Mean Girls andDarwin

When I began reading the selections on this topic a scene from the movie Mean Girls came to mind. In the scene a fight breaks out between two girls in their high school cafeteria. However, instead of shrill screams, aggressive encouragement, and an involved but removed audience, everyone in the cafeteria begins acting like animals. They growl, make monkey noises, and move in ways that embody wild animals- it’s hilariously ridiculous and startling accurate. The scene, in essence, puts its own modern twist on survival of the fittest. You see the two girls where fighting over a boy. the girls were competing for dominance and the boy.


Okay so you only need to watch the first 14 seconds of this clip. Music plays over the animal sounds in the movie, but