In last Friday’s lesson within the unit, Film Genres and National Cinemas, students continued to investigate a wide range of teen films, and share their readings with their peers. For their blog, students were to pick at least one teen film they have seen in order to reflect on the question: How has this film influenced your understanding of the world? Was there anything that this film led you to believe or expect about being a teenager? While I touched on the idea of unrealistic expectations in my previous blog, I will focus on the film Mean Girls (2004) and the demonisation of ultra femininity in cinema.
To kick off this blog, I should make a confession(s of a Teenage Drama Queen)... I absolutely idolised Lindsay Lohan when I was a child. I think the first film I saw her in was Freaky Friday (2003), where she starred alongside Jaime Lee Curtis. While I was seven or eight years old when the film came out, I watched the film when I was ten or eleven as it was rated PG (I remember being so jealous of some of the kids who were allowed to watch PG and M movies already, and that saw Freaky Friday in the cinemas). Whether Lohan was playing the loud and angsty teen Anna, or her perfectionist mother (post fortune cookie induced body swap), I thought she was absolutely beautiful, and exemplified the image of a cool and confident teenager. While she was often cast in teen films like Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004), Get a Clue (2002), Just My Luck (2006), and of course Mean Girls, there were also numerous films that were targeted to children like Disney’s Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005), and Mattel’s ‘Cool Barbie’ animated movie, My Scene Goes to Hollywood (2005), in which she played a perfect movie star version of herself, and even had a doll made in her likeness. Even as a child actress, she shined brightly in The Parent Trap (1998), and Life Size (2000) (I wished I had auburn hair and freckles too!). In accordance with the film ratings rule in my family (especially considering my younger sister), it wasn’t until I was actually in high school that I saw Mean Girls and in many ways, it scared the bejeebers out of me.
One of the key things that impacted my understanding of the world of high school and the post-school real world can be summed up in the film's title: Mean Girls… girls are mean, and it is hard to find kind female friends and allies. While I’m sure the wide majority of viewers laughed along with the jokes, and invested in the drama of the plot, the very plot in question relies on the common understanding that cruelty of females towards other females is a natural phenomena, and anyone who doesn’t know that must have been living under a rock (or the film’s equivalent - being homeschooled in Africa). Even Cady’s new friends Janice and Damien are far from sweet and warm-hearted. Their first significant encounter with Cady after all was a “tour” of the school’s cliques. From jocks to preps to “...girls who eat their feelings, girls who don’t eat anything”, this act of apparent kindness (or even mercy towards our doe-eyed newbie) only serves to isolate Cady more, and prevents her from getting to know the large majority of her peers beyond their initial two-dimensional (and often highly offensive) categorisation. Janice describes her friendship group as “the greatest people you will ever meet”, and Cady’s only viable friendship option (even though she refuses to pronounce Cady’s name correctly, constantly patronises her, and says that her interest in Math is gross).
While there are reasons for Janice’s hatred towards Regina, these do not even need to be shared for Cady and the audience to know she is a “bad person”. This is due to a phenomenon in the film and entertainment industry known as the demonisation of ultra femininity. In a nutshell, the effect of this is for things that are typically thought of as feminine like the colour pink, shopping for high heels, and enjoying makeup to be coded and seen as stupid, useless, shallow, and in extreme, evil. You may notice that the most horrible female characters in movies appear to be either ‘classically evil’ (i.e. wicked witch features - black cloaks, long fingernails, wild dark hair - basically Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter films), or pretty in a highly artificial and doll like sense (with long blonde hair, designer handbags, diamond earrings, and colour coordinated stationery). While there is nothing inherently bad about either of these looks, the fact that they have been used again and again to portray nastiness and cruelty has taken its toll on how society views females, and has been the most damaging in my opinion for females in how they view and regard one another. This trend certainly has a twisted and sexist overtone, when you consider that when a girl chooses to enjoy girly things, they are automatically perceived as either a dumb blonde, a bully, a soulless narcissist, or a mixture of all three.
Demonisation of ultra femininity is certainly seen in the case of ‘The Plastics’ when the entire school cohort regards them with jealousy, caution, and fear. On the flip side, “naturally gorgeous” girls with seemingly effortless and comfortable fashion choices are seen to have more depth of character, and as individuals that are “not like most girls” (a dreadfully backhanded compliment, as it assumes there is something subpar and lacking with the majority of females). As Cady begins dressing and acting more like Regina (honestly a pretty natural thing for humans to do when they are trying to assimilate and gain social acceptance), it goes without saying that she is descending further over to ‘the Dark Side’, and losing her wide-eyed, unassuming and non-threatening personality in the process. When considering this, I think of the film The Devil Wears Prada (2006), where the audience is supposed to see Andy as “selling her soul for fashion”. Alternatively, you could see Andy’s friends in this film as being unsupportive of her commitment to her new job, and her boyfriend being threatened and thus critical of her new found self-confidence. This is true in Mean Girls too, when Janice erupts and tells Cady off for becoming Plastic (rather than remaining her passive pawn in a cruel game of revenge). In a conversation with a friend, she clearly recalls the first time she saw the film Legally Blonde (2001) as a young teen and like many, she had reservations about watching a film about a “bimbo”. Upon viewing, the audience gets to know Elle Woods, and loves her unconventional approach to being both pretty AND smart (unheard of, right?). The fact that that was enough to serve as a plot twist of sorts says enough about how we are programmed to judge a book (cough, cough, women who are just enjoying femininity) by its cover, and how much misogyny we need to unlearn after it is carefully worked into our perception of what is normal and natural.
In summary, while it is a fantastically fun film, Mean Girls definitely solidified the idea for me as a teen that only girls fight and talk nasty. For some time, it appeared to me that boys fought with their fists, while girls fought with words, where in reality, both are used interchangeably and simultaneously by both genders. Upon reflection, this ‘learned truth’ could also be very damaging to young boys too because words can be incredibly hurtful and impactful, but admitting you are being affected by this type of bullying might be hard as it is seen and understood as a more “feminine” tactic. In a boy’s case, it is almost like it would need to be a physical alteration to be taken seriously, leading to the victim needing to fight back in order to be considered manly. Thus, these toxic concepts around femininity and expectations around gender contribute to the continuation of toxic masculinity also.
Videos:
Taylor Swift. 2009, Taylor Swift - You Belong to Me, online video, viewed on 12 February 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNIsY6JdUw
Comments