'Mean Girls' Is So NOT Fetch And It Can't Sit With Us
Tell me again why we're celebrating a holiday about traumatizing others? That's not fetch.
"You can't sit with us," is the infamous line quoted in "Mean Girls," the cult classic movie of my generation and the ultimate chick flick. This movie is hilariously funny ("Is butter a carb?"), aesthetically pleasing (hello, pink Wednesday's), and still relevant almost twelve years later. But that's the problem: it's still relevant.
According to Wikipedia, "Mean Girls" was partially based on the non-fiction self-help book "Queen Bees and Wannabes," by Rosalind Wiseman. It "focuses on the ways in which girls in high school form cliques, and on patterns of aggressive teen girl behavior and how to deal with them." The movie got the first two parts down to a T: cliques and aggressive teen girl behavior. From the Burn Book to Regina George getting hit by a bus, nobody escapes unscathed. However, it seems like the last part, dealing with bullies, was hardly addressed at all.
This movie seems to normalize and even glorify bullying. October 3rd has literally become "National Mean Girls Day," for fans all across social media. Everyone dresses up in pink and spends all day quoting Regina George's most iconic lines. That seems all fun and games, but where do we draw the line? I don't want to say that this movie caused bullying rates to worsen because no one's done a study on it (yet), but I have noticed growing up that bullying just seems to increase every year. It's "funny" in our culture to make fun of people that are different from us, to ostracize them, to tell them to kill themselves. Just open your Twitter app.
Like the running joke, Regina George literally is "flawless." She has perfect hair, perfect clothes, a perfect boyfriend, the perfect body, the perfect house, perfect friends, a so-called "cool" mom, et cetera. She seems to really have it all. I remember at one point in the movie, the bathroom scene after the talent show, Gretchen Wieners mentions that Regina's parents "totally don't sleep in the same bed anymore." Regina was probably lashing out at everyone in school because her home life was unstable, which isn't really funny when you think about it.
A popular saying in Alcoholics Anonymous is "Hurt people hurt people." I think this was a crucial point that the movie forgot to address. People aren't mean for the sake of being mean, in most cases. It irritated me how the whole plot of the movie was how to get back at Regina George and ruin her life. You can't fight mean with mean. Tons of middle school and high school girls watch this movie, and this is the message it's sending to them.
As someone who was bullied throughout elementary, middle, and high school, I don't feel comfortable with how this movie has become such a cornerstone to the Millennial culture. People have literally told me I can't sit with them, that I'm ugly, that I should drink bleach and die. I'm not trying to be oversensitive, and I find this movie funny, but it seems like society has just taken the whole concept of it and run with it down the wrong path. Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words leave emotional scarring that last a lifetime. Literally. The DSM-5 was updated to include small, cumulative attacks as triggers to PTSD. 77% percent of student have experienced bullying, and every seven minutes a child is bullied, according to "Psychology Today." Tell me again why we're celebrating a holiday about traumatizing others? That's not fetch.
