As a final entry to the Fox’s Factual Facts blog, I would like to sum up my findings and state some more of my opinions on my analysis. To conclude, I found that misrepresentations and false stereotypes work together in the media in order to show teenage girls to society as something that most teenage girls aren’t. I also found that all different kinds of media use the same kinds of bullying tactics for teenage girls, in order for them to conform to the media’s and society’s standards of what beauty is. I learnt that they mainly what teenage girls to conform to their standards in body image and how the ‘perfect thin’ slender body is what every girl needs to have according to magazines and movie analyses. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a perfect or ideal body type for teenage girls, I think the media should instead encourage all body types whether that may be thin or curvy. Another way the media tries to control society is promoting gender stereotypical roles, this is seen throughout all variations of mediums but mainly seen in Disney films. This promotes women being weaker than men, and always needing a man to rescue them from bad situations they’re in. In my opinion, this message is also not a message that I think they should put out to young girls as it not makes them need a man rather than want one and places pressure on girls to find a man that’ll provide and take care of her. I think the media should promote the message of teaching young girls to be smart, independent, and unafraid when it comes to looking after themselves and them being able to rescue themselves. Some stereotypes that the media still promotes is that teenage girls are conceited, materialistic, obsessed with boys, obsessed with their appearance and also obsessed with social status. My opinion on those stereotypes is that they are way over-exaggerated, and those stereotypes encourages society to perceive teenage girls as having only the characteristics that are presented to them in magazine articles. Making teenage girls appear to be a lot more horrible in personality than what they really are like, I guess the media forgets the fact that all teenage girls are different in the way they look and the way they think. Overall, I think that all media outlets need to stop with the way that they represent teenage girls as it can seriously affect them. I think this because if a teenage girl is a little bit fatter than what society wants she will be body shamed and pressured by society, her peers and most importantly herself to lose weight which can potentially cause her to develop serious mental and physical diseases. I don’t think it’s fair for that to happen to young teenage girls as they are beautiful and don’t deserve to be exploited and pressured into changing themselves by media outlets just so that the businesses that are behind it can make a profit.
Factual Fact – Disney Princesses.
Disney Picture Link. Graph Link.
The Walt Disney company is one of the most successful, and well-known businesses throughout the world. They have produced and released some of the most popular and legendary children’s movies that are popular in every family home today. Disney Movie’s are aimed for an audience of children from 3-15 years old as they are branded with mostly G and PG ratings, but people of all ages can watch their movies and enjoy them. But because most of their viewers are so young, you would think that they would promote positivity in body image, not caring about social status and teaching them to love themselves for who they are. Rather than promote misrepresentations, stereotypes and gender roles of women to teenage girls.
Body Image.
Plus Size Princesses. Disabled Princesses.
In most Disney movies ugliness is commonly seen in the main antagonist or villain in the films, making teenagers and children identify and associate ugliness as a sort of evil that shouldn’t be accepted in society. It is mostly female villains who are subjected to this kind of body shaming treatment, they are fat (Ursula from ‘The Little Mermaid‘) old (The Old Woman from ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’) and also hideously ugly (The two step-sisters from ‘Cinderella.’) As almost all female villains on Disney Movies are portrayed this way, this then leads to a common representation that can potentially influence young teenage girls to believe that all fat, ugly and old women are associated with evil, also that they are all mean and bitter due to the fact that they aren’t pretty, thin or young. This main idea that Disney projects is that they openly teach young teenage girls that the more attractive you are, the happier and more morally accepted you will be in life. Also Disney Villains are commonly shown as being insecure about the way that they look, which then causes them to take out their anger and frustration of younger, slimmer and more attractive characters. A prime example of this insecurity would be the ‘Evil Queen‘ in ‘Snow White’ as she is determined to be and obsessed with becoming “the fairest of them all,” in fact she is so willing to be the fairest in the land she even attempts to have somebody kill Snow White (who is the fairest in the land) in the hope that with Snow White gone she can be the ‘fairest of them all.’ Another example would be in ‘Cinderella’ where the two ugly step-sisters constantly bully and abuse the beautiful Cinderella, by basically making her their slave and not letting her leave the house. I believe they bully and abuse Cinderella, due to their own insecurities about the way they look and how they secretly wish that they looked like Cinderella. Whereas Disney promotes beauty, if you’re beautiful you will live a happily-ever-after. In the film ‘Beauty and The Beast’ Disney tried to promote the ‘looks don’t matter,’ which I will give them recognition for trying, but if you look at the plot structure this isn’t true. As at the climax of the film Beast ends up transforming back into handsome human form, before he goes on to live his happily ever after with Belle who is equally as attractive.
