Mean Girls: How groups (cliques) are developed in Girl World

Ryan Bartz Small Group Communication Professor Mark Fokken 11/24/13

Synopsis of Subject Film and Group Development:

The movie that I chose for my group analysis paper was Mean Girls. Mean Girls is about a 16-year old girl name Cady Heron who has been homeschooled by her parents in Africa for 12 years. Her parents decided to come back to the U.S. to have her enrolled in public school. In her first few days at North Shore High, Cady meets Janis and Damian, who are members of the Art

Freaks clique in the school, who show her around the ropes of high school and the various cliques in the school but Janis warns Cady to be aware of the school’s most popular, fashionable, but malicious clique The Plastics. The clique consists of Karen Smith; the girl who is sweet but dumb; Gretchen Wieners; the girl who is rich and stuck-up and “has hair full of secrets,” and the evil, Queen Bee herself Regina George.

During lunch, Regina invites Cady to sit down at their table and the clique unanimously takes her under their wings, but Cady realizes that in order to be part of this clique she has to go by strict standards such as only wearing a ponytail once a week, to not wearing a tank top 2 days in a row.” When she goes over to Regina’s house, she soon discovers The Burn Book in which the Plastics write derogatory comments about their classmates and teachers in the school.

In Cady’s math class, she meets Aaron Samuels, Regina’s ex-boyfriend who talk on occasion, but then Regina finds out that Cady really likes him and says that she can talk to him and put in a good word for her. One day, Aaron invited Cady to his friend’s Halloween Party and she accepted the invite. That night of her party, Cady (as a zombie bride) sees Regina talking about her but not in a good way. Regina back-stabbed her by was gossip and kisses him in front of her. Cady now sees that Regina wasn’t even a good friend to her and turns to Janis and

Damian for some serious help. Janis really comes up with a plan to destroy Regina’s reputation and for getting back at her because of an evil plan that she did in eighth grade. The plan was to use her resources against her by breaking up her relationship with Aaron, making her gain weight by eating nothing but

Kalteen Bars, and turning Gretchen and Karen against her. Janis also warns Cady that if they want this plan to go smoothly, then she has to “keep hanging out with them like nothing is wrong.”

In order for Regina to go from the top of the pack, to the bottom Cady starts to act like

Regina, and abandons Janis and Damian. The night of her little get-together with her “friends” turns out to be a party most of the school attends except for Regina. She then sneaks to the Party and catches her puking on Aaron. Janis catches Cady and calls her names such as a “cold, shiny, hard plastic,” “a Mean Girl,” and a “bitch.”

Regina then gets betrayed by Cady which lead her to cut out a picture of her and Cady and manipulates herself into writing awful comments about herself in the Burn Book. She then turns in the book to Mr. Duvall and she then accuses Cady, Gretchen, and Karen into thinking she wrote that comment about her and all the other girls in the book. She then throws out pages of the book around the halls of the school which then starts a riot around all the cliques of the school.

In a workshop session done by Ms.Norbury, she asks every girl in the bleaches a series of questions like “If you have ever had a girl say something bad behind her back?” to “If you have ever had called a girl a slut before?” Ms.Norbury asks Cady if she has ever started a rumor about anyone, but she is afraid to admit that she started a rumor about Ms. Norbury selling drugs on the side which made her very disappointed in her. She also lets the girls talk about their feelings in a healthy way, and to apologize to people who have hurt them the most. Janis gets up and talks about how they plotted against Regina to turn her world upside down and the whole crowd was shocked that it happened but cheered her on about it. Cady then stops Regina in the middle of the street and she gets run over by a school bus. Rumors were then starting to flare that Cady pushed her in front of the school bus.

On the night of the Spring Fling dance, Cady finds out the she won Spring Fling Queen and uses her acceptance speech as a way to apologize to her classmates that got hurt by the Burn

Book. She then goes on and asks “why people are stress over a plastic crown?” Instead of taking the crown and walking away, she then breaks the crown into pieces and shares it with her competitors and out onto the crowd. Afterwards, she apologized to Janis and Damian for hurting them, and reconciled with Aaron.

