The Role Of Beauty In Mean Girls

One of the strongest human desires is the feeling of needing to fit into a certain group. Just think about it. When you were in high school, there were so many groups that you partook in, or wanted to be in. A staple of this example would have to be from the movie Mean Girls, and how Cady wanted to become a part of some girls who were known as “the Plastics.” They were skinny, rich girls who were known for their beauty by the student body. I’ve watched the movie multiple times and can never figure out who came up with the claim that they were the “most beautiful girls in school.” Now that I am thinking about it, that is where we are wrong. As humans are evolving, so are our standards of beauty in women. So, the real question I am trying to answer is what is beauty?

Women being “beautiful” has changed so much throughout the years. I remember how I used to be the skinniest and shortest girl in my class. I was always made fun of because I “did not have any meat on my bones.” Family members would make fun of me and ask me, “Do you eat?” “Do your parents feed you?” This only caused insecurities for me as I was growing up and I started eating more in hope to become bigger. It confused me as a child because I remember watching Mean Girls and thinking about why I was getting skinny-shamed, when Regina

George was considered skinny as well but she was seen as beautiful. Today, I am still confused on what the true definition of beauty is. So many things are considered beautiful: thigh gaps, thick thighs, pale skin, tan skin, big eyes, small eyes, being skinny etc. Notice how most of these things are contradicting one another. Today, the new “in” is looking toned and having a nice body for both genders. This fits together with biologist Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution that basically sums up to “the more appealing a characteristic is, the more likely it will get passed down to our future generation,” or in other words, the survival of the fittest. We, as humans, are proving this theory as we are searching for beauty by noticing the most attractive people because we are unconsciously trying to find the best person to “breed” with, so we could pass down our traits. It sounds animalistic, but do not forget that although we are human, we are considered animals.
After trying to figure all these things out, I looked more into what beauty is and why it is so important to everyone. After many google searches and going through many articles, I found a claim on The Huffington Post that states, “Beauty has been defined in so many ways. What I have discovered is that beauty is simple. Beauty is happiness” (Herrick 2015). Trying to stay away from clichés, I thought long and hard and decided that I disagree with this. Since Herrick said, “beauty is happiness,” then everything someone is happy about, must be beautiful. For example, I am happy because a death happened. No, I am not happy because someone died, but I am happy because death means that there was life, therefore, death is beautiful. Another example is I am happy because I ate a cookie, therefore a cookie is beautiful because of all the hard work that was put into making the cookie. That means if someone was happy about their body, or their beauty, then it would be beautiful (to them). So why is it that we have a word to describe something that is not beautiful, if we say that beauty is everything that is happy?
On the webpage, Keen.com, it says, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There is sadness in beauty. Beauty can be ugly” (n.d). This is where things get tricky. What I see as beauty today, is ugly in a different time. In my own opinion, I think that being toned, having a small waist, and having a symmetrical face is beautiful. This would have been different for the Italian Renaissance Era (1400-1700 A.D.) Per the Buzzfeed video, Women’s Ideal Body Types Throughout History, The Italian Renaissance era believed that women with ample bosom, rounded stomach, full hips, and fair skin were “superior indications of beauty.” This becomes the opposite of what I find as beautiful today. Not only that, but in every era so far, we have been wrong about what is beautiful. We change beauty standards so many times within a century that even if we were right. The word “beauty” has become an illusion of our minds, influenced by others, and creating unrealistic standards for women to “achieve.” I come from a family with the “short” gene, therefore I cannot achieve the beauty standard of being a tall girl with long legs, no matter how hard I try. If I learned anything during my first semester in college, it would be from biology; Once again proving Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, people cannot change their own characteristics genetically, but people can change the next generation’s traits when they seek out the genes that they want, and have it be passed down to their future kids and so on.
Overall, I believe that what we know and thought we knew about “beauty” has been wrong.

No one is ever right when it comes to what the correct standards of beauty is since everyone is so different from each other. Beauty was defined as happiness, but was later contradicted by a different source saying “Beauty can be ugly,” so what exactly is beauty then? I believe that beauty is an illusion, contributed from everyone you have interacted or have seen. Beauty is unrealistic, so women, and everyone else should stop trying to find what’s beautiful, and just be happy with who you are. Set goals for yourself and stop trying to live another’s dream based on what you see around

you.