Mean Girls/Headscratchers


 * Does it annoy anyone else the way the movie assumes Aaron is a nice, pure, wholesome guy, untouched by the nest of vipers that surrounds him? He dates Regina twice when she's at her most tyrannical; all she has to do to get him back is tell him she didn't break up with him the first time; he only breaks up with her when he finds out she's been cheating on him. He apparently has no problem with the kind of person she is; he tells Cady that Regina's just "more up-front" about being an asshole than most people. She asks him why he's friends with Regina and he snaps back, "Why are you?" -- like that's a good answer instead of casting them both in the same light. And then when Cady turns into Regina he acts like she's betraying his doe-eyed faith in her. Oh, but "all he cares about is school and his mom and his friends" -- that's why he sucks at math but thinks he's good enough to tutor someone else, he omg does his own laundry, and we never even meet any of his friends outside Regina's circle. For a movie that's supposed to be about how girls are a super special girly kind of mean to each other, they could have done better than including a male character who's basically a hypocritical honorary Plastic and mysteriously never gets called out on it.
 * This troper never saw Aaron as anything close to plastic.
 * Yes, he dates Regina, and he's an idiot for taking her back a second time over such a flimsy excuse. But he could genuinely care for her, or it could be the fact she's smoking hot and he's a teenage male. The reason he asks Cady why she's friends with Regina is because she's just spent the last ten minutes bitching about her, and yet calls her a friend. It's pretty realistic writing for a male teenager, they don't tend to bitch like us females.
 * Aaron liked Cady for who she was, not the plastic she became. What's so wrong about that?
 * And lastly, are you serious? Aaron's a nice guy, that's why he offers to help Cady out when she starts to fail; by this point all he knows is that her test scores are lower than his. Maybe he's not the greatest at maths, but it's clear that he doesn't know she's failing on purpose until she tells him. And if you're referring to the original screenplay, it's not just implied he does his own laundry, but he does his mother's too. Sorry, but that's pretty impressive for a teenage boy. We don't meet any of his friends because Aaron has a relatively small role in the film, and there was honestly no need to show them either.
 * "He liked Cady for who she was, not the plastic she became" is obviously the movie's intention, but it's completely undermined by the fact that he's apparently fine with the way the "Plastics" behave. He never objects to any of it until Cady's the one doing it. "You are just like a clone of Regina" -- a line said in disgust by a character who... has dated Regina twice. And the reason it's important to show him caring about school, his mom and his friends is that we're told those are the things he cares about. Instead we get him sitting at Regina's lunch table listening to her talk about her cranberry juice diet.
 * Cady and Damien liken being in the plastics to "being famous" or "being on the cover of Teen Us Weekly". Add that to the fact that Regina is HOT and you have "Hotness + Fame = Profit". Yeah, it's shallow but hello, teenage boy. It's obvious that people toed the line around Regina just so high school wasn't hell on earth every day so dating her would be the best possible way to keep her being nice to you, of course, and make everyone else think you're a legend ("omg he's DATING Regina!"). He obviously liked Cady for the fact that she was generally the opposite of Regina but also isn't about to say no to Regina and risk her wrath.
 * Keep in mind that he says this after the second time they broke up. Getting burnt twice by Regina probably hammered in the lesson for Aaron that Regina isn't that great of a person. Now that Cady is increasingly emulating Regina, especially so soon after he broke up with Regina, it viscerally repelled him. Teenage boys aren't the deepest or smartest of creatures, but they can learn, even if it takes a while. Aaron is no exception. Whether you think he is shallow or not, at least he was not malevolent like the plastics were at the height of their power.
 * Does anyone else think the bitchiest person in the movie was actually Janis? Nothing major really seemed to be going on in the school cliques until she started trying to bring Regina down. The Plastics even mention they hadn't used their burn book for ages. She seemed to use Cady as the puppet to exact the revenge she wasn't brave enough to do herself, she had to send the kid who barely knew what school was to do it all then at the end reveals it all in a way that makes Cady look worst!
 * I think the point wasn't that anyone was the most rotten apple of the bunch. The point was probably more that they're all a bunch of socially maladjusted pricks in their own special way.
 * ^ What that person said. The moral of the movie is obviously that we've all felt victimised by others, and in our moments of weakness we've all tried to make ourselves feel better by being mean in return. This is shown in the assembly scene with Tina Fey and the Maths Tournament scene. Janis, Gretchen, Cady, Regina, pretty much every girl in the movie is mean to the others because they're insecure about their ability to make friends/self-esteem. That's what teens do.