For years since its release, high school girls everywhere have worshiped Mean Girls as though Jesus himself brought it down from above and handed it to us on a silver platter. The film, which focuses on the female high school experience, is supposed to be the “unedited” version of how high schools really are–but, in reality, it’s not.
The only way that Mean Girls should ever be viewed is as a joke. The movie gets everything wrong about high school and should not be worshiped as a cult classic. The movie is filled with plot holes, false representations of the high school experience, and horrible lessons for young girls to follow.
10. There is more to high school than being popular/following the popular crowd.
Mean Girls focuses on The Plastics as the end-all, be-all of their school. Everyone knows them, talks about them, and wants to be them (or be friends with them). No matter what happens with them, everyone knows and follows. High school is simply just not like this. Sure, there are those who may “feel” more popular than others, but the entire school doesn’t revolve around them and most people who aren’t friends with them just don’t give a f**k about them outside of class. People have lives outside of high school and not everyone cares to be known/have their business be known by everyone.
9. Transitioning into a school from being homeschooled is not that easy, Cady.
Being homeschooled your entire life is definitely a different experience than going to a public school. Sure, Cady seemed to struggle–as in she ate her lunch twice in a bathroom stall. But, in reality, a new student coming into a brand new school would definitely feel a bit more “off” than Cady did. And, she probably would have been lost a whole lot more, too. To top it off, most kids wouldn’t even notice a “new girl” in their school at all, let alone nominate her to be the “Spring Fling” queen.
8. Making teacher-student relationships look normal is completely wrong.
We all know that the movie finds the gym teacher/coach sleeping with two of his students (and they fight over him). In reality, student-teacher relationships hardly ever happen because every teacher knows it’s a deathtrap. Most high school students are underage, which makes the relationship illegal. On top of it, if you get caught sleeping with a student, you’ll lose your license and most likely end up banned from teaching ever again. Professionals know that a hook up is not worth losing your entire career. Also, if they did decide to sleep with a student, they know better than to do anything on school grounds (like getting caught kissing in a closet).
7. Students do not control the school.
No matter where you live or where you go to school, students do not run anything. The administration and the teachers are the ones who are in charge and more often than not, nothing that happens in Mean Girls will ever be allowed in a real school. Students do not make the rules, and they definitely don’t have the ability to cause an entire chaotic episode the way in which it happens in the movie–especially from a few small rumors.
6. Brawls like that would never happen.
I went to a New York City public school with 4,000+ students and even there, no brawls ever took place like that. In high schools everywhere, there are security guards, deans, and other administrators who handle all of these types of situations. There would never, I mean never, be a brawl where students are fighting, throwing each other down staircases, and all of the “dramatic” things that happen during that fight scene.