In the end, the Plastics broke up and went their separate ways. After Regina’s spine healed, and she went out for the Lacrosse team, Karen was the weather girl for the school’s news program, and Gretchen is the new Queen Bee of the “Cool Asians” clique. As for Cady, she is still friends with Janis, Damian, and Kevin. Cady was so relieved that “Girl World was at peace” and “All the drama from last year just wasn’t that important anymore.”

Group Definition:

The type of group that is depicted in the movie is a social group because The Plastics are the most popular, fashionable girls at North Shore High School. They walk together, talk to each other, laugh the same, etc. so that other girls can be intimidated or just jealous of them. Their goal is to be popular and have higher social-status than the rest of their peers. According to

Damian, one of the members of the Art Freaks clique defines them as “Teen Royalty. If North

Shore was US Weekly, they would be on the cover.” The charge of this group is to “rule the school” through manipulation and envy whereas the charge in the Art Freaks was to get even with Regina and to expose the Plastics to who they really were and bringing them down.

Overall, the members of the clique were committed to what the charge was until half-way in the movie when the “Burn Book” was revealed to the school. It then caused a riot of who wrote what which then lead to Cady taking the blame for the book instead of the other girls in the clique.

The Plastics did not work well as a clique because they were in an inhospitable climate in their school, and have people hate them for who they are. The group had an inappropriate focus on personal feelings when everyone was just following Regina around and Regina was controlling everyone in the clique and no one had the right to say to her that she’s treating other people badly. Cady also had to sacrifice her personal integrity by hanging out with the Plastics and people were telling her to dress and look a certain way.

The 4th edition of Group Discussion defines self-esteem as “what you think about yourself.” (Young, Wood, Phillips, Pedersen, 2007). Regina had low self-esteem because she was looking for someone’s approval of her body image while Karen and Cady claimed to be stupid when they are really not. Both of these cliques had a sense of power or the “ability of influence others.” (Young, Wood, Phillips, Pedersen, 2007). Regina had power over the Plastics because they did whatever she said while Janis influenced Damian and Cady to ruin Regina’s reputation.

When talking about conflict, Regina was a leader but used manipulation to get her way which is why high-social status cliques like The Plastics will never last because of their fatal flaws that were built on lies, manipulation, and control.

During a special assembly for the Junior Girls, Ms. Norbury used a constructive approach of conflict by asking the girls a series of questions such as if they have gossiped about someone behind her back and if they have been called a slut. Then, she had them get in their own cliques and express the problems they were facing within their own cliques and made them write apologies to people that they have hurt in the past.

Analysis of the Development of the Group:

Throughout the movie, the Plastics as a group went from being the most popular and the most exclusive to a fall-out and going their own separate ways. By applying the four developmental stages I learned about in class, the group had its ups and then it went downhill in the end.

Forming: The Art Freaks and The Plastics are already formed and Cady gets invited by the Art Freaks first and then later in the cafeteria she gets recruited to join the Plastics by Queen

Bee Regina. The Art Freaks definitely take her under their wings for who she is, while the

Plastics invited her (in a consensus agreement) to eat lunch with them “every day for the rest of the week.”

Norming: Gretchen tells Cady the rules of being in the clique. After Cady sees Regina kiss Aaron at a party, she cries out to Janis for help and Janis works out a plan to make Regina’s life miserable. Janis tells Cady that if they “want this to work; you have to keep hanging out with them like nothing is wrong.” Later in the movie, Gretchen and Karen tell Regina she couldn’t sit at their table because she was wearing sweatpants on the wrong day. Her only excuse was that “it is the only thing that fits me now.” Janis comes up with a scheme to get back at Regina and Cady falls into the plan to spy on Regina and expose her for who she really is.

Performing: After the Plastics made Cady over, she started to become one of them. She would walk like them, talk like them, laugh like them, etc. which also turns her into one of the most feared and hated girls in school. This also means that her classmates have gossiped about her because they are jealous of her looks and style.

Storming: Gretchen and Regina compete for Queen Bee because Gretchen has seen who

Regina is, she’s mean and nasty to other people and she’s even mean to her own “friends” in the clique. Meanwhile, Cady and Janis’s friendship clashed because she was abandoning her and

Damian to hang out with the Plastics and she eventually turned into a “Regina.” Regina also wrote bad things about herself and blamed it on Cady for writing it in the Burn Book. Pretty soon pages of the book get distributed in the school and a riot breaks out which leaded into disruptive conflict.

