Summary

• Mean Girls perpetuates harmful stereotypes and insults, such as the casual use of the R-word and fat shaming, which are cringeworthy upon rewatch.
• The movie portrays homeschooling as strange and socially awkward, overlooking the reality that it is not uncommon and doesn't automatically make kids socially inept.
• Mean Girls displays social segregation with its portrayal of cafeteria scenes and the categorization of students, highlighting the lack of diversity and limited interactions across different social groups.

Mean Girls is a cult classic, and yet, although the movie is still beloved by millions of fans today, rewatching it so many years after its release comes with some harsh realities. The 2004 teen comedy follows the socially inexperienced Cady (Lindsay Lohan) as she attends public school for the first time. Hit with a culture shock regarding the hierarchy of high school, she quickly befriends fellow outcasts Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese), but she treads dangerous waters when they create a scheme to bring down the school's most popular girl, Regina (Rachel McAdams).

The exceptional 2024 Mean Girls musical remake, which leans a lot on the audience's nostalgia for the original. However, despite its fun premise and memorable moments, upon a rewatch of the movie, some storylines and dialogue in Mean Girls prove to be quite harsh.

10 Regina Casually Uses The R-Word

This is one of Mean Girls' cringiest quotes.

Regina is the ultimate Mean Girl, and she doesn't care who she offends. However, one of Regina's lines truly shows her colors as she casually uses the R-word. When she first meets Regina in the cafeteria, Cady explains that she has just enrolled in high school after being homeschooled all her life. Regina is shocked, until she says that she knows what homeschooled means, casually adding the R-word. She later uses it again when talking about Janis and their previous friendship.

9 Mean Girls Isn't Kind To Homeschooled Kids

Homeschooling in America is not as strange as the movie suggests.

Cady and her parents had lived in Africa, where she was homeschooled the entire time. Although she proved to be a gifted student who liked to learn, Mean Girls is patronizing homeschooled kids. Cady's dad treats her as if she's in kindergarten, and everyone around her in school acts stunned that she was homeschooled. In reality, homeschooling isn't as shocking as Mean Girls makes it sound, and homeschooled kids aren't always socially awkward or completely unaware of pop culture.

8 Mean Girls Includes A Lot Of Social Separation

The movie's cafeteria scene is the most problematic.

Shortly after it begins, Mean Girls casually insults several minorities and misrepresents eating disorders with a single quote. The description of various types of high school students includes "unfriendly black hotties, Asian nerds, cool Asians, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don't eat anything." Mean Girls is not big on diversity, given that all the Plastics are exclusively white, but the fact that it seems like all the categories of high school students are put together, and they only sit with each other, screams social segregation and is one of the things that pop up the most during a rewatch of the movie.

7 The Fat Shaming In Mean Girls Isn't Funny

Scenes derogatorily focused on weight and size prove the movie was a product of its time.

When Mean Girls was released in 2004, the beauty ideal was skinny models, but that doesn't hold up today. There are many instances of fat shaming in Mean Girls, and Regina George losing her "hot bod" led to her losing her popularity. Not even her friends accept her when she gains weight, and she starts wearing sweatpants. Gretchen makes a big deal out of it, despite Regina explaining that it's the only outfit that fits her, invoking one of Mean Girls' Plastic rules and telling her she can't sit with them due to their dress code.

This perpetuates the idea that girls had to be skinny to be liked and be popular, and it's one of the harsh realities unearthed when rewatching Mean Girls 19 years later. There are many instances in Mean Girls when words of size are used as insults, including the one in the cafeteria scene about "girls who eat their feelings," hinting at their size, and the film talks a lot about body weight. Although that is a common thing in teenage films, this storyline is cringey during a rewatch.

6 Mean Girls' Race Assumptions Are Uncomfortable

Multiple characters of color are used for race-based jokes.

On top of the harmful stereotypes portrayed in the cafeteria scene, Mean Girls makes race assumptions based on appearances. During Cady's first day at school, Ms. Norbury (Fey) hears she has a new student from Africa, and erroneously welcomes a Black kid in the class, but the person reveals she is from Michigan. Later, Cady looks around the cafeteria and starts speaking to people of color in Swahili. Karen (Seyfried) also asks Cady why she is white if she comes from Africa, and Kevin G. (Rajiv Surendra) asks Janis if she is Puerto Rican, but she is Lebanese.

5 Mean Girls Shows That Girls Have To Hide Their Intelligence To Be Liked

Cady pretends to be bad at school to be more attractive.

Cady has an instant crush on Aaron (Jonathan Bennett), and when the movie was first released, viewers may have rooted for her to get the guy. However, rewatching Mean Girls today, her methods come across as concerning. Aaron is interested in Cady, but the only way she gets him to spend time with her is to fail her math class. Cady is smart, but the fact that the only way to get Aaron's attention is to hide her intelligence proves how problematic the story is. There are other ways to get him to spend time with her, but she lies about her intelligence to make him feel smarter.

4 Janis Ian Is Actually A Mean Girl

The Mean Girls character is wrongfully treated as a good person.

Cady is hit with a culture shock when she attends a typical American high school, but she befriends Janis and Damian, who seem to want to help her. However, Janis is also a mean girl, just like the Plastics. Janis is patronizing toward Cady at the beginning, making fun of her for being new. She is also the one who plans to ruin Regina's life, and then she hates it when Cady starts to enjoy popularity, despite setting her on that path. Although Janis isn't as obviously mean as Regina, she ditches Cady as a friend after she gets lost in the plan, instead of helping her out of it.

3 Damian & Janis' Kiss Is Problematic Given His Sexuality

The two friends kiss during Mean Girls' Spring Fling scene.

Damian and Janis have one of the best relationships in Mean Girls. They stand by each other despite various rumors and have a lot of fun together. At the end of the film, they naturally attend the Spring Fling dance together, since they have no other dates. Although Damian is always depicted as gay in the film, one of the most problematic scenes sees the two kiss and are immediately disgusted by that. They have a great relationship up to that point, and that added moment of confusion is completely unnecessary.

2 Despite Being A Feminist Movie, Mean Girls Makes Sexism Women's Fault

This issue in Mean Girls is ironic.

Mean Girls' central message is that girls need to each other, but the film's main storyline is also about girls competing with each other, and one notable line proves to be problematic as a result. During Ms. Northbury's speech in the gym near the end of the film, she tells girls to stop calling each other names so that men will stop referring to them similarly. The quote gets worse on further rewatches given what the film is all about and what it should stand for. The quote makes it seem like it is women's responsibility to change, so men will treat them with respect.

1 Gay People Are Portrayed As Stereotypes Or Predators

Mean Girls includes a lot of homophobic jokes

There are many instances where the LGBTQ+ community is misrepresented in Mean Girls. Damian is mostly described as a gay stereotype, with a love for pink and art, which leads to the "too gay to function" label. Although this is a joke between him and his best friend Janis, it is still a homophobic line, and it's later used as an insult added to the Burn Book.

Another depiction of gay people makes it seem that they are predators. Regina didn't invite Janis to her pool party in middle school because she feared Janis was a lesbian, and she "couldn't have a lesbian" at her party, with other girls in swimsuits. Thanks to Regina, Janis's life was "ruined," just because she was rumored to be a lesbian. There are also many instances where people use slurs to describe Janis, although it's later revealed that she isn't a lesbian, as she starts dating Kevin G, solidifying that Mean Girls isn't that fetch upon a rewatch, even as beloved as it is so many years later.