Mean Girls’ Regina George breaks the ‘bad guy’ mold from the moment she walks on screen: a beautiful, pink-clad princess of a high school junior, she’s hardly the antagonist we might initially expect in a movie. And yet she’s one of pop culture’s most iconic villains.

“Evil takes a human form in Regina George…”

She reminds us of how tough it is to be a teenager, and how terrifying high school can be – when you’re in it, and even after you’ve left. Perhaps the worst thing about Regina is that what’s horrible about her is actually what’s… true. Regina was a menace because she understood some pretty dark fundamental truths about the world, and the fact that she was right about them underlines some major problems in society. So let’s take a deeper look at what Regina, unfortunately, got right in her outlook on life (and why it’s so important that society, like Regina, learns to change for the better.)

What (& Who) the World Rewards

Regina isn’t a nice person – she doesn’t care about her friends or family, and her main drives seem to be status and wealth. And, that’s kind of the point. Throughout the movie, she’s shown to get what she wants, not by being kind, as we’re so often told is the way to success for girls and women, but by being treacherous and manipulative. As Janis says, “Regina would be nothing without her high-status man candy, technically good physique, and ignorant band of loyal followers.” And Regina is astute: she knows all these things are important. She makes decisions not based on what will make her happy, but based on how she’ll be perceived by the wider school community. So she chooses to pursue a relationship with Aaron Samuels, a hot senior star athlete, rather than Shane Oman, who she really likes. She diets obsessively, despite having the kind of body her fellow high schoolers are jealous of. And she hangs out with Gretchen and Karen, despite not being stimulated by their conversations, because they strengthen her position as the most popular girl in school.

Actually, Regina would probably have been more fulfilled by continuing her friendship with Janis, who we see is just as cunning and intent on destroying Regina to get her back for bullying her as a child. In the end, these two girls are much more similar than Regina is to Gretchen or Karen. But in friendships, Regina maintains her powerful mystique by never letting the other party feel safe in their standing – with her or the school at large. In her childhood friendship with Janis, Regina made sure she never felt like her affection was reciprocated. And she’s not totally wrong. Janis is absolutely obsessed with her, even years later. And that’s because Regina understands that if you want to be revered, you can’t appear human – so genuine friendships, where both people are on even footing, are a big no-no. The cold way she treated Janis means that, even though Janis doesn’t like Regina, she still looms large in her mind, and her life.

When we look at what motivates Regina, we begin to see that her life seems a little empty – she’s frustrated by her mom, who lets her do anything in her effort to seem cool, and by the vapid interests of her friends. But by putting up with these things, and containing her anger most of the time, Regina is rewarded with something that she sees as more important than happiness: power. By the end of the movie, all of the main characters are pursuing things that are more interesting to them; Cady has joined the Mathletes, something Regina previously told her was ‘social suicide’, while Regina herself is taking out her anger on the lacrosse pitch. While they are both clearly better off in every way that matters, the fact that their ‘Queen Bee’ status has disappeared as they’ve gone down these happier routes does actually kind of confirm Regina’s initial theory that doing what you enjoy and being honest doesn’t result in adulation.

How People’s Minds Work

Regina understands perfectly how her fellow students work. She gets their buy-in by creating an exclusive circle around herself, but also by using a powerful mix of flattery and cruelty.

“The weird thing about hanging out with Regina was that I could hate her, and at the same time… I still wanted her to like me.”

She compliments her fellow students but she never really means what she says, it’s just that she knows she has to interact with people in a positive way, in order to make them feel special enough to maintain her position as their queen.

