Mean Girls

A y2K must watch

Mean Girls was the first PG13 movie that I watched. Well, technically it was Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix, but that didn’t have any swearing or sex in it, which everyone knows are the hallmarks of PG-13 movies. The first time I watched Mean Girls was monumental. Like getting my period, it gave me this false sense of womanhood, of what it meant to be a teenage girl, wear makeup, date boys, and own a pink razor– the cellphone, not the thing for shaving, obviously.

In 2004 I was nine years old. I had yet to be introduced to the comedy of Tina Fey and along with most of the world, I didn’t know about the existence of Rachael McAdams or Amanda Seyfried. But, I grew up on Lindsay Lohan. Freaky Friday, The Parentrap, and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen were all movies I lived by. In fact, for my cousin’s Sweet 16, she made a mix CD that was used as her party favor. It consisted of songs picked by each of her guests and the song I chose to put on the CD was “Drama Queen (That Girl)”.

I don’t remember Mean Girls coming out in theaters. I just remember everyone talking about it like it was the gospel of girlhood and that my parents told me I wasn’t allowed to see it. Eventually, my parents either caved because I complained about not being able to watch it or I watched it behind their back. Knowing me, I probably wore them down to saying “yes”.

I remember the skirt Lindsay Lohan wore on the back of the cover which features the scene where Cady Heron lands head first into a trash can. It was pastel and frilly. I wanted that skirt. As a young, wanna-be fashionista, I wanted all the clothes in that movie. I wanted to be just like those girls. In a way, that movie reaffirmed some of the toxic ideas of what it meant to be a girl in the 2000s. To be a successful teenager I needed to have a boyfriend, be skinny, and wear short skirts. I guess my raging hormones clouded my judgment from understanding the point of the movie.

The movie also introduced me to language that I had never heard before on screen. It was the first time I heard someone talk about their period or STDs. For better or worse, it was the first time I saw a gay character and the first time I heard the word “lesbian” spoken in dialogue. It was the first time I heard of limits as a mathematical term, though I still have no idea what it means.

I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve watched Mean Girls. Ten… twenty… maybe more? I can tell you that the dialogue of Mean Girls became like a secret code of sisterhood. I could quote the movie to almost any girl in my grade and she’d know exactly what I was talking about. In college, it was a guaranteed conversation starter that I could use with strangers. That and quoting anything from Spongebob (but we’ll save that for another day). I still use Mean Girls speak to this day.