Summary
The film opens on the front lawn of a suburban house, where two parents are handing off a bagged lunch and an emergency phone number to a child on her first day of school. Although the parents' tone and the camera's perspective suggest that that child is a toddler entering kindergarten, she is in fact 16 years old and entering high school. The girl introduces herself to the audience as Cady Heron, and explains that she was home-schooled for her entire life until today.
A brief montage shows Cady's fears about the assumptions people have about home-schooled kids—either that they are maladjusted geeks or ignorant bumpkins—before she explains that her parents are "totally normal" research zoologists who spent 12 years living in Africa, until her mother received a tenure offer at Northwestern University. Despite her ordinariness, Cady seems trepidatious about her first day of school, nearly walking into the line of a passing bus, and eyeing the antics of the other students warily as she proceeds to her homeroom class.
In homeroom, Cady tries introducing herself to an unfriendly student named Kristen Hadley. Two students named Janis and Damian watch Cady and attempt to give her advice about where to sit before Cady collides with the incoming teacher, Ms. Norbury, holding coffee and donuts. Cady helps Ms. Norbury change while the principal, Mr. Duvall, arrives and introduces Cady to the rest of the class as a new student from Africa. Mr. Duvall mispronounces her name and Ms. Norbury initially mistakes an African-American student for Cady, who is white. As she goes about her day, Cady remembers in voice-over how unaccustomed she was to not being trusted by the adult figures around her. In the cafeteria, no one is friendly toward Cady, leading her to eat her lunch in a restroom stall. When her parents ask her how the day went, Cady merely rushes past them, looking disappointed.
On the second day of homeroom, Damian compliments Cady's natural hair color, and Janis introduces him to Cady, commenting he's almost "too gay to function." After snapping back at the insult of a passing jock, Janis introduces herself to Cady as well, and both Janis and Damian agree to help Cady find the room for her next class, Health. Leading Cady out behind the track field, Damian notices Cady is in twelfth-grade calculus, and Cady admits she likes math because it's universal. Cady then realizes that Janis and Damian are inviting her to skip class, rather than leading her to Health, but feels relieved to have found friends. A brief scene shows the Health teacher trying to advocate abstinence and then distributing condoms.
Janice and Damian dryly inform Cady that she is a "slice" and a "regulation hottie." As a gym class filters out to the track field, Damian comments on the clothes of a student named Karen Smith, who is a member of "The Plastics," a clique that Damien describes as "teen royalty." In addition to Karen Smith, they point out another member of The Plastics, Gretchen Wieners, a Toaster Strudel heiress notable for knowing information and secrets about other students. Finally, they single out Regina George, the leader of The Plastics, who various athletes are carrying regally onto the field. Although Damian calls her the "star" and the "queen bee," Janis is more vitriolic in her assessment, remarking that, "Evil takes a form in Regina George." A brief montage reveals rumors in circulation about Regina—for instance, that her hair is insured for $10,000, that she does car commercials in Japan, and that John Stamos called her pretty.
Back in the halls, Damian defends caring about Regina George because he is a member of the Student Activities Committee, which is led by whomever wins Spring Fling Queen (usually Regina). Janis teases Damian for "outgay[ing]" himself, and then offers Cady a hand-drawn map of the cafeteria layout. The map essentially decodes for Cady the social divisions that separate North Shore High School's different friend groups: "freshmen, ROTC guys, preps, JV jocks, Asian nerds, cool Asians, varsity jocks, unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don't eat anything, desperate wannabes, burnouts, sexually active band geeks, the greatest people you will ever meet [Janis and Damian], and the worst [The Plastics]."
That day in the cafeteria, Cady is waylaid by another student named Jason on her way to sit down with Janis and Ian. Pretending to be a poll taker, Jason tries to flirt with Cady by asking her a suggestive question. Sitting nearby with The Plastics, Regina takes notice and coldly upbraids Jason for taking Gretchen to a party and then "scamming" on another girl in front of them. Having dispatched Jason for Cady, Regina invites her to sit down. With a wide, friendly smile, Regina inquires why she doesn't recognize Cady, and Cady explains that until recently she was home-schooled in Africa. Regina calls her "interesting" and "pretty," and compliments her bracelet. Gretchen quickly agrees, calling it "fetch." After convening privately on their side of the table, the Plastics invite Cady to sit and eat lunch with them for the rest of the week—which Regina calls "a really huge deal." Karen informs Cady that on Wednesdays they wear pink.
