“Not every girl is miserable. There are actually genuinely happy girls. I don’t come across them very often, but they do exist.”
—Rosalind Wiseman, in her best-selling nonfiction book, Queen Bees & Wannabes, 2002
Mean Girls, released in 2004, is the first teen movie of the 21st century to earn an indisputable spot in the canon. For one thing, Tina Fey’s tart, smart screenplay is as witty and quotable as Clueless’s—to my taste the teen comedy gold standard—but with a genuinely nasty bite all its own. For another thing, its titular trio, known as the Plastics, are as iconic as any screen predecessors in their coordinated, almost weaponized outfits: tight pink tops, short tight pink skirts, stripper heels, Breck Girl hair. Any movie can dress villains in black, but it takes skill and imagination to intimidate with pink.
