Teenagers today over-dramatize everything to gain the feeling of girl power. Teens will dramatize girl crises to gain girl power. Mean girls and Clueless are examples of films that reinforce the old view that girl power is only achieved after a teen girl’s girl crisis.
Mean Girls tells the story of Cady, an African teenager educated by her scientist father. Cady’s first two friends, Janis and Damian, help her to adjust to high school. She is then unwittingly accepted by a group dubbed the Plastics. They are Regina George, Karen Smith, and Gretchen Wieners. Cher, thinking of herself as matchmaker first convinces two professors to get together. She becomes more confident after her success. She gives a new pupil, Tai, a makeover. Cher is shocked when Tai becomes popular. She realizes her ex-stepbrother’s assessment of how clueless Cher was.
Mean girls use outdated views of ‘girlpower,’ which only occurs after a girl crisis’ in order to illustrate how high school girls who have a girl crisis become better and gain girlpower for themselves. Cady was an outsider and didn’t understand what was right or wrong. This led to Cady having a crisis when the secret book was leaked. Regina George was the one who found out about what Cady did. Cady kissed Regina’s former boyfriend after forcing Regina and Regina’s boyfriend to split up. Regina then leaked the information in her secret school book, which contained all of the girls’ names. She accused Cady or Gretchen as being behind it. After all the drama was over, she realised that her actions were not in line with who she really is and that it wasn’t the best way for her to gain power. She decided to go back to old habits. After she apologised, she gained more girl power.
Clueless is designed to make Cher seem likeable, as she does not think that she’s doing anything wrong and she believes she’s privileged, confident, and clueless. Cher’s thinking changed when she realized she was really clueless. Cher experienced a variety of crises. Cher, for instance, failed her driving tests, and Cher realised Elton had only been making her happy to make her happy. Cher also believed that she had said everything correctly, but she was mistaken. Cher was made to realise that she has no clue about anything.
There is no need to talk behind other people’s heads as in Mean Girls. After a major fight, girl power came after it was all sorted out. However, if there had been no talk behind others’ backs then there wouldn’t have been such a big fight.
Girls today are more likely to dramatize their own crises to gain power.
In movies such as Mean Girls and Clueless they reinforce the outdated notion that ‘girlpower comes only after a crisis’. Teen girls are known to overdramatize their life for the sake of gaining girl power.