She’s also able to orchestrate absolute chaos with her devious plan to release the Plastic’s Burn Book while making sure to include something scandalous about herself. For less villainous characters, this leak would be mortifying – but Regina does it deliberately, in order to get Cady into trouble. She’s so single minded and intent on bringing down Cady that she doesn’t care about the risk to her own reputation – and with good reason. Because she can read everyone so well, she knows that she needs to put herself in the Book in order to evade blame and land her three former friends in trouble. Sharing the Book goes almost exactly as Regina anticipates – until she realizes that, by making an enemy out of Janis Ian, she left herself, and her reign, vulnerable. (Perhaps cutting Janis out was actually the biggest thing Regina got wrong in her pursuit of power…)

How Social Hierarchies Function (Both Times)

Regina understood that, in order to stay on top of the metaphorical pyramid at school, she needed to establish strict boundaries for her fellow Plastics and for the other students.

In order to be admired in the way she desires, Regina needs ridiculous rumors to flourish about her, and tidbits of knowledge to be shared about her. These rumors almost seem to elevate her to superhuman status – and they also stop people from talking about the other, messier parts of her life (such as piecing together her secret relationship with Shane.) She knows that certain types of gossip are valuable in the pursuit of power.

She’s also keenly aware of the fact that the factors keeping her in control are relatively arbitrary; she even says herself that Karen is prettier than her, and as a result should technically be voted Spring Fling Queen. So she creates a web of petty rules to make sure she’s always able to keep the other Plastics in check. She understands that Gretchen and Karen need these strict kinds of rules to abide by and focus their energies on, so that they feel the safety of their position in the hierarchy – and don’t try to overthrow her. These rules can’t be undermined – or Regina would be undermined. So Regina was right about the powerful psychology of creating a framework for her followers to exist in that is completely controlled by her. But, on the flip side, she’s also right when she breaks the rules, and tells Gretchen they aren’t real. The rules aren’t real to Regina – she made them up herself. But what she doesn’t realize is that, once she enforced the rules, she made them real for Gretchen. Regina’s ‘rules for me and not for thee’ outlook is terrible but effective at achieving her goals of keeping everyone in her orbit under her control…

About Cady’s Secret Power

Cady’s arc – from innocent homeschooled new girl to Regina’s mean queen replacement – is one of the movie’s most surprising twists. But Regina saw it coming from the first second she laid eyes on Cady in the cafeteria.

Firstly, she recognizes that Cady is attractive – and that poses a big problem unless she can get her on her side, because Regina’s attractiveness is one of the main roots of her power as a leader.

Next, she senses that, having been homeschooled, Cady doesn’t have the chronically low self esteem of the other teenage girls – which means she could have the confidence to threaten Regina’s previously uncontested reign of the school. So Regina makes the snap decision to pull Cady into the Plastics to mitigate the risk. Gretchen eventually reveals that Regina has never really liked Cady – so she clearly has an ulterior motive for bringing her into the fold. It’s a classic case of keeping your enemies close.

As the story develops, we see that Regina was right to try and keep Cady on her side, because ultimately, everything she feared came true: Cady did undermine her power, overthrow her, and replace her as queen bee of the school. It’s as though, right from the very beginning, Regina sees something of herself in Cady – which Cady doesn’t even see, and is surprised to learn is there.
“So why are you still messing with Regina, Cady? I’ll tell you why. Because you are a mean girl!”

And the rest of the school sees this side of Cady, too – while she might start out seeming innocent, by the time the school year is halfway over she’s evolved so much into a mean queen that people don’t even really question the idea that she might have pushed Regina in front of a bus to usurp her. While it might have taken most of the movie for everyone else to notice it, Regina clocked it instantly.

Conclusion

Despite being one of the great teen villains of the early aughts – and someone who ultimately gets her comeuppance – we can learn a lot from Regina George. She’s a shrewd leader, who’s (unfortunately) right about the way much of society works. She understands her teachers, her parents, and her fellow students perfectly – she knows a lot about what makes other people tick. She can even see aspects of other people that they themselves might actually miss, which is a powerful trait that gives her a lot of control. Her reign of terror at North Shore High shows us what’s valued in wider society – and, importantly, gives us a glimpse of what we can do to buck those trends and find genuine happiness.

“Finally girl world was at peace.”