Five Ways ‘Mean Girls’ Ruined My Life

Well, we’ve made it, everyone. It’s 2013 and I’m starting the new year off right by talking about the hit 2004 comedy, Mean Girls. In the wake of Liz & Dick I feel it’s important to revisit a simpler time in Lindsay Lohan’s life. (Also I just saw Les Mis and going back and watching Mean Girls thinking of Amanda Seyfried as Cosette is awesome).

In the autumn of 2004 I was being shipped off to Dublin to study abroad for a semester of college. So being in a foreign land, we watched a lot of Irish TV, a lot of The O.C. on Irish TV and then tons of DVDs. We obsessively watched Freaks and Geeks and also watched Mean Girls (which was victim of a weird censorship recently),which had come out earlier that year. So I always associate this movie with that period of time.

It’s also possible I’m totally misremembering this time but you know what? That’s what memories are about: basing feelings on potential lies.

So here are five ways Mean Girls ruined my life:

1. I Tried to Make “Fetch” Happen

Okay, not LITERALLY “fetch” but I was completely sympathetic towards Gretchen Weiner’s desire to coin a new term.

There was a while when I had tried to make “foom” happen as a substitute for the word “cool.”

This is not a joke.

So, I saw Gretchen Weiners and I was like, “alright, I totally get it, girl. You go for fetch and try to make it happen!”

It doesn’t hurt that I already loved Lacey Chabert and felt close to her. I mean, I love the entire cast of this movie. Literally. Anyway, moving on.

2. Gave Me Horrible Flashbacks

High school wasn’t terrible for me but middle school was my least favorite time. Seventh grade in particular was not the best year for me. Typical middle school teasing stuff, but still enough to make me break out into hives at the thought of going to school in picture day.

So anything where we’re in a setting where girls are being horrible to each other at school gives me terrible flashbacks to some pretty un-fun times.

Over the Christmas holiday I was in my childhood bedroom and found all my old journals. We’re talking journals from 1st grade up through the beginning of high school.

(See below for an example of my freshman year of high school notebook.)

And we didn’t have a Burn Book exactly but we did have a notebook we passed around that was mostly schemes for how to sit close to our crushes in 5th grade and a lot of bullying of each other within the pages. Yikes.

There was also the normal, “I have a crush on Matt. Who do you like?”

And I somehow made it through all that despite that fact that there were more than a few times that I was on either end of a three-way phone call attack.

3. Can’t Hear Jingle Bell Rock Anymore

I mean, this scene in the movie is just epic. I have so many questions while watching this.

• Where did these outfits come from?
• Who allowed them to be worn at a school function?
• Is that pleather?
• Why are they slutty Santa outfits? Why not slutty elves?
• Shouldn’t Regina have been a Santa and everyone else been elves at least?
• How have they been doing this choreography for so long when they’re juniors?
• Were they really doing these dance moves in middle school?
• My experience at middle school dances says yes, probably.
• Why aren’t they just singing Jingle Bell Rock the whole time?
• I mean, I was involved in a lip synch performance to “On Bended Knee” in 5th grade but we had some sick dance moves involving chairs and stuff, so…
• How is Amy Poehler so funny just dancing along to this?
• Why is their music being played off a boom box?
• How are Lindsay’s boobs staying inside her shirt?

Those questions aside, this has forever been joined in my brain whenever I hear Jingle Bell Rock.

Which is hopefully only in the month of December and not very frequently.

4. Lamenting the Fact I Never Had Tina Fey As a Teacher

Obviously, we all love Tina Fey, and by extension Liz Lemon.

But sometimes I feel like Ms. Norbury gets overlooked as a great Tina Fey character. And I have had some pretty good and memorable teachers in my day but I just feel like she’s so awesome.

She seems like a pretty good teacher and she coaches the Mathletes.

She serves as piano accompaniment at the Winter Talent Show.

She has a part-time job which I assume made her say, “I don’t really like talking about my flair” at least once.

And she ends up teaching us all a lesson about calling fellow women sluts and whores and just saves the day.

The only questionable thing is when she basically encourages Cady to stay out even though she’s grounded because she’s “already out.” That seems like crossing-the-teacher-student boundary territory but whatever.

5. Can’t Stop Saying “The Limit Does Not Exist!”

Anytime I’ve heard the word “limit” since 2004, I have promptly chimed in with “the limit does not exist!”

Anytime I’ve figured something out since 2004 I’ve yelled, “the limit does not exist!”

And of course anytime anything good happens to someone you should say, “You go, Glen Coco!”

Much like Clueless before it, Mean Girls completely infiltrated my speech and vocabulary.

I recently got told, “this was probably you in high school” after Janice’s line of “your mom’s chest hair!” as a response to what her wig is made out of.

P.S. That was NOT me in high school.

I would be like a combo Cady and Janice. Slash, I’d be that girl who doesn’t appear in this movie because she’s not a Plastic or obsessed with the Plastics.

I can only hope I one day get to say, “I’m not like a regular mom, I’m a cool mom.”

And don’t forget: on Wednesdays we wear pink.(Images screengrabbed from my DVD)