Blog 3. Mean Girls Represntation.

How does the representation affect teenage girls?

The movie 'Mean Girls' by Mark Warters sends the a poor representation of teenage girls to the viewers, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re5veV2F7eY In this scene when Cady Heron first meets the 'Plastics' she is portrayed in wearing no makeup, plain hair tied back and natural, she is wearing jeans and a checked shirt. When we first see Cady she seems to be innocent and unaware of girls like the girls in the "plastics” group. Cady has only a few friends and is not noticed much by anyone. When Cady first sits down to eat with the plastics she has on her tray a normal amount of food consisting of a milk of some kind and three different pieces of food. This is significant as near the finish of the film Cady is like a different girl, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VF06kEKGUk in this scene Cady is wearing a lot of makeup and her hair is down and curled, she is wearing large hoop earrings, she’s wearing a pink tank top and is only eating a salad, apple and a diet coke. This shows a complete change in how Cady is viewed as she is now with the popular group and people notice her and in order to be in this group it shows that she has to wear less, wear more makeup, look "pretty" and eat less to be cool and popular to then fit in with the other girls. I believe that teenage girls watching this film could take away extremely negative ideas about this representation of Cady. For example teenage girls may feel that they should put this practice into theory about being all those things about wearing your hair in a certain way, wearing makeup in order to be the most popular girl in the school this could also lead to girls attempting to be the leader of the school knocking out all the girls in their way, when I say this I mean they can be nasty and horrible to girls just so they can be the leader and have power over others. The representation that is portrayed of Cady is showing how she had to change dramatically in order to be the best; she turned into someone whom she is not. I fear that this can make teenage girls feel insecure about their selves making them want to go through these dramatic changes and totally trying to be someone who they are not. This representation of Cady I believe would hit the pre-teens or younger teens watching this rather than older teenagers who would watch the film, this is because pre-teens or young teens wouldn’t understand as such that it’s not good to be how Cady turned out where as older girls would have learnt along the way that you do not need to change who you are to become 'popular' because that is not important. This representation is basically sending a harsh message through the use of costume and props to portray that being unpopular and un noticed looks like this:

And sending out a message that you need to be materialistic like Cady in the pictures bellow and having to look like the photos bellow to be popular and liked:

All photos from google images.