The Girlfriend Gaze

Abstract

The film Mean Girls (2004) is a teen comedy representing girls’ high school cliques. The heroine, Cady (Lindsay Lohan), has been home-schooled by her zoologist parents and at the beginning of the film she moves back to the US after living on the African continent for 12 years. At school, the innocent Cady is confronted with a variety of in-groups, including The Plastics: so-called because of their Barbie doll aesthetic. The Plastics are ruled by the Queen Bee, Regina (Rachel McAdams), who is blonde, wears pink and is the most powerful girl in the school. She controls her girlfriends — and the other students — through regulating body image and style; no one can be as perfect as her. Her attitude towards other girls is revealed when one of The Plastics, Gretchen, asserts that ‘seven out of ten girls have a negative body image’. Regina replies, ‘Who cares? Six of those girls are right.’ She abuses the students by denigrating their weight, and she also participates in slut-shaming by calling the other girls sluts and whores. These forms of regulation intersect with misogyny. As one of the teachers, Ms Norbury (played by Tina Fey, who is also the writer and therefore a privileged mouthpiece for certain ideas) warns: ‘you all have to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it OK for guys to call you sluts and whores.’ The Plastics are intrigued by Cady and they befriend her.

Being mean is such a rush. It is like that feeling you get when someone loses weight and then they brag about it and then they gain it all back. (Ellie, Cougar Town)

Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it. (Cady, Mean Girls)