Interpersonal Elements In Mean Girls By Cady Herron

An interpersonal element that is hugely represented in Mean Girls is culture, which is defined as the system of learned and shared symbols, language, values, and norms that distinguish one group of people from another. Cady Herron is forced to move from Africa to America, where society is extremely different. On her first day at an American public high school, Cady enters the lunchroom and notices a group of African American students sitting at a table together. Growing up around African people, she identifies with them and she assumes that they are her in-group, so she approaches them hoping that they will let her sit with them, but they are confused as to what she is doing. To them, she is part of the out-group because she is white. They do not identify with her, so one of the girls puts her purse in the empty seat next to her, communicating that Cady

Regina expresses one-up messages to her two friends, which is expressing dominance to control a relationship. Gretchen complains to Cady that Regina told her that she couldn't wear hoop earrings anymore because they were “her thing,” and how unfair it was, but Gretchen follows Regina’s orders because Regina holds this coercive power and dominance over her, and Gretchen does not want to take one of Regina’s punishments. The last concept that I think Mean Girls really represents is self concept, which is the set of stable ideas a person has about who he or she is. Moving to a completely different country where culture and society was much different, Cady had a shy and reserved personality, but she also had this positive attitude with a somewhat high self-esteem. When she got denied by the African American students on her first day of school, her self-esteem went way down. She was questioning her worth as a person because students of the same race as the people she grew up with didn't want anything to do with