All of the Disney Princesses have one thing in common, they all have minuscule waists. Look at the picture of Jasmine, as you can probably see both Jasmine’s head and neck are bigger than her waist. Megara on the other hand is even skinnier than Jasmine, who’s waist is even smaller than the width of her own ponytail. Disney constantly wants to portray the princesses as beautiful which I totally understand, but why do the princesses have to have the tiniest waist line and completely flawless in order to be considered beautiful. Disney shows teenage girls that the representation of beauty is what their ideal normal woman should look like, but in reality it is impossible for a teenage girls to look like them no matter how much they want to. As the Disney Princesses all have size 0 waists, skinny limbs and even small feet. This unhealthy, and unnatural body size is presented through Disney’s animated characters of course and has received plenty of criticism, but this kind of body type is what society wants out of teenage girls. Our society sees a slender, hourglass figure as the beautiful ‘ideal-perfect’ woman, and all media sources reflects that furthermore influencing society. I’ve noticed that Disney constantly follows stereotypical beauty made by society’s expectations through it’s animations. If the Disney was to show a princess with a different body type that was plus sized for example, society may not find her beautiful as she doesn’t live up to their expectations, and Disney could risk losing popularity and profit from it. Disney continues to use this trend of thin, society approved women since the earliest productions with female leads. Disney movies present the idea of beauty that society seeks to them, but with that comes an increase of negative influence of the “ideal” body type to teenage girls and children.
Jasmine with a realistic waist line.
The Little Mermaid is one of the worst movies in terms of representation and stereotypes of teenage girls. In this movie, Ariel is a sixteen-year old girl who dreams of living on the land. She then goes to the surface and see’s Prince Eric, whom of which she instantly falls in love with. But in order to be with him she abandons her entire family, runs away from her home and moves in with a man she has only seen once and hasn’t even talked to. She then sets out to find Ursula who is in fact considered so dangerous that she has been banned from the kingdom and forced out of society, purely because she overheard two eels saying that Ursula was a miracle worker. Then after Ursula convinces Ariel with insults, Ariel take approximately 3 seconds to agree to give Ursula her voice in exchange for a magic potion that will turn her tail into legs and she truly believes Ursula when she says that in 3 days it is possible to “make” some guy love her otherwise she has to become a sea plant, i.e. a vegetable in a garden of lost souls.
Everything about that short summary of the film is just wrong, especially the misrepresentation, the stereotypes and gender roles targeted at teenage girls throughout this film. This movie pretty much promotes the harmful stereotype of ‘you must change yourself for the person you love,’ you can see this in Ariel as she starts the film out as a brave, curious and adventurous young mermaid. She even saves Prince Eric from drowning, but as soon as she ‘falls in love’ with Prince Eric she suddenly changes into a quiet, love-sick girl, constantly obsessing over him and does nothing but stare wide-eyed at him in admiration. Ariel is so obsessed with Prince Eric even though she hasn’t even talked to him, that she runs away from her family and home to just to be with him. Ariel even struck a deal with Ursula to change herself from being a mermaid to getting human legs, to meet Prince Eric in exchange for her voice. This message shows girls that because Ariel is beautiful she doesn’t need her voice to portray her thoughts, leading for Ariel and real life teenage girls to believe that it’s their physical beauty that trumps their beauty on the inside and what your personality is like. Her whole demeanor is changed from being bold to being submissive to Eric, and her whole interest in human culture shrinks down to just seeking out a ‘kiss.’ In the end, Ariel does ultimately get ‘her prince’ but at the expense of giving up her personality and leaving her family, friends and whole world behind. Sending out the message out to young girls that in order to get somebody to fall in love with you, don’t be yourself.