Janis encourages Cady to pretend to be friends with Regina and The Plastics, merely so that she can relay back to Janis and Damian a trove of juicy gossip about their behavior. Cady admits that Regina seemed "sweet" but Janis responds angrily that Regina is a "scum-sucking road whore," and Damian agrees that she is evil, although "fabulous." When Cady inquires about why Janis seems to have a particular vendetta toward Regina, Damian begins a story about Regina starting a rumor about Janis, before Janis stops him. When Cady asks if she can borrow something pink to wear, Janis says no and Damian says yes. Later that day, a handsome boy sitting in front of Cady in math class named Aaron Samuels asks her for a pencil, and Cady remembers her first unsuccessful crush a boy named Nfume in Africa at the age of five. Back at home, Cady tells her parents that although people weren't "nice," that she made friends.
On Wednesday, Cady has lunch again with The Plastics, this time wearing Damian's extra-large pink polo, as Gretchen enumerates the more intricate rules of what Cady calls "Girl World": no tank tops two days in a row, only one ponytail per week, jeans and track-pants only on Fridays, and so forth. Gretchen explains that all individual decisions are usually subject to the opinions of the rest of the group, even with romantic relationships. Cady puzzles the other girls by doing some quick math to answer Regina when she asks how many calories are in her lunch. After Regina leaves, Cady tells Gretchen and Karen she has a crush on a senior named Aaron Samuels. Both of them breathlessly tell Cady she cannot like or talk to Aaron Samuels because he is Regina's ex, but forgive Cady and vow to forget about it, with Gretchen ominously saying, "It'll be our little secret."
Analysis
The script that Tina Fey wrote for Mean Girls is based in part on Rosalind Wiseman's 2002 self-help book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends & Other Realities of Adolescence. Fey grounds the film from the perspective of protagonist Cady Heron, a 17-year old American girl who has lived abroad in Africa for 12 years when the film opens. Cady's outsider status and naivete about navigating high school cliques helps provide the comic setup for the film's plot, and makes her an effective foil for the rest of the film's cynical, manipulative characters. The opening scene parodies Cady's childlike innocence by placing the camera at a low angle as her parents speak, suggesting she is a toddler (although in fact, she is just sitting on front steps).
Cady's personal character arc, from naive outsider, to consummate "mean girl," to mature, evolved individual, will be the driving force of the film's plot, which teaches that the glamorous but cruel behavior involved in maintaining one's popularity is a seductive but ultimately hollow enterprise. Cady's first day as a student evokes the visceral terror of being friendless and alone at a large public high school, epitomized by moments like Mr. Duvall and Ms. Norbury's early mistakes with her name, and the shot of Cady eating lunch alone in the restroom stall. Cady's intense feelings of anonymity in a large public high school crowd make Janis and Damian's eventual attempts to talk to her feel like a relief.
The scene in which Cady, Janis, and Damian skip class behind the gymnasium introduces all of the characters involved in the film's key conflict, which positions Cady between Janis and Damian on one side, and The Plastics (Gretchen, Karen, and Regina) on the other. Cady's loyalties to Janis and Damian, and to The Plastics, waxes and wanes over the course of the film, and the film occasionally sets up uncanny parallels between each side. When Cady frets about skipping school, Janis's reply to Cady, "Why would we get you into trouble? We're your friends," raises core themes about good and bad friendship that the film will examine. Although Janis and Damian may skip school and trade jabs (such as Damian being "too gay to function"), their friendship is still genuine and committed, standing in stark contrast to the kinds of social relationships Cady will soon encounter.
Waters visually renders the hierarchy of The Plastics in the way that the girls enter the athletic field. Regina (the classical Latin word for "queen") enters on the shoulders of other male students, while Gretchen and Karen enter on foot (and are pelted with footballs). The Latin meaning of Regina's name anticipates another major theme of the film: "royalty." Damian calls The Plastics "fabulous," "teen royalty," and the film concludes with an event that crowns a king and a queen. The film uses the political formation of royal monarchy—where a select few royals preside over a mob of commoners—as a metaphor for the way that the exclusive "in-crowd" wields their popularity over others in school.
Regina is an especially difficult character for Cady (and the audience) to read in the film's early scenes, preventing Cady from forming a solid opinion of her. Regina is not without her virtues; for instance, she can be strong and capable, such as when she helps Cady escape Jason's predatory flirting in the cafeteria. Moreover, as a montage shows the viewer, she is the object of various outlandish rumors and gossip, making it difficult to discern what is true and what is false. Damian's extra-large pink polo t-shirt, which Cady wears to fit in with The Plastics on Wednesday, symbolizes the fact that Cady is simultaneously trying to belong to two very different social cliques—to The Plastics, and to the "outcasts" (Janis and Damian).
