Mean Girls: How Regina Was Right About Everything (Unfortunately...)

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00:00Mean Girls' Regina George breaks the bad guy mold from the moment she walks on screen.

00:05A beautiful pink-clad princess of a high school junior,

00:08she's hardly the antagonist we might initially expect in a movie.

00:11And yet she's one of pop culture's most iconic villains.

00:14An evil takes a human form in Regina George.

00:17She reminds us of how tough it is to be a teenager,

00:20and how terrifying high school can be when you're in it and even after you've left.

00:25How many of you have ever felt personally victimized by Regina George?

00:34Perhaps the worst thing about Regina is that what's horrible about her is actually what's true.

00:39She's a life-ruiner. She ruins people's lives.

00:42Regina was a menace because she understood some pretty dark fundamental truths about the world,

00:48and the fact that she was right about them underlines some major problems in society.

00:53So let's take a deeper look at what Regina unfortunately got right in her outlook on life,

00:58and why it's so important that society, like Regina, learns to change for the better.

01:03Regina isn't a nice person.

01:05She doesn't care about her friends or family,

01:07and her main drives seem to be status and wealth.

01:11Get in, loser. We're going shopping.

01:13And that's kind of the point.

01:14Throughout the movie, she's shown to get what she wants,

01:17not by being kind, as we're so often told is the way to success for girls and women,

01:22but by being treacherous and manipulative.

01:24As Janice says,

01:25Regina would be nothing without her high-status man candy.

01:30Technically good physique.

01:33An ignorant band of loyal followers.

01:35And Regina is astute.

01:37She knows all these things are important.

01:39She makes decisions not based on what will make her happy,

01:42but based on how she'll be perceived by the wider school community.

01:46Regina's like the Barbie doll I never had.

01:48I'd never seen anybody so glamorous.

01:50So she chooses to pursue a relationship with Erin Samuels,

01:53a hot senior star athlete.

01:55Why would I break up with you?

01:56You're so hot.

01:58Rather than Shane Omen, who she really likes.

02:00She diets obsessively, despite having the kind of body

02:03her fellow high schoolers are jealous of.

02:05I really want to lose three pounds.

02:07And she hangs out with Gretchen and Karen,

02:09despite not being stimulated by their conversations,

02:12because they strengthen her position as the most popular girl in school.

02:16She's the queen bee, the star.

02:18Those other two are just her little workers.

02:20Actually, Regina would probably have been more fulfilled

02:22by continuing her friendship with Janice,

02:24who we see is just as cunning and intent on destroying Regina

02:27to get her back for bullying her as a child.

02:30In the end, these two girls are much more similar

02:32than Regina is to Gretchen or Karen.

02:34But in friendships, Regina maintains her powerful mystique

02:38by never letting the other party feel safe in their standing,

02:41with her or the school at large.

02:43In her childhood friendship with Janice,

02:45Regina made sure she never felt like her affection was reciprocated.

02:48Like, if I would blow her off to hang out with Kyle,

02:50she'd be like,

02:51why didn't you call me back?

02:53And I'd be like, why are you so obsessed with me?

02:56And she's not totally wrong.

02:57Janice is absolutely obsessed with her, even years later.

03:01And that's because Regina understands that if you want to be revered,

03:04you can't appear human.

03:06So genuine friendships where both people are on even footing are a big no-no.

03:11I'm always on your left.

03:12And right now you're getting on my last nerve.

03:15Switch.

03:15The cold way she treated Janice means that,

03:18even though Janice doesn't like Regina,

03:20she still looms large in her mind and her life.

03:23When we look at what motivates Regina,

03:25we begin to see that her life seems a little empty.

03:28She's frustrated by her mom,

03:29who lets her do anything in her effort to seem cool,

03:32and by the vapid interests of her friends.

03:34That is so fetch.

03:36Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen.

03:39It's not going to happen.

03:40But by putting up with these things,

03:42and containing her anger most of the time,

03:44Regina is rewarded with something that she sees as more important than happiness.

03:48Power.

03:49It was my parents' room.

03:51But I made them trade me.

03:52By the end of the movie,

03:53all of the main characters are pursuing things that are more interesting to them.

03:56Katie has joined the Mathletes,

03:58something Regina previously told her was social suicide,

04:01while Regina herself is taking her anger out on the lacrosse pitch.

04:05While they are both clearly better off in every way that matters,

04:08the fact that their Queen Bee status has disappeared as they've gone down

04:11these happier routes does actually kind of confirm Regina's initial theory

04:16that doing what you enjoy and being honest doesn't result in adulation.

04:20Regina understands perfectly how her fellow students work.

04:24She gets their buy-in by creating an exclusive circle around herself,

04:28but also by using a powerful mix of flattery and cruelty.

04:32The weird thing about hanging out with Regina was that I could hate her,

04:34and at the same time, I still wanted her to like me.

04:37She compliments her fellow students, but she never really means what she says.

04:41It's just that she knows she has to interact with people in a positive way

04:45in order to make them feel special enough to maintain her position as their Queen.

04:49Oh my God!

04:51I love your skirt.

04:52Where did you get it?

04:53Uh, it was my mom's in the 80s.

04:55Vintage!

04:57So adorable.

04:58That is the ugliest effing skirt I've ever seen.

05:00She's also able to orchestrate absolute chaos,

05:03with her devious plan to release the Plastics Burn book,

05:06while making sure to include something scandalous about herself.

05:09For less villainous characters, this leak would be mortifying,

05:12but Regina does it deliberately in order to get Katie into trouble.

05:16She's so single-minded and intent on bringing down Katie

05:19that she doesn't care about the risk to her own reputation, and with good reason.

05:23Because she can read everyone so well,

05:25she knows that she needs to put herself in the book in order to evade blame,

05:29and land her three former friends in trouble.

