Friday, May 2, 2014

Mean Girls 10-Year Anniversary


Ten years ago, the world was introduced to the best and most quoted movie of our generation. Of course, I’m talking about Mean Girls. The hit movie featured Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried and everyone’s favorite Gretchen Wieners (I mean, does anyone even know her real name?). The movie, and my personal guide to surviving high school, quickly resonated with girls of that age demographic who were facing the same real life issues, including cheating boyfriends, disloyal friends, what to dress up as on Halloween and gaining weight. And come on, who didn’t write their own Burn Book about girls in their high school after this movie was released?

huffingtonpost.com
















Mean Girls quickly became a cultural phenomenon. That’s why, for the 10-year anniversary for the movie, the Internet was flooded with Mean Girls memories to celebrate the milestone. In honor of the anniversary, Twitter crunched some numbers to determine the most tweeted Mean Girls phrases that have appeared the most often since 2010.

  1. You go Glen Coco
  2. So fetch
  3. It's October 3rd 
  4. On Wednesdays, we wear pink  

An entire decade has passed and these quotes are still relevant and appear on social media probably every day. Social media is always adapting and changing so for a movie from ten years ago to still be relevant on Twitter, it must be doing something right to have such an effect on its viewers.

CNN even participated in the Mean Girl fun and ran an online article about why Mean Girls is still “fetch.” The movie featured “too gay to function” Damien at a time before gay rights were fully embraced, especially in high schools. And we got to see a sweeter side of Lindsay Lohan, before she spiraled off into a drug and alcohol addict.

On the 10-year anniversary, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the prevention of female bullying in schools, launched its own Mean Girls campaign with a different spin. Anyone who has watched Mean Girls before knows the famous line “you can’t sit with us” when Regina George was banned from sitting at The Plastic’s table because she wore sweatpants the whole week. The Kind Campaign took advantage of the decade anniversary to launch its “You Can Sit With Us” movement.

The Kind Campaign 

The purpose of “You Can Sit With Us” is to finally put an end to girl-on-girl bullying within schools. The campaign launch was done at a perfect time, especially since Mean Girls does depict the idea of female bullying. “You Can Sit With Us” went viral on social media with many celebrities sharing the picture and #YouCanSitWithUs hashtag on Twitter and Instagram. The organization took advantage of a cultural phenomenon and turned it into something of meaning. Mean Girls will always be a favorite movie of millions of people, but a movement to end bullying is something that really should be a cultural phenomenon. That is so fetch.




Sources:

The Kind Campaign – “You Can Sit With Us”

France, L. R. (2014, May 1). 'Mean Girls' is still 'fetch'. In CNN. Retrieved May 2, 2014, from http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/30/showbiz/movies/mean-girls-10-year-anniversary/

Grossman, S. (2014, April 30). These Are the Most-Tweeted Mean Girls References. In TIME. Retrieved May 2, 2014, from http://time.com/82790/mean-girls-twitter-references/

Biggs, C. (2014, May 1). You CAN Sit With Shay Mitchell, Sophia Bush + Amanda Seyfried. In MTV Act. Retrieved May 2, 2014, from http://act.mtv.com/posts/you-can-sit-with-shay-mitchell-sophia-bush-amanda-seyfried/

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