Cady's Heroine's Journey as seen in Mean Girls
Our class viewing of Legally Blonde sparked a chain reaction which caused me to watch several new movies from genres that I had previously left unexplored. Starting with Legally Blonde’s sequel, I worked my way through Legally Blonde 2, Clueless, and Mean Girls. Each of these respective films featured strong female protagonists undergoing their own heroines’ journeys. Although all of these films are worthy of an in-depth blog post, I have chosen to focus on the most critically acclaimed of the three: Mean Girls. Mean Girls follows high school junior Cady Heron, who is enrolling in a public high school (in the Chicago suburbs?) after being homeschooled in Africa for her whole life. Her illusion of the perfect world is displayed in her confidence heading into her first day of public school. Cady self-identifies as a “normal” homeschooled girl—not a stereotypical homeschooled nerd or religious fanatic. This sense of normalcy makes her overly optimistic about her chances of fit...