Mean Girls (2004)

and the Girl Who Broke the Crown

The third film in the series about a group run by one girl, and the funniest. What it teaches about a compliment that is a test, a group that tells you what you feel, wanting to be liked by someone you can't stand, rules that are real only when they hurt you, and a girl who learned the whole script and then broke the tiara.

Mean Girls (2004). Directed by Mark Waters, written by Tina Fey from Rosalind Wiseman’s book Queen Bees and Wannabes. Lindsay Lohan as Cady Heron, Rachel McAdams as Regina George, Lacey Chabert as Gretchen Wieners, Amanda Seyfried as Karen Smith, Lizzy Caplan as Janis Ian, Daniel Franzese as Damian, and Tina Fey as Ms. Norbury.

“The weird thing about hanging out with Regina was that I could hate her, and at the same time, I still wanted her to like me.”

Cady Heron, about the girl who ran the group.

This page belongs to On Screen. It is a refusal, and the gentle issue after a heavy one, Fifty Shades of Grey. It is the third film in the series about a group run by one girl, after Heathers and Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, and the funniest. It began as a self-help book for parents about girls’ cliques, which Tina Fey turned into a comedy, drawing on her own high school.

Like every entry on the On Screen page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. That rule matters more than usual here, because this film’s whole point is that the pattern isn’t a kind of person. The new girl, the kind one, learns every move in a few months.

The Story

Cady Heron, sixteen, has been homeschooled her whole life and spent the last twelve years in Africa. On her first day at North Shore High School, she struggles to make friends. Two outcasts, Janis and Damian, befriend her, explain the school’s cliques, and warn her about the Plastics: Regina George, the queen bee; Gretchen Wieners, the insecure gossip; and Karen Smith.

The Plastics invite Cady to join them. Janis sees a chance: Cady will get inside the group and destroy Regina’s reputation.

Cady falls for Aaron Samuels, Regina’s ex-boyfriend. Regina says she doesn’t mind, and promises to talk to him for Cady at a Halloween party; instead she kisses him in front of her and takes him back. Cady commits to the plan. She tricks Gretchen into giving up secrets, breaks up Regina and Aaron, and gives Regina high-calorie bars disguised as diet food. When Regina wears sweatpants on a Monday, against the group’s rules, she is pushed out, and Cady takes her place.

At a party at her house, Cady admits to Aaron she doesn’t really need math tutoring, and he tells her she’s as manipulative as Regina. Janis and Damian, whose art show she skipped for the party, tell her she has become what she was pretending to be.

Regina finds out about the bars and spreads the pages of the Plastics’ “Burn Book,” a scrapbook of insults about classmates and teachers, through the halls, after adding insults about herself so the others will be blamed. The school erupts. The principal and Ms. Norbury gather the junior girls in the gym. Regina storms out, Cady follows to apologize, and Regina is hit by a school bus. She survives. A rumor goes around that Cady pushed her.

When Cady learns that something she wrote in the Burn Book has gotten Ms. Norbury accused of dealing drugs, she takes full responsibility for the book. She joins the Mathletes, wins the state final, and is elected Spring Fling queen. She breaks the tiara and hands out the pieces to the crowd, making peace with Janis, Damian and the Plastics.

By senior year the Plastics have broken up, and each of them has found something of her own.

Mean Girls made more than $130 million on a budget of under $20 million.

What It Gets Right

Nearly all of it. It knows that a group like this isn’t run by force. It’s run by wanting to belong, by rules nobody wrote down, and by compliments with hooks in them. It shows that the girls in the group are trapped too: Gretchen, Karen, even Regina. It refuses the easy story that mean girls are a type. And unlike Heathers, its way out isn’t a dangerous boy. It’s a girl owning what she did, in front of everyone.

What It Teaches

1. “So you agree?”

On Cady’s first day, Regina tells her: “You’re, like, really pretty!” Cady says thank you. Regina: “So you agree?” “What?” “You think you’re really pretty.”

It’s funny, and it’s a trap with no right answer. Agree, and you’re vain. Disagree, and you’ve insulted her taste. Many women learned early that a compliment from the person in charge can be a test.

2. “You may think you like someone, but you could be wrong”

Gretchen explains the group’s rules: “you wouldn’t buy a skirt without asking your friends first if it looks good on you.” And it’s the same with boys: “Like, you may think you like someone, but you could be wrong.”

The Decoder’s Card 31, Authority Hijack, is “Becoming the interpreter of your inner world.” In a group like this, you don’t get to know what you feel. The group tells you, and you check with it first.

3. “I could hate her, and still want her to like me”

Cady says it plainly: she could hate Regina “and at the same time, I still wanted her to like me.” And Gretchen: “The meaner Regina was to her, the more Gretchen tried to win Regina back. She knew it was better to be in The Plastics, hating life, than to not be in at all.”

The Decoder’s Card 57, Hot and Cold, is “Warmth and withdrawal on a schedule you can’t learn.” A compliment for Cady’s eyebrows, a shove for Gretchen, in the same breath. When you can’t predict the warmth, you work harder for it. That isn’t weakness. It’s what unpredictable warmth does to anyone.

4. “You can’t sit with us”

Regina comes to lunch in sweatpants on a Monday. Karen: “So that’s against the rules, and you can’t sit with us.” Regina: “Those rules aren’t real.” Karen: “They were real that day I wore a vest!”

The Decoder’s Card 15, Conditional Affection, is “Love as a reward system.” The group’s love was always a reward for following the rules, and the rules were whatever the girl in charge said that day. The vest line is the whole lesson in one joke: the rules were real when they hurt Karen. They stopped being real only when they hurt Regina.

5. “You’re not pretending anymore”

This is where Mean Girls goes further than the films before it. Cady joins the Plastics to bring Regina down. In a few months she is using every move she learned: secrets traded, a relationship broken up, a body made into a weapon, a group that decides who sits where. Janis tells her: “Hey, buddy, you’re not pretending anymore. You’re Plastic.”

Most of us have been both Cady and Gretchen at some point: the one who learned the script, and the one who used it. That’s why the Decoder reads patterns, not people. A pattern can be learned in a semester. It can be unlearned too.

6. The tiara

What turns it around isn’t revenge, and it isn’t a boy. When the Burn Book gets a teacher accused of a crime, Cady takes full responsibility for it, all of it, and lets the others go unpunished.

Then she’s crowned Spring Fling queen, the prize Regina always won. She breaks the tiara and hands the pieces out to the crowd. She says it herself: “Calling somebody else fat won’t make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter. And ruining Regina George’s life definitely didn’t make me any happier.”

It’s a refusal of the whole game: there doesn’t have to be one girl on top.

The Girl Who Ran the Group, Side by Side

	Heathers (1989)	Romy and Michele (1997)	Mean Girls (2004)
Who ran it	Heather Chandler	Christie, who led the A-Group	Regina George
The way out	A boy whose rescue was worse	Walking back in as themselves	Owning it, and breaking the crown
The pattern	The group as a job	Living for their approval	Belonging as a reward

Three films, fifteen years apart. Each one is a little kinder to the girls inside the group than the one before.

If You Grew Up on This

Many of us can still quote this film line for line. Nothing on this page asks you to stop. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Has someone’s compliment ever felt like a test you couldn’t pass?
Did a group ever tell you what you “really” felt, or who you were allowed to like?
Is there someone you could hate and still want to like you?
Were the rules real only when they hurt you?
When have you been Cady, and used a script you learned? What would breaking the tiara look like now?

Cady broke the crown and handed out the pieces. Nobody had to be on top.

You’re the audience now. You can sit wherever you like.