Macapugay, Ma. Isabela Josephine G.

July 22, 2022

2020-03121 COMM 10 – B1

SINONG MAS CHIKANA?: AN ANALYSIS OF THE CENTRAL CHARACTERS FROM

THE MOVIE MEAN GIRLS (2004)

What does the label “mean girl” entail? If a person constantly makes people feel bad

about themselves to mask her insecurities; cheats behind her boyfriend’s back every Thursday in

the projection room above the auditorium; backstabs her friends to get out of troubles, and lies to

get what she wants, then it could be the denotative determinants of a “mean girl”. However,

would a person still be considered a “mean girl” if she is unknowingly one? Meaning, she

practices the same actions yet she still perceives herself as a righteous person who believes she is

doing everyone a favor? In the movie, Mean girls (2004), Regina George is the former while

Cady Heron is the latter. Despite being polar opposites in the beginning, still, both portrayed

mean girl personalities by using misrepresentation to project their idealized selves. However,

Cady Heron has a more complex character development and multi-faceted identities due to being

part of multiple cliques, communities, and groups, hence creating identity gaps. On the other

hand, Regina George has a more consistent character and she will be briefly included in this

analysis as basis of comparison with Cady Heron.

Janis Ian used to say, “God! See, at least me and Regina George know we're mean! You

try to act so innocent like, "Oh, I use to live in Africa with all the little birdies, and the little

monkeys!"” This basically encapsulates how the identities and fronts of Cady Heron

interpenetrated contrastingly. Zooming into Cady’s character before she went to a public high

school, she presented a stereotypical “good girl” image who was sheltered, obedient, and
ignorant about the “teenage life” as a result of growing up in Africa. She wanted to be accepted

so badly by the students in school that when the outcasts of the school, Janis Ian (a rumored

lesbian) and Damian Franzese (gay) approached her, she befriended them despite their

reputation. She then presented another identity of being the “nerdy/weird girl” for this reason and

for showing great skills at Math causing the Matheletes leader, Kevin Gnapoor, to tail and

convince her to join their club, which is allegedly a “social suicide.” At this point, Cady’s frames

of identity enhance each other. She perceives herself as someone who is a native of Africa, good

at Math, and obedient child. And based on what I, her friends, the school community, and her

parents think (audiences of her performance), she presents an image of a stereotypical good and

nerdy girl. Although the students perceive her as a “weird girl”, her ascribed relational identity,

because of her group of friends, it does not contradict her good girl image since being “weird”

cannot be categorized as morally right nor wrong, hence its additive nature to her good girl

identity (Jung & Hecht, 2004).

However, when she joined “The Plastics”, it resulted to identity gaps or discrepancies in

Cady’s frames of identity. Since being part of the group entailed being one of the hottest, most

popular, beautiful, and flawless girls in the school, Cady had to revamp another identity, her

idealized self, and veil or misrepresent unacceptable parts of her that would threaten her status in

the group, like her relationship with Janis and Damian and her fashion sense, to acclimatize to

the clique’s culture and accomplish their motive of taking down Regina George. At first, she was

hesitant to push through with their plan since she was prevented by guilt, a common barrier to

misrepresentation, until she saw Regina George’s true colors when she kissed Aaron Samuels,

her love interest, during the Halloween party, despite knowing her feelings for him. This

triggered Cady to shift to her “idealized self” and misrepresent herself when she is with “The
Plastics” or Aaron Samuels and revert back to her good girl identity when she is with her friends

and parents (Goffman, 1956). Eventually, the events that ensued proved the identity gaps that

occurred in Cady. First, there was a personal-relational identity gap when Regina got hit by a bus

and Cady was accused for pushing her. This earned her an unfavorable reputation in school of

being the “bad guy” although Cady knew to herself that she did not do it. Despite this, she still

confessed that she did it, most probably to ease her guilt, hence proving how others’ perceptions

influenced how she saw herself. Second, there was personal-enacted identity gap when Janis

invited Cady to her art show and Cady said she planned a party in her house without inviting

them as part of their “master plan” to bring down Regina George (Jung & Hecht, 2004). The fact

that she excluded her friends from her party contradicts her stated motive and how she sees

herself. At that moment, she has already shifted to her idealized self, her mean girl or Plastics

front, without her realizing it. This flaw in her performance was reflected in the dumbfounded

faces of her friends since they are the wrong audiences to such performance; they are the

audiences from the “outside” as what Goffman (1956) called it.

Regina George, on the other hand, consistently presented a mean girl front from the start

up until before she got hit by a bus. The movie did not explicitly expound why she developed

into such kind of person but it can be inferred that her household is one of the contributing

factors, especially the situation of her parents (Morin, 2021), who may be divorced, which is

corroborated by the absence of her father throughout the film and her cold treatment to her

mother. She may have also hidden these parts of herself and merely projected an idealized self

(physically perfect, rich, flawless) to create her mean girl identity like Cady, as leader of “The

Plastics.” However, what makes her different from Cady is that she was able to maintain such

status or identity through mystification wherein she also used misrepresentation to hide her
insecurities and projected her idealized self to manipulate people and basically serve her “evil

endeavors” to create a sense of awe, reverence, and fear in people, hence creating her “Queen

Bee” title that renders her unrivaled, unstoppable, and unreachable by anyone.

Cady and Regina are two of the notable characters in the movie that presented mean girl

identities. Based on the discussions above, one can deduce that indeed, Cady Heron was a mean

girl, too, despite not realizing it. As posited by Hecht (2009), identity is a social phenomenon,

shaped by communication and relationships with people in specific groups. Since it can be

observed that Cady shifted from one identity to another when she communicated or belonged in

specific cliques, this substantiated Hecht’s statement and the analysis’ claim that her mean girl

persona was part of her multi-faceted identities, although only passing, still it was her. It is what

made Cady Heron dynamic, interesting, and genuine, ironically.

 References

Primary Source: Mean Girls (2004) directed by Mark Waters

Goffman, E. (1956). The presentation of self in everyday life. Edinburgh: University of

Edinburgh Social Sciences Research Centre.

Hecht., M. (2009). Communication theory of identity. In S. W. Littlejohn & K. A. Foss

(Eds.), Encyclopedia of communication theory (pp. 139-141). CA, USA: SAGE
Publications, Inc.

Jung, E. & Hecht, M. (2004). Elaborating the communication theory of identity: Identity gaps
and communication outcomes. Communication Quarterly, 52(3), 265-283.
doi:10.1080/01463370409370197

Morin, A. (2021, February 21). The Psychological Effects of Divorce on Children. Verywell
Family. https://www.verywellfamily.com/psychological-effects-of-divorce-on-kids-
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