In the well-known teen movie, Mean Girls, one of the main characters, Regina George, represents a stereotypically portrayed female in a drama between girls in high school. She is clearly represented as a stereotypical girl who wears very revealing clothing, likes the color pink, and performs traditional tasks society has prescribed for female teenagers, such as putting on makeup, having multiple boyfriends, and running for the "Spring Fling Queen." The relationship Regina has with her mother is unique, in the way that her mother is portrayed as more of a teenager herself who is detached from Regina's needs as a daughter. She allows her daughter to do anything she wants which enables Regina to be a spoiled, selfish girl. It never occurred to me that due to the lenient relationship she has with her mother, Regina thinks that her irresponsible, narcissistic behavior throughout the movie is acceptable because she is not corrected by her mother who models the same type of behaviour herself. Regina's mother perpetuates the negative stereotype of the egotistical teenage female and her daughter is a reflection of her example.
I have seen this movie multiple times and have never considered the stereotypical gender identity portrayed throughout the film until reading this article and thinking about which movie to choose. Regina George symbolizes what movies and society all too often portray a girl to be. In Nancy Chodorow's chapter, Pre-Oedipal Gender Configurations, she states that "mothers are and have been the child's primary caretaker, socializer, and inner object; fathers are secondary objects" (Chodorow 470). In Regina's life, her father is barely involved and shows little interest in what she does. Her mother, on the other hand, is always home and is somehow involved in many aspects of Regina's life. Regina's personality is very selfish because she always gets what she wants due to her parents' wealth and permissive attitude with Regina.