Also in this ‘children’s movie’ Ariel is way over sexualised. Ariel is a 16-year old girl who wears only a clam shell as a bra, and of course her mermaid tail. Although Ariel is supposed to be portrayed as independent, explorative and rather intelligent, her skimpy clam-shell bra doesn’t reflect her true self worth and just makes her appear to be so much older than what she really is. Also not to mention the fact of when Ariel is turned into a human and she takes a magical potion that knocks her out and she then wakes up on a rock beside the shore completely naked aside from just her clam-shell bra. To which reveals a darker theme by Disney for a so called children’s movie, this representation of teenage girls being over sexualised by Disney is not an accurate representation of all teenage girls. I believe that it’s not an accurate representation of teenage girls because teenagers wear a lot more than just a clam-shell bra, and it makes teenagers seem as though they okay with being nearly naked in public. But in reality most teenage girls suffer with self-consciousness, low self-esteem and low self-confidence due to their own physical attributes not even nearly coming close to Ariels figure, as most teenage girls don’t have naturally flat stomachs with minuscule waists, or wide hips.
This also causes implications to how society and the public perceive teenage girls to be like due to this misrepresentation, like how teenage girls can be perceived to be slutty/shallow due to older people imagining them to be dressing and acting in the same way that Ariel does when it comes to boys or going to teen parties. Teenagers also can be perceived as being obsessed with boys because of the ‘crazy teenage hormones’ that most parents dread,apart from the ‘directioner fan girl‘ this simply isn’t true either. For the most part teenage girls are only obsessed with food and social media outlets, I mean most girls do like boys but using the word obsessed seems to harsh a term. This then causes society and media to perceive teenage girls as obsessive, clingy and weird, as if this is what teenage girls are like in movies such as ‘The Little Mermaid’ that was made by a company with adults working there. Then they must be right, (note the sarcasm). Another way teenager girls can be perceived by society is that, they can make stupid decisions when they are in love. With Ariel, a stupid decision that she made was trading away her beautifully talented voice to a dangerous stranger that was exiled from Ariel’s entire society because she was that dangerous, for a pair of human legs so that she could go get the man that she loved but hadn’t held a conversation with before. This then lets society and media see an over-exaggerated version of a stupid decision that teenage girls can make at such a young age. To which of course the media will see and continue to perpetuate this over-exaggerated message of stupidity with teenage girls when they are in love, leading to society perceiving teenage girls as stupid when they are in love and making bad decisions because of their relationship. However this isn’t the case, more often than not teenage girls manage to fall into the trap that is stupid in love when they get into a relationship with a new boyfriend. This will then lead to teenage girls being criticised by adults, friends and strangers on their relationship and the decisions that they make in that relationship like having sex, or having a baby in that relationship at a young age. Then due to this decision to get pregnant at such a young age she will then be criticised by all the people I mentioned previously, this can lead to peer pressure to get an abortion of the baby and make the mother put the child up for adoption, when she may actually want to keep the child. Or she could also receive bullying because of this decision of hers to have a baby with a man she loves at a young age, which can also lead to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, low confidence, and could go to such extreme lengths that the mother could potentially kill herself and the baby.
Gender Roles.
(Link to Pic.)
Disney portrays gender roles a lot throughout all of their films and also in their stores, a statistic that I found was that “73.2% of all toys sold by Disney are marketed as “boys only”,and gives the “boys only section 100% of the vehicle, building, and weapons toys. The chats also show that the girls toys were given 66.7% of all of the toys that cultivate creativity, 97% of the dolls, and 100% of beauty cosmetics and jewellery.” (Click here for Link to Blog.) This statistic astounds me as to why there is even sections named “boys only” and “girls only,” because when we were all younger we only played with what we liked and what we thought was cool. Rather than thinking I want to play with these toys because it’s pink and i’m a girl and this is what I am expected to like. I remember when I was a little girl my favourite toys were lego’s, cars and pretty much anything to do with building so why must other little girls be taught that no you can’t play with cars because those are for boys. Ultimately it is teaching children from a young age about gender roles, what society expects them to like when it comes to toys and clothes and inequality. Whereas an example of gender roles in one of their films is in ‘The Lion King,’ when Simba’s father is killed, Simba runs away and Scar takes over. The Lionesses are then shown waiting around for Simba to hopefully return and save them, furthermore showing the lionesses as weak characters and in need of rescuing as they aren’t able to do it for themselves and depend on the lions.
