Marissa Reyes

Professor Alvarado

Sociology 1

19 March 2017

Mean Girls Sociological Analysis

The film that I chose to analyze is Mean Girls. This movie is about a girl named Cady

Heron who moves to a new country and a new school. She grew up in Africa and was always

home schooled. She struggles to fit in a completely new environment and experiences conflicts

with her peers and the struggle to fit in. She loses sight of what is important and even ruins

friendships when she starts chasing after this boy who she is interested in. She sabotages her

friend Regina George, who becomes her enemy out of jealousy and she does things out of

character. She helps create a book that includes negative opinions of her peers which leads to

chaos among all the students. Auguste Comte, Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim are important

people whose ideas helped shape sociology. These founders of sociology contributed to the

major perspectives such as the functionalist perspective, conflict perspective, symbolic

interactionist perspective, and other ideas and theories. These perspectives can be seen in the

movie Mean Girls.

One major theme that comes up in this film is social conflict. The conflict perspective

addresses the conflicts in society such as struggles with power, economics, and politics. Karl

Marx views conflict theory as a division of classes such as rich and poor and a hierarchy of men.

This can be seen in Mean Girls with Cady Heron changing her personality and abandoning her

values to fit in with the popular girls. In this movie we see the dominant characters are Regina

George and her small circle of friends who are referred to as the plastics which Cady eventually
becomes one. The minorities are Cadys true friends, such as Janis Ian and Damian who she

ditches for the plastics. To fit in, Cady also abandons her culture of dressing simple and admiring

the little non material things. She starts to wear more revealing, expensive clothes to impress her

dominant peers.

Emile Durkheim contributes to the functionalist perspective. This perspective focuses on

individuals doing their part in society to create balance. Philosopher and sociologist Auguste

Comte also believed in the balance of a society for positive social change. Regina George and the

plastics keep social order in their school. Everyone has a part or role in their society, for

example, Regina Georges role is to be the rich popular girl that everyone wishes they were. The

way the school is structured allows Regina to keep her role until Cady comes and tries to

overpower her. Cady experiences a role exit when she decides to stop sabotaging Regina and she

apologizes to the whole school. In the end all the plastics experience role exit and change their

ways for a better more balanced society in their school.

Last but not least I will be discussing the interactionist perspective. This perspective

focuses on the effects of everyday interactions. Individuals are shaped by these interactions for

example; a bad upbringing can lead to a troubled future. In Mean Girls the plastics and even

Cady are all shaped negatively and become deviant. They create a burn book that contains

pictures about their peers with insults about them. This book gets released at school and

everyone starts fighting each other. Cady was raised to be a decent person but she gets molded by

her new peers and disobeys her parents along with doing other deviant actions. On the other hand

Reginas mother is very easy going and lets her do whatever she pleases. Her mother also lets

Regina boss her around which explains why Regina feels the need to boss around her peers.
 Many perspectives and ideas are found in Mean Girls but the perspective that applies the

most in my opinion is the interactionist perspective. This movie really focuses on the interactions

between the peers as well as their teachers and parents. We can really see the struggle of peer

pressure and the constant want to be popular in this movie. It is fascinating how interactions can

drastically sculpt a person in a negative or a positive way. It is important to understand these

perspectives in order to comprehend how society works.