introduction

"You need to stop calling eachother sluts and whores...it just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores".How and why are females represented the way they are in contemporary teen movies with particular reference to mean girls?

Teen Movies have been around for many decades but the representation of women from the 60's to now has changed vastly. This is all due to the issues and debates that swarm around us in todays society and the many problems that exsist are reflected by the media into movies and portrays the zeitgeist which is present in teen lifestyle. Most current issues that involve youths and teenagers are incorporated into teen movies and stereotypical representations are put across to us which may be true to a certain extent but not always. Females are slowly beginning to get noticed in the media after all these years but are being represented in negative ways as will be proved in my study of 'Mean Girls' which is a interpreatetion of Tina Feys 'queen bees and wannabes'. Directed by mark waters in the USA in 2004 Mean Girls in many eyes is a significant film of its genre as it features women and includes female voices, females who are not just subjected to the 'male gaze' according to Mulveys theory. It had been an influential teen movie of its time for films such as Bratz, and pretty persuasion and had close connections with 1990's hit clueless and in a way reinvigorates it with a fresh look on the teen genre in the sense of representations of females and the ideologies they give out to its audience