These gender stereotypes of how women should act compared to men is an awful message to portray to young girls, this is because in these films the women are often seen as weaker compared to men, sensitive, emotional, passive, domestic, stereotypical and troublesome for male characters. Is this really a message that we want to send into the minds of young girls, that will remain with them throughout their child hood and teenage hood. This stereotype that Disney has produced of teenage girls can then result into real characteristics that some girls may develop if they consider the disney princesses as their idol, or a role model they look up to. Which can later cause some serious problems in the future such as being in an abusive relationship (Beauty and the Beast), leaving everyone you know and love to get a man you have never talked to (The Little Mermaid) and many other serious implications.
Factual Fact – Magazine’s Influence.
Seventeen Magazine is an american teen magazine that targets teenage girls between the ages of 10-17. It provides tips on fashion, gossip, news, advice and interviews with celebrities that are adored by teenagers.
In a 2006 report done by Magazine Publishers of America, 78% of teenagers read teen magazines. With more than 3/4 of all teenage girls that were surveyed saying that they do read teen magazines, it’s safe to say that throughout the world those statistics would be very similar. This represents how many girls are accessible to reading these magazines which promote stereotypes, and encourage young girls to change the way that they look to fit the ‘ideal thin’ body image. A 1999 study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that teens between the ages of 15 and 18 spend an average of 13 minutes daily reading magazines, they also found that on a given day, about 6 in 10 of these teens will read a magazine. This shows us that teen magazines hold a major influence over young teenage girls, therefore leading to these young girls receiving messages that the magazine is sending them messages about body image, and the idea that thinner is better.
“Perfect Hair,” “GET YOUR BEST BUTT,” “Look Pretty!” Those three phrases are what your eye is automatically drawn to, due to it’s marginally larger font size in comparison to other phrases and it’s bright, bold colours. These phrases are typically what you would see on almost every teenage magazine in order to entice teenage girls into buying this magazine, so they can find out how to change the way that they look in order to achieve society’s standard of beautiful. Not only do teen magazine’s using brightly coloured, eye-catching fonts but they also use photos of teenagers favourite celebrities to entice the reader even more into buying the magazine. They are also using these captions to make the teenage readers feel insecure about themselves, so that they feel as though they have to know what the magazines tip was for “Look Pretty!” Which also leads to the company making a profit out of a teenagers insecurities, which is a form of exploitation.
In the 2008 August issue of seventeen magazine, Blake Lively is their cover girl. Most teenage girls know who Blake Lively is as she is a main character in the popular television show Pretty Little Liars. With having Blake on the cover of their magazine, this then draws the attention of all Blake Lively and Pretty Little Liars teenage fans to the magazine. Also it could draw more teens that may not know who she is but see her and think that they want to look like her, leading to them hoping that the magazine will have tips as to how they can look like her.
Blake is a beautiful blonde haired, blue eyed young adult with a perfect face and unblemished skin. This picture of her is placed on the cover of the magazine because she is considered to be media’s ‘ideal woman’ for young teenage girls to aspire to be like. On the cover she looks perfect – her hair is being blown gently by a wind machine, but still there isn’t one hair remotely out of place. Her skin is flawless, her make-up has been applied perfectly by a professional, also her petite frame is flaunted by her tight singlet and cardigan. As teenage girls look at this magazine, they automatically assume that in order to be on the cover like Blake is you have to look like her, as she is portrayed as one of Seventeen Magazine’s ideal woman. The magazine wants these teenage girls to believe that this look that Blake has is easily attainable, that all teenage girls will aspire to have but in reality it’s actually impossible. This is probably due to the fact that each and every photo in this magazine especially the cover, has had a photoshop artist spending hours ‘touching up’ and ‘fixing’ all of Blake’s imperfections that simply make her human. They want you to be fooled by this photoshopping tactic so that you buy all the products that they advertise in this magazine so you can appear more like Blake Lively so that they can make a profit.
