The Essence of the Male Gaze in Means Girls

From advertising to cinema, sexuality has always been a dominant force that has been used to achieve certain goals, from generating profits to portraying genders in various ways.  One of these various ways is the “male gaze,” or the act of looking at women, who are being objectified by men.  One such movie to portray aspects of the male gaze is Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004).

16-year-old Cady Heron (Lindsey Lohan), who was previously home-schooled, has moved from Africa to Evanston, Illinois and starts to attend North Shore High School.  She is befriended by Janis and Damien, both social outcasts who help get Cady familiarized with the school’s cliques.  Unexpectedly, Cady is then befriended by the bitchy queen-bee Regina George (Rachel McAdams) to join the Plastics.  Realizing the possibilities, Janis devises a plan to ruin Regina’s life, with Cady joining into the plan after she’s mislead by Regina at a Halloween party.  As she deconstructs Regina’s life, Cady’s is slowly turning into the one she’s trying to take down, as she is repulsed by Aaron Samuels, Regina’s ex-boyfriend, and renounced by Janis and Damien.  After learning the truth about Cady’s nutrition bars, Regina puts herself into the Burn Book, a book containing hateful statements about numerous girls at North Shore, she gives it to the principal, then spreads its content all across the school, prompting a riot.  After holding a remediation session with all of the school’s girls, Regina storms out of school and is hit by a school bus.  After being shunned by the entire school, including Aaron, Janis and Damien, Cady confesses she wrote the Burn Book.  After winning the state Mathletes competition, Cady goes to the Spring Fling and is crowned Queen, but she tells everyone that her victory belongs to everyone and they are all beautiful in their own way.  Everyone forgives each other, and all of the drama is put to rest.

Mean Girls, as a whole, can be a study of the objectification of women.  Throughout the movie, Regina, Cady, and the rest of the “Plastics” strive to gain the attention of the men at North Shore High School.  One sequence exemplifying this is before the Halloween party, where we see Regina, Cady, Gretchen, and Karen dressing up.  All but Cady dress as animals in a sexually-provocative manner, with Regina dressing as a Playboy bunny and Karen as a scantily-clad mouse.  Here, the viewer is subject to voyeurism, for they see these women as sexually-pleasing objects.  Nothing is being noted about either of their mental capacities or personalities, therefore they can both be portrayed as blonde bombshells, or those who aren’t very intelligent but get their way by the use of their attractive bodies and assets.  For example, in her day, Marilyn Monroe was the epitome figure of the blonde bombshell.  Also playing into the objectification of women, the women in Mean Girls are dressed as animals, which plays into the male viewer’s animalistic, sexual fantasies.  Seeing these women dressed in this manner, as well their lack of looking directly into the camera, distances themselves from the viewer, which in turn makes him desire the women more greatly.

Another sequence portraying the male gaze is when the junior girls are in the gym confessing their cruelties and apologizing to one another, with each confessing girl doing a trust fall into a group of girls.  Here, we have a point of view (POV) shot of Regina making a cruel comment about Janis, who’s just gotten onto the table to confess.  The shot following this is the reaction shot showing Janis replying to Regina.  The POV shot was shot from above, showing Regina in a subjective manner.  It’s also a mid-close up shot with Regina in the center, putting all of the attention on her.  Looking at these two shots, we see that Regina is, once again, objectified and shown for the means of pleasing the male viewer, while the reaction shot does the complete opposite with Janis.  With the reaction, Janis is shown among the rest of the people in the crowd and is dressed in a more masculine manner, thereby repulsing any of the viewer’s sexual desires for her.  

Basing on the observations of these various sequences, we can agree with Mulvey’s assessment of the role of women in film, primarily as an object to be looked at and desired.  Throughout the film, the viewer has opportunities to be a scopophilia, taking every chance possible to gaze upon the attractiveness being portrayed by the various women.  While there are very few men in leading roles that can be targeted as victims of the male gaze, the way the women interact with one another in Mean Girls supports the idea of said gaze.