Mean Girls: Halloween, Objectification, and Perceived Social Norms

In the film Mean Girls there is a scene where the popular girls (Regina, Karen, and Gretchen) invite the new girl in school, Cady Haren, to a high school Halloween party. Cady, being from Africa, is not privy to the social norms that surround Halloween. The film makes it clear that Cady is blissfully unaware that girls are expected to dress promiscuously during this time of year as Cady takes the traditional understanding of a Halloween costume to heart by creating a terrifying and elaborate Ex-Bride outfit (see below). Cady arrives at the party only to be humiliated by the fact she is the only one dressed in a non-slutty way. One of the girls, Karen, even poses the question "Why are you dressed so scary?" Regina (the Queen Bee) is dressed in the most identifiably slutty outfit (a playboy bunny). Using her powers of "hotness" in this outfit, Regina woos Aaron  (the boy they that Cady has a crush on).  This leads to Cady leaving the party, crying and mortified. While this scene excites humor because Cady is so unaware of social norms, it is also extremely eye opening. This scene perpetuates the idea that women should objectify themselves in order to get a man, as well as the notion that it is indeed the social norm for women to dress slutty on Halloween, which overall may or may not be the case. 

In Kim et. al.’s article, “From Sex to Sexuality: Exposing the Heterosexual Script on Primetime Network Television,” characters in media who are dressed promiscuously, like in this scene, reflect an adherence to the traditional heterosexual script. More specifically depicting characters dressed in this manner reflects the feminine courtship strategies of Women can/do/should objectify themselves, and Women are valued primarily for their physical Appearance (Kim et., al., 2007 p. 151) . By ostracizing the character of Katie because she does not choose to objectify herself or value her appearance, coupled with the fact that Regina (the most promiscuously dressed female in the scene) is the one who "gets the guy," further supports the notion that in order to get a male’s attention, and to be desired, it is a female’s job to objectify herself and make herself a item worth wanting. The fact that Cady is ridiculed because she does not adhere to these feminine courtship strategies sends the message that if one does not follow this script they will be both ostracized and unwanted by the object of their affection. 

Beyond this, this specific scene promotes the notion that dressing promiscuously on Halloween is the social norm. It also stands as an example and warning. This warning being that if you do not dress promiscuously on Halloween you will be shunned and humiliated. While this might seem like the case in real life, and I know in my own personal experiences I have felt as though the majority of my friends have dressed “slutty” for Halloween, there is no statistical evidence that states that this is so. Therefore, a scene like this may possibly perpetuate the belief that more women are dressing slutty for Halloween than actually are. This notion made me think of Chia and Gunther study, “How Media Contribute to Misperceptions of Social Norms About Sex” which found that, “students tend to overestimate the sexual permissiveness of their peers students,” and that “students form erroneous impressions of peers partly according to their estimates of media influence on peers and their own attitudes (Chia & Gunther, 2006 p. 317).  The utter humiliation Cady face because she does not know that she is suppose to dress slutty on Halloween signals that, for women, dressing promiscuously on Halloween is the norm. Therefore, based off the central idea of Chia and Gunther's theory, it is possible the depiction of dressing slutty on Halloween as a social norm  may lead to women believing that other women are dressing more promiscuously for Halloween than actually are actually doing so, depending on the extent to which they believe the media influences their peers and their own attitudes. 

All in all, while a lot of  the humor in our media is derived from misunderstanding of social norms, taking a look at this specific scene in Mean Girls and thinking about the messages it sends about the way women should dress and what the social norms and their implications are makes one think twice about finding humor in the scene at all. 

References, 

Chia, S. C., & Gunther, A. C. (2006). How media contribute to misperceptions of social norms about sex. Mass Communication & Society, 9(3), 301-320.

Kim, J. L., Sorsoli, C. L., Collins, K., Zylbergold, B. A., Schooler, D., & Tolman, D. L. (2007). From sex to sexuality: Exposing the heterosexual script on primetime network television. Journal of Sex Research, 44(2), 145-157. doi: 10.1080/00223390701263660