Teen Magazines largely focus on promoting stereotypes, and promoting false representations of how teenage girls and boys think, act and feel about certain topics. An example of a false representation of teenage girls is that all normal girls are thin, girly, innocent, obsessed with boys and will change everything about themselves that makes them unique in order to get a boy. This representation is completely inaccurate and sends the completely wrong message to young teenage girls, and sets a bad example for them to follow. It is telling them that in order for you to be loved by yourself and everyone else, you must conform to magazine regulation beauty and change everything about you that makes you unique.
Teen Magazines affects society’s attitude and perception towards teenage girls through using an array of representations and common stereotypes. Teen magazines discuss various different topics but don’t branch out within those topics such as when talking about love, they only talk about love between a woman and a man. They don’t seem to address the fact that some teenage girls aren’t in love or obsessed with other teenage boys, but they are in fact are in love with another person of the same gender.They also never have pictures of disabled women in the magazine, there is a large portion of women in the world who struggle with a disease that has changed the way they look. Such as women who may have one of their limbs missing, or their hair has fallen off due to a treatment, they have been left disfigured, have scars, why are these women not considered to be beautiful enough to be on a magazine. They also don’t branch out with race or ethnicity of models inside the magazine, as inside the magazine it is predominately filled with caucasian women rather than black, asian and muslim women just to name a few. I simply don’t understand why they struggle to introduce more varieties of beautiful women in teen magazines that truly are role models for teenage girls, that aren’t required to be a size 0-4, that have different sexual preferences and colour of skin. Without these different varieties of women, teenage girls are encouraged to be seen as materialistic, superficial, gossipy and mean this in turn alters society’s perception towards teenage girls. Leading to society criticising the actions of teenagers more and more until they are taken to extreme lengths, whether that may be cutting themselves because they were bullied for not living up to standards made by magazines (looks standards, expectations of sexual orientation, race) or even worse extreme cases of anorexia, body dysmorphia, bulimia, depression, low self-esteem, low self-confidence and even suicide.
In my opinion, Seventeen Magazine, have a predominately negative impact on their teenage readers. This is due to the fact that these teen magazines support the idea of young teenage girls needing to know how to have perfect hair, perfect make-up, perfect body type and most importantly the perfect boyfriend. Furthermore trying to reel in readers with only materialistic and superficial tips and advice, all of the magazines have captions, pictures and whole pages dedicated to making teenage girls feel more insecure about themselves whether it may be because of body type or acne. This will lead to teenage girls flicking through the magazine and buying products that are ‘guaranteed’ to make them feel beautiful, even when they already were to begin with. Not only do magazines need to stop sharing unrealistic representations and false stereotypes of ‘the typical teenage girl’ but all media outlets do.
Factual Fact – Mean Girls.
The movie Mean Girls is about 16 year old Cady Heron, who goes from living in bush country in Africa being homeschooled by her parents to living in The United States of America going to a public high school for the first time. There she is confronted by a variety of stereotypical teen cliques from the ‘Sexually Active Band Geeks’ to ‘The Plastics,’ where she struggles to find out where she fits in until she is confronted by two outcasts (Janis and Damian) who hatch a plan to use Cady in order to infiltrate The Plastics to find out all the mean things they say about them, but what they didn’t see coming was Cady slowly turning into a plastic herself.
This film over exaggerates the stereotypes and representations of teenagers and teachers in high school. This is seen with the Plastics clique, as they are the most popular girls at school and they have perfect make-up, no acne or pimples, stylish clothes, rich parents, perfect bodies, perfect hair, and good looking boyfriends. This representation shows the younger audience that in order to be popular you must have all of these attributes, and if you don’t you can’t be popular. This can potentially affect teenage girls as if they do conform to this image of what teen girls should look, act and dress like conjured up by the media and enforced by society it’ll make them start hating themselves. Leading to them trying to hide their natural features through make-up if they think they aren’t pretty enough, getting plastic surgery to alter their body and enhance features, even lead to serious illnesses such as anorexia, bulimia and body dysmorphia. link to gif. 
