-to-face interaction and is learned through social interaction. On Cady's first day of school she meets two people named Janis and Damian. Janis and Damian agree to show Cady her next class but instead they take her outside where she sees three beautiful girls. Cady of course asked who those girls are and her two new friends explain that they are the "Plastics". In this movie the plastics are the rich, popular, dumb, beautiful, and self- conscious group of girls. Symbolic interaction is the biggest sociological perspective in this movie since it shows Cady becoming a plastic.

The conflict perspective created by theorists Karl Marx and W.E.B Du Bois stated that factors such as race, sex, class, and age are linked to social inequality. It also states that the dominant group has all the power over disadvantaged group that tend to conform. In Mean Girls Regina George is the dominant character and belongs to the dominant group in the high school. The Plastics rule the school everyone moves as they walk down the hallway, the other students know they cannot sit with the plastics or even speak to them.