The Mean Girls President
Send in the Ms. Norburys!
Movie: Mean Girls (2004)
Screenwriter: Tina Fey (based on the book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman)
Director: Mark Waters
Starring: Tim Meadows (Principal Duvall), Rajiv Surendra (Kevin Gnapoor), Tina Fey (Ms. Norbury), Lindsay Lohan (Cady), Rachel McAdams (Regina George), Lacey Chabert (Gretchen Weiners), Lizzy Caplan (Janis Ian), Ana Gasteyer (Cady’s mom)
Dear Queen Bees and Wannabes and…ugh…fine, Boys, Too,
Do you know that once, I was texting with a handsome singer, and he told me that he was scared of me.
I told him he was acting like a little girl, and then he got upset and said he would not respond by insulting me the way I had insulted him.
And that was a really good response, and yet, I don’t think it is an insult for me to call a man “a little girl.”
I think it is just me calling something the way I see it. Duh!
If you say you are scared of a woman because she’s pretty and…I don’t know…confident, or something? Then just…I don’t know. Like, call your mom or something, and see what your mom thinks.
Because any woman worth her salt has gotta be a little bit scary. That’s how you make in America. That’s how you run things.
Now, in Mean Girls, Regina George (played by Rachel McAdams) is the meanest girl, and she’s scary. Why is she scary? And why does being mean work for her?
Well let me pinpoint one situation that we can all learn from, in order to topple the hierarchies of power that are Mean Girls Gone Wild, in the United States Government.
In one scene, Janis (Lizzy Caplan) cuts two holes in the tank top of Regina George, and lets the tank top hang on a rack in the locker room. When Regina George puts it on, over her sports bra, the holes are cut out in the area of her breasts, and Regina George barely flinches. She just goes with it. She keeps up her swanky walk, and now, she views it as the latest fashion trend in the high school. The girls around her follow suit. They all start wearing tank tops with the holes cut out over their shirts.
This is the key to overthrowing our communist-fascist-whatever-ist government takeover by Mean Girls in the U.S. (Let’s be honest. These guys are getting hair plugs and drinking down the Rogaine and the Whatever-drug-it-is that keeps women having their babies, cause they don’t have much real testosterone. It’s all Plastic-ness.)
We all just need to act like Regina George. We just roll with the cuts. We just walk swankily and keep changing the rules the way we want them to be. We can just act like it doesn’t phase us. Duh!
Gosh, people don’t even realize how much power they give Dumb Guys. Like, if you keep listening to Dumb Guys, they are going to think their dumbness is intelligence. And you’re like, feeding their egos all the time, by acting like their Dumbness is Intelligence. So you just say, “Whatevs.” And you invent a new protein bar and start selling it and making a lot of money and planning your own victory at the big dinner dance, when you get the crown and all that.
And really, beyond all the swanky walking and “pretending we don’t care thing,” we just need more Ms. Norburys to take over the United States Government. We need Ms. Norburys eating their chocolate-covered oreos and their donuts, and pushing young women to advance, and showing us all math equations, and telling us not to fail on purpose when she knows we can do better. We need Ms. Norburys to tell us that cute boys are not the priority, but our own success is. We need Ms. Norburys instructing us to write letters of apology for the things we’ve done wrong, so that everyone in this big massive high school can finally heal and move forward with the main focus—which is graduation.
Like, we’re all here to graduate. No one wants to be an adolescent in high school forever. High school is stifling and interesting at times, but mostly, the food isn’t very good, and we are tired of sitting in these metal desks, and it’s time to dance free in the forests of America.
So. Let’s develop a plan wherein we tackle the Regina Georges of the Presidential Cabinet Thing, and know that one day, there will be a big yellow school bus who takes the reigns of this weird Republican brewhaha (which is not Republican at all—if people would even open a history textbook like once!) and restore justice and liberty once and for all to a nation of citizenry looking for Ms. Norburys and nice presidents to helpfully, and healthily, coordinate parties and celebrations and fun stuff for our country. Like, this is just getting annoying and I don’t even like reading the New York Times because it just isn’t fun to read, and when people are happy, they just do nice things for other people—naturally. And then The New York Times can cover good stuff again.
When people are miserable, cranky, angry, insecure jerks—they say one thing and mean another. And they insult people, too.
This is basic science. Do kind things + be happy = feel good all over.
Anyway, it is not an insult to call a male person “a girl” or “a woman.” Okay? It may be accurate regarding gender dynamics, roles, expectations, and stereotypes, and thus, it is not necessarily an insult, because girls have a lot of power. Girls are running this ship. Haven’t you heard the Beyonce song, “Run the World? Girls!)”
It’s like, true. And also Clarissa Pinkola Estes has that book Women Who Run with the Wolves, and it’s possible that those women are running things, too. There are a lot of wolves in the United States.
If we just get clear on who runs things, and who is really in control of the whole shebang, then we can work with dignity and grace to restore the ideals of American democracy, American high schools, and American Idol.
We just need some good math teachers to step up and show us the way. (And also cute black principals.)
K?
With all sincerity and easeful justice,
Ms. Wonderful-Girl
(P.S. Wouldn’t you trust Tina Fey with your first-born? It’s because she’s from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania)
Your Saturday Vinyl Playlist - Mean Girls-ist