05:32Don't worry, we're gonna find out who did it.

05:35There's only three girls in the whole school who aren't in it.

05:37Sharing the book goes almost exactly as Regina anticipates,

05:40until she realizes that by making an enemy out of Janice Ian,

05:44she left herself, and her reign, vulnerable.

05:46I convinced her that it would be fun to mess up Regina George's life.

05:51Perhaps cutting Janice out was actually the biggest thing Regina got wrong in her pursuit of power.

05:55Regina understood that in order to stay on top of the metaphorical pyramid at school,

06:00she needed to establish strict boundaries for her fellow plastics and for the other students.

06:05In order to be admired in the way she desires,

06:07Regina needs ridiculous rumors to flourish about her,

06:10and tidbits of knowledge to be shared about her.

06:12She has two Fendi purses and a silver Lexus.

06:15I hear her hair is insured for $10,000.

06:17I hear she does car commercials in Japan.

06:20These rumors almost seem to elevate her to superhuman status,

06:24and they also stop people from talking about the other, messier parts of her life,

06:28such as piecing together her secret relationship with Shane.

06:31She knows that certain types of gossip are valuable in the pursuit of power.

06:35She's also keenly aware of the fact that the factors keeping her in control are relatively arbitrary.

06:41She even says herself that Karen is prettier than her,

06:44and as a result should technically be voted Spring Fling Queen.

06:47The Spring Fling Queen is always pretty.

06:49I mean, the crazy thing is that it should be Karen,

06:51but people forget about her because she's such a slut.

06:54So she creates a web of petty rules to make sure she's always able to keep the other plastics in check.

06:59On Wednesdays we wear pink.

07:01She understands that Gretchen and Karen need these strict kinds of rules to abide by,

07:05and focus their energies on so that they feel the safety of their position in the hierarchy,

07:10and don't try to overthrow her.

07:12You can't wear a tank top two days in a row,

07:14and you can only wear your hair in a ponytail once a week.

07:18So I guess you pick today.

07:20These rules can't be undermined, or Regina would be undermined.

07:23So Regina was right about the powerful psychology of creating a framework for her followers to exist

07:29in that is completely controlled by her.

07:31But on the flip side, she's also right when she breaks the rules and tells Gretchen they aren't real.

07:37You're wearing sweatpants.

07:39It's Monday.

07:41So?

07:42So that's against the rules, and you can't sit with us?

07:45Whatever.

07:46Those rules aren't real.

07:48The rules aren't real to Regina.

07:49She made them up herself.

07:51But what she doesn't realize is that once she enforced the rules,

07:54she made them real for Gretchen.

07:57They were real that day I wore a vest.

07:58Because that vest was disgusting.

08:00You can't sit with us!

08:01Regina's rules for me and not for thee outlook is terrible,

08:05but effective at achieving her goals of keeping everyone in her orbit under her control.

08:10Katie's arc, from innocent homeschooled new girl to Regina's mean queen replacement,

08:14is one of the movie's most surprising twists.

08:16But Regina saw it coming from the first second she laid eyes on Katie in the cafeteria.

08:21Firstly, she recognizes that Katie is attractive,

08:23and that poses a big problem unless she can get her on her side,

08:27because Regina's attractiveness is one of the main roots of her power as a leader.

08:31Next, she senses that having been homeschooled,

08:34Katie doesn't have the chronically low self-esteem of the other teenage girls,

08:38which means she could have the confidence to threaten Regina's previously uncontested reign of the school.

08:44You're, like, really pretty.

08:46So you agree?

08:48What?

08:48You think you're really pretty?

08:49So Regina makes the snap decision to pull Katie into the plastics to mitigate the risk.

08:55Okay, we should just know that we don't do this a lot, so this is, like, a really huge deal.

08:59We want to invite you to have lunch with us every day for the rest of the week.

09:03Gretchen eventually reveals that Regina has never really liked Katie.

09:07She doesn't even like you that much.

09:08So she clearly has an ulterior motive for bringing her into the fold.

09:12It's a classic case of keeping your enemies close.

09:15That Katie girl is hot.

09:17She might even be hotter than Regina George.

09:19As the story develops, we see that Regina was right to try and keep Katie on her side,

09:23because ultimately everything she feared came true.

09:26Katie did undermine her power, overthrow her, and replace her as Queen Bee of the School.

09:31Was I the new Queen Bee?

09:33It's as though right from the very beginning,

09:35Regina sees something of herself in Katie, which Katie doesn't even see,

09:39and is surprised to learn is there.

09:41So why are you still messing with Regina, Katie?

09:43I'll tell you why, because you are a mean girl!

09:46And the rest of the school sees this side of Katie, too.

09:48While she might start out seeming innocent, by the time the school year is halfway over,

09:53she's evolved so much into a mean queen that people don't even really question the idea

09:57that she might have pushed Regina in front of a bus to usurp her.

10:01Well, half the people in this room are mad at me, and the other half only like me

10:06because they think I pushed somebody in front of a bus.

10:09While it might have taken most of the movie for everyone else to notice it,

10:12Regina clocked it instantly.

10:14Despite being one of the great teen villains of the early aughts,

10:17and someone who ultimately gets her comeuppance,

10:19we can learn a lot from Regina George.

10:21She's a shrewd leader who is unfortunately right about the way much of society works.

10:26She understands her teachers, her parents, and her fellow students perfectly.

10:30She knows a lot about what makes other people tick.

10:32She can even see aspects of other people that they themselves might actually miss,

10:36which is a powerful trait that gives her a lot of control.

10:39Her reign of terror at North Shore High shows us what's valued in wider society,

10:44and importantly, gives us a glimpse of what we can do to buck those trends,

10:48and find genuine happiness.

10:51That's the take.

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