This representation of teenage girls affects society’s attitude and perception towards teenage girls as in mean girls they are seen as conceited, materialistic, bitchy and hate everyone who isn’t apart of their clique. As a teenage girl myself I can honestly say that in reality this simply isn’t true, in reality everybody sits with whoever they want to sit with at lunch and most people have more than one clique and alternate between those cliques to spend time with all the people they want to be friends with. Also in the real world, not all girls are all so easily-swayed to do things because someone else is doing it, for example if the most popular girl started wearing sandals because she likes them it doesn’t mean that I am going to follow her in her footsteps and wear the same shoes as her if I don’t like them. Whereas in mean girls when Regina has holes cut out of her singlet as revenge, all the other girls in school then see Regina wearing it and copy her style. (link to scene.) This representation of teenage girls being easily-swayed by woman they idolise is then perpetuated across the media, which leads to more people believing that all teenage girls are manipulable, gullible and credulous.
This film also covers the topic of body/self image as it appears the skinnier the plastics get, the more power they have to judge other girls in the school who aren’t like them. For example, this is seen when Regina is tricked into eating Kalteen Bars which causes her to gain weight rather than lose it, as Regina gains more and more weight she begins losing her power to judge and insult people until she is no longer considered the “Queen Bee” and no longer idolised at all within the school. One scene in particular that stood out to me when covering the topic of body image was when Cady and the Plastics went to Regina’s house. The Plastics who are all beautiful stand in front of the mirror and say things they don’t like about themselves. This scene is one of the few scenes which is actually true, the fact that teenage girls do look at themselves in the mirrors and point out flaws they want to fix in order for them to be closer to achieving perfection. This message is very effective in the representation that teenage girls are self-conscious, as most teenage girls can relate to looking in the mirror and pointing out all their flaws. Furthermore showing the ignorance of certain media outlets (magazines,etc.) as they choose to completely ignore this message of how self-conscious teenage girls actually are, and continue to perpetuate that the skinnier you are the more beautiful you are.
Regina George is the stereotypical ‘Queen Bee’ of North Shore High School and the leader of ‘The Plastics”. With her two followers (Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith) constantly following her and obeying everything she says as seen in beginning of the jingle bell rock scene where she forces Gretchen to swap sides with Cady even though Gretchen doesn’t want to. Regina finds a way to be the centre of attention by bullying other girls and takes joy in ruling the school and her home. Regina George is the prime example of a stereotype as she is a tall, skinny, blonde haired, blue-eyed girl with her rich parents wrapped around her finger. She is what media and society’s ideal “perfect” teenage girl looks like, even though Rachel McAdams (the actress who played Regina George) was a full-grown 25 year old at the time. This then causes expectations of what your typical teenage girl should look like to get even higher than what they already are, causing teenage girls to feel more and more self-conscious about their appearance and being succumbed to bullying and peer pressure to change themselves. Although throughout the film Regina appears to also bully herself, as she constantly states throughout the film “I wanna lose 3 pounds” even though she is already skinny, this suggests that she has potential to develop one of several mental health problems such as anorexia, bulimia and body dysmorphia. Also in the scene where Karen, Gretchen and Regina are all standing in front of the mirror and even though they are all beautiful they only point out things that they don’t like about themselves, like that Regina can’t wear a halter top because she has “man shoulders” and that her “pores are huge.” The media then shows that they really do promote the idea of body image as it seems that you can’t be beautiful if you aren’t skinny, and to qualify as skinny you have to be a size 5 or less in dress stores leading Regina gaining the mental concept that she needs to lose weight.
