October 3rd is
National Mean Girls Day, making it a perfect opportunity to revisit the best Lindsay Lohan movie ever, one of the finest comedies about high school social hierarchy, and a defining film of my high school experience (and not just because it came out about a week before my graduation). I’ve seen it a thousand damn times. It continues to rivet — and for reasons only the homos can properly articulate and savor. Let’s count ‘em up.
Heathers is hilarious, but dark. Clueless is flawless, but slick. Mean Girls is very funny, AND it’s based on Rosalind Wiseman‘s parental self-help book Queen Bees and Wannabes, which warns of lady cliques, exclusion, and social currencies in high school. The movie works as a funny textbook in its own way, and the story works like this: Cady Heron (Lohan) moves to suburban Illinois from Africa, where her parents worked as anthropologists. She fancies herself the Margaret Mead of North Shore High, noting the rituals of her classmates with detachment and curiosity. She pictures her fellow students clawing at each other over a watering hole, chomping up underclassmen like Bengal tigers. It’s a clever trick, and superfly screenwriter Tina Fey‘s gimmick turns the movie into a checklist of nutty behaviors that we both gawk at and identify with. The popularity of the word “frenemy” began with this movie. That continues to be a valuable term. I just hope today’s high-schoolers remember to turn down the Rihanna every once in awhile and give thanks to Mean Girls. Know your roots, kids.
Watch " Mean Girls "
