Regina George from “Mean Girls” (2004)
Regina George. The girl you love to hate… but you also kind of love.
“Mean Girls” immediately hit it off among audiences when it first came out in 2004. It’s been 16 years, and it’s still fresh in our minds. The film has gained a cult status, and is one of THE teenage dramas you need to watch.
Who can forget the iconic Regina George? This is one of those cases where the antagonist of a movie has garnered far more popularity than the protagonist. And who can be blamed? You simply cannot ignore Regina George.
Even recently Ariana Grande’s ‘Thank You, Next” music video paid a tribute to the character and the movie: blond wig, sass, pink clothes, posse of bimbos, Jingle Bell Rock dance and all.
Regina is blonde, skinny, beautiful, popular, rich, wears all the coolest clothes, is Spring Fling Queen and is dating the cutest, most nicest boy in school, who also happens to be Spring Fling King. She also happens to be a colossal bitch. And yet, within the walls of North Shore High, Regina is something of a legend. She’s admired, revered and feared even. Whatever she does, however stupid, mean or outrageous, everyone else wants to do.
She bullies literally everyone, treats her friends like trash, is cheating on her boyfriend and basically thinks no end of herself. Heck, she’s even got a ‘Burn Book’, where she writes garbage about almost every single person she’s ever met.
Regina George may be evil, but she represents everything you secretly ever wanted to be. I mean, sure it’s shallow. Being pretty, popular, rich and charismatic isn’t everything, but you do wish you were those things. If you aren’t those things, you want the people who are those things to like and favor you. At our cores, we are all materialistic. We all seek validation on some level. It’s simply human nature.
But when it really comes down to it, Regina is a very broken person. An instance from her childhood is mentioned in which she throws a dollhouse down the stairs just so her cousin couldn’t have it, even though she herself didn’t want it. Obviously, she’s very disturbed. There’s the age old back story of the rich kid who’s family is so messed up, that even though the kid gets anything they could ever want, they grow up without actual love.
From the few scenes in which Regina’s mother appears, it’s obvious that she’s probably almost always drunk, and is very concerned about her fake breasts and gossip. Even when Regina is getting down and dirty with a boy in her room, her mother asks them if they want a condom. That says quite a lot. So even though Regina may have grown up getting everything she wanted and believing that she is the center of the universe, she never received any real love, care or parental concern. And there is a possibility that she underwent myriad other traumas in her childhood.
How she channels all that resulting frustration and anger is by being mean to people. Add to that a pretty face, a nice body, money and lots of glitz and glam, and you’ve got a dictator! (Because ultimately humans are idiots who give importance to things like physical appearance.) And Regina will do all it takes to keep it that way. It’s probably the one thing in her entire life that gives her a sense of security. Be it ensuring that only a select set of people get to sit with her at lunch or wearing only certain kinds of clothes or forcing herself to date the Spring Fling King when she likes someone else, she does what it takes to maintain the image of perfection and superiority.
Regina George is certainly not someone to aspire to be like, and yet she’s so iconic. Why? Of course she’s one of the biggest bitches in fiction, but she’s also quite the force to be reckoned with. It takes a hell of a lot to take her down.
I am not glorifying her meanness, but overall, she’s someone you sit up and take notice of. For example, even when her spine is fractured, she shows up to the Spring Fling in a beautiful dress looking like a million bucks. And she doesn’t go down without putting up a fierce fight when people are trying to bring her down. Not everyone can do that. She’s a mean, but confident and sassy bitch. That kind of sass and confidence is definitely something to aspire to, and that’s why we love to hate Regina George, but also really, really love her.
(Images and gifs from various sources on Google.)
