In the movie Mean Girls, released in April of 2004, you see the traditional story about the new girl in school and the stereotypes that engulf the adolescent environment. Cady Heron, played by Lindsay Lohan, shows us what life at a corrupted school could be like for teens that are not so familiar with the American ways of socialization and “surviving” the potentially threatening lifestyle it could lead on.
Sadly, children succumb to it as a result of a dire need to fit in. In the film, we’re first introduced with the impression that high schoolers and the staff are super strict and have no sympathy for the new students. As it subtly resembles almost a ‘prison’-like feel, Cady finds herself in a situation every teenager feels in their life; isolation and the feeling of being outcasted. We also see that Cady was like any other new girl, just wanting to make friends and fit in with everyone, thus the pressure of peer acceptance.
She finally gets into a clique of her own, which honestly would’ve been the best choice just to stick with that group and not get involved with the “queen bees” that ruled the school. Regina George was portrayed as the girl everybody hated, but wanted to be treated great by her. She’s the spoiled girl that always got what she wanted, and built a strong reputation off of being rebellious and a bully in general. As part of Regina’s scam into recruiting a new girl to showcase the “best looking girls in school”, Cady gets sucked in completely.
It’s easy to fall into the peer pressure when you’re greatly outnumbered, and eventually you’re stuck doing things that you wouldn’t normally because you were trained overtime that it was a normal thing to do. That’s why I believe younger teens have become more familiar with having sex at a younger age, because the coolest people in school do it and they always want to contribute to the shock factor. Therefore it possibly will get to the point where it’s okay to have sex as soon as you start hitting puberty, which is not exactly socially acceptable…
but it’s happening. This film highly impacts the vulnerability and unsure senses that these teens have. As the teachers could care less about what’s going on in their kids love lives, the kids mostly think of it as the center of their life at the time. A level of maturity and irresponsibility come in with these thoughts and priorities. Cady also finds herself making small references back to her original home, Africa. She sees the other students as simple jungle animals in the wild, survival of the fittest at its best.
That’s probably the best metaphor someone could compare high school to, a jungle. An incontrollable area where children have to grow up and find out who they are and where they fit in and what they should do. When peers such as your friends or classmates influence your life without you realizing it, it is determined it’s peer pressure. Almost every child is victim to this idea of peer pressure at some age or the other. It’s an identity crisis, while also a constant comparison by parents and teachers, that makes children “follow the leader” in terms of the social scale.
Kids, being in the process of forming an identity, needs the support and direction by those around them. The only way possible of making your child strong enough to beat peer pressure is to help him build confidence and to treat your growing child with respect and as an important individual that will make mistakes. ” The main consequence of saying no to negative peer pressure is not just withstanding “the heat of the moment,” as most adults think. Rather, it is coping with a sense of exclusion as others engage in the behavior and leave the adolescent increasingly alone.
It is the loss of the shared experience. Further, the sense of exclusion remains whenever the group later recounts what happened. This feeling of loneliness then becomes pervasive but carries an easy solution – go along with the crowd. ” says Michael Riera. As the adolescence side of sexuality and sex roles play out, it seems that kids are still entirely too vulnerable and unable to think for themselves, whereas when you grow up you deal with the opposite. Hitch is a movie released in 2005 starring Will Smith.
It focuses on a love guru trying to make relationships blossom and take off by “playing the game” of love, tricking women into making them think their man has moves and tricks and knows how to generally please a woman, when in reality they were paying the love guru to tell them what to do. As you age, your ability to become emotionally attached and involved with someone gets more difficult and harder to withstand. “The concept of love is a contentious issue in the classroom,” said Katherine Lineberger, a doctoral student and a marriage and family instructor in the sociology department at the University of Colorado.
“Love is such a deeply felt emotion that many people get disturbed when sociologists speak about it in a patterned, predictable way. But sociologists have found that it is patterned and predictable. ” Ultimately, it’s up to you to find out who you’re attracted to and how or if you pursue them at all. according to an old Chinese proverb, “Couples who love each other tell each other a thousand things without talking. ” This is the whole idea behind this movie, is that the chemistry between two people connect on a whole different level than speech and feeling.
In this film, it was obvious that race, age, or gender was not a factor in this “love doctor’s” agency, as he simply just wanted to help others find the love of their life, even when he struggles to find one of his own. ” Today we see both increased immigration and rising rates of intermarriage. In 1960, less than 1% of U. S. marriages were interracial, but by 2008, this figure rose to 7. 6%, meaning that 1 out of every 13 U. S. marriages was interracial. If we look at only new marriages that took place in 2008, the figure rises to 14. 6%, translating to 1 out of every 7 American marriages.
People don’t normally like to believe that older people can fall in love just like a young person, but it’s not true at all. The maturity level is just advanced so not everyone hears about it compared to the restless teenager that struggles to contain their hormones. All in all, human sexuality is very visual and exaggerated in films such as mean girls, and as ridiculous and almost unbelievable as Hitch. These movies were not documentaries set on the human sexuality and sex roles, but took some stereotypes and issues in our world, and put them on the big screen. Some may believe it’s a lie, some think it’s the truth. It all depends on how you interpret it in the end.
