Susan Douglas’ chapter titled “Lean and Mean”, to be honest, really annoyed me. It might be that she has progressively started to annoy me over the semester while reading Enlightened Sexism, or just this particular chapter. I feel as though I have been preached at my entire life about how awful our generation is and how it never used to be like this and Douglas did it as well. I fully admit that our generation is more obsessed with plastic surgery, appearances, etc. than any previous generation but I do not feel as if I can do anything about that. I also feel as though I cannot do anything about the cattiness that is all too present in today’s teenagers. I am often times very embarrassed to admit it, but “Mean Girls” was based off my high school, it is set in my area. That is the exact environment I grew up in and although I was already in high school when the movie came out, I do not think that the movie helped eliminate the stereotypes girls face today and the exclusivity in the middle schools. If anything, it made it “cool” to act even more like that because that’s what the popular girls in the movie did. If we want to work towards improving our generation and our society, we need to not produce movies such as “Mean Girls”. Even if the producers aimed to use the movie to show the country how ridiculous it is (which I highly doubt was the case), if did not come off that way. If we want to get rid of cattiness and this size zero, 36D stereotype I believe we need to simply ignore it. We need to eliminate it from all mainstream media outlets and we need to come up with a new body type to advertise. This is, however, easier said than done.
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