In the whole movie, there was a lack of cohesiveness and as well as the four developmental stages in the movie. Cohesive is “a feeling of we-ness in the group” (Young,

Wood, Phillips, Pedersen, 2007). In both cliques, there was a lack of cohesiveness. Janis didn’t really care about what Damian and Cady had to say and every time Cady suggest a new idea for the plan, Janis refused to listen to her ideas at all. Same goes with the Plastics, Regina basically was the center of attention and made all the decisions and rules by herself and didn’t let any of the members chip in any suggestions.

In the Forming stage, The Plastics and Cady didn’t really introduce themselves and just started complementing on her looks and her bracelet that she was wearing.

In the Norming stage, Cady wasn’t being Regina’s friend because she didn’t defend her and talked to her into staying at their table after she was ousted out of the table by Gretchen and

Karen. Also, Cady wasn’t voicing her opinion in both groups so she ditched Janis and Damian and started to become one of the Plastics and becoming the new Queen Bee. Also, Janis agreed on when referring to Damian as “too gay to function” that it would be an inside joke around Cady and Damian but when it was said around the Plastics they were able to use those words and wrote it down in the Burn Book. Then, Cady realized that it wasn’t cool to say it around the

Plastics because they were going to use the words that she said and have Regina manipulate what she was saying.

When the group was in the performing stage, Regina made sure that everyone was acting like best friends when they were walking in the halls together, eating lunch together, etc. and she controlled the rules and hierarchies within the clique as well. Regina also made sure that even if

Cady was in the clique, she would soon find out that she is out to get her and put her down.

When the group was storming, was when the Burn Book was getting exposed to Mr.

Duvall and Regina refused to tell him that it was she that wrote it not any of the other girls in

The Plastics. Instead of letting a massive fight around the school, the group should have decided to tell the truth and say that all of them were involved writing in that book and the place they found it was in Regina’s room. They would then be offered some serious consequences such as x number of days in detention or being expelled from school.

Analysis of Roles fulfilled by various group leaders:

In the movie, the girls in The Plastics play different kinds of roles in the clique. Rosalind

Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabees dissects the different roles that girls play in real life and how they are showed throughout the movie. Regina George is, of course, the Queen Bee because she is the girl that is feared by everyone and “isn’t intimidated by any other girl in her class.” (p.25, 2002) She also makes the rules of how all the members should dress like each day, telling the members to follow her around and do what she tells them to do, and she looks for approval by her followers Gretchen and Karen. She then falls down the social ladder when Cady comes in the group and starts to act like her.

Gretchen Weiners, in this case plays two roles: the Sidekick and the Banker. The

Sidekick in her is basically the closest friend to Regina and she has to act the same, talk the same, and look the same, etc. and is basically a “follower.” When she plays he Banker, she is definitely “in the know” about everyone in the school, very insecure about herself, and she can get people to trust her in an “I’m-trying-to-be-your-friend way.” (p.29)

Karen is definitely a Sidekick because all she does is just follows Regina and Gretchen around and she just agrees with everything Regina has to say. When she’s in that position, she loses her right to express her own opinion whether the clique agrees with her or not.

Cady is the pleaser/wannabe/messenger in the group. This is because she will do anything to get into the clique by pleasing “Regina” to dress like her, act like her, etc. and she is basically an observer of how the clique acts around each other. She also served as the “go-to” person for the Art Freaks because Janis really wanted some dirt about the Plastics and how she was treating people in the clique. She also turns into the Queen Bee in the movie after Regina breaks the strict dress code of the group.

Works Citied:

Lohan, Lindsay, Tina Fey, Rachel McAdams, and Lacey Chabert, perf. Mean Girls. Adapt. Lorne Michaels.

Writ. Tina Fey. Paramount Pictures, 2004. DVD-ROM.

Wiseman, Rosalind. Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip,

Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2003. N. page.

Print.

Young, Kathryn S., Julia T. Wood, Gerald M. Phillips, and Douglas I. Pedersen. Group Communication: A

Practical Guide to Participation and Leadership. 4thth ed. Long Grove, Il: Waveland Press Inc.,

2006. 25-29. Print.