Janis Ian is your stereotypical goth like outcast, who has a vengeance for her ex-best friend Regina George. Janis is snarky to everyone throughout the film and is not afraid to hide how she feels, she appears to be the only person who isn’t afraid to stand up to Regina. Janis used to be popular until her reputation was destroyed by a rumour that Regina made up saying Janis was a lesbian, leading to her dropping out of school for the rest of the year and when she returned, “all her hair was cut off, and she was totally weird.” Janis now willingly embraces the fact that she is an outsider with her new best friend Damien. Janis is another prime example of a stereotype as she is “the goth like outcast,” due to the fact she wears heavy dark eyeliner and dark coloured clothes only. She is not what the media would show as their ‘ideal’ teenage girl, as she wears darker colours making her appear more masculine than feminine, which is shown in the prom scene where Janis doesn’t wear a dress to prom but instead a matching purple suit with Damien. Janis is a strong, confident character throughout the film as I believe the bullying that she received when she was at middle school made her become tougher, as when another classmate says “Nice wig, Janis. What’s it made of?” she replies “Your mum’s chest hair.” Not letting his words get to her. As well as bestow some insightful wisdom as seen very rarely throughout the film such as “There are two kinds of evil people. People who do evil stuff, and people who see evil stuff being done and don’t do anything about it.” This quote I believe she based on her experience on being bullied referring to Regina as a person who does evil stuff as she made the rumour and spread it, and then referred to other students and teachers who saw this and didn’t do anything about it. This shows that the media only cares about the superficiality of teenage girls, not about who they are as a person and the obstacles they have overcome to be who they are today. Furthermore showing the audience that what you think is not as important as how you look. Hence, why the media talk about Regina George and the plastics, rather than about Janis Ian as she hasn’t conformed to society’s standards and expectations of how teenagers should look, act and dress. (GIF 1) (GIF 2) 
Cady Heron.
Cady Heron changes dramatically throughout the film. Cady started out the film going to her first day of school as the stereotypical new girl, she was very innocent and made sure to be very friendly to everyone. Cady wore baggy old clothes, with her hair tied up into a messy ponytail showing her looking like an average high school student and stood out from the crowd when she was walking into school, as she was the only one without a clique. Whereas on her second day of school, she befriends Janis and Damien. Who intern changes her views on people and manipulates her into hanging out with The Plastics so that they can find out the things they say about them. But as Cady hangs out with the Plastics more and more, her personality begins changing progressively into a replica of Regina’s leading to Cady becoming rude, nasty and back-stabbing all whilst ditching Janis and Damien. Also as Cady’s personality changes, her outfits change as well. Cady goes from wearing her an over-sized plaid shirt and baggy jeans, to wearing tight revealing clothes and more make-up that covers her facial features more as she becomes more obsessed with body-image and gossip. This change in her personality and style shows the audience how easy it can be for a teenage girl like Cady to be manipulated into changing herself, just so that she can fit in at school. It’s only at the very end of the film that Cady finds her true personality again, as she realises exactly how much she has changed and how much people hate her due to the effects that she has had on them. The media then shows Cady as easily-swayed by others and weak-minded, leading to parents and older viewers to think that this representation of new girls doing anything to feel like they belong and fit into new environments,even if it means having their personality besmirched is true. When in reality teenage girls are more strong-minded, and usually stick to being themselves. (Cady realising how she’s affected people.) 
Factual Fact – First Things First.
Hello and welcome to Fox’s Factual Facts blog, I have been set the task to share in this blog with my radical readers some of my thoughts, opinions and of course factual facts about how teenage girls are represented in a range of mediums (film, television, magazines, newspapers, websites and video games.) But before I start blogging about all of that I must first explain to you some key words that I’m going to be using a fair amount of throughout my blogs.
Representation.
According to oxford dictionary representation means “The description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way.” In the media, representation is used a lot such as perfume/cologne being represented as being able to make anyone sexually attractive to all people.
Stereotypes.
According to the oxford dictionary stereotype means “A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.” In the media, stereotypes are created and used more often than not in movies, television and magazines an example of a stereotype would be that all blondes are dumb which is not true.
Media.
According to the oxford dictionary media means “The main means of mass communication (television, radio, and newspapers) regarded collectively.” The media is used to communicate with all people around the world, about all different things from a natural disaster occurring in a country that will need help, to what a celebrity was wearing at an awards show like the Grammys.
Representations and stereotypes work together in the media to portray to society how teenage girls for example should look, act and dress like. This is so that the media can have a stronger amount of control on what society should consider to be beautiful and what society should consider to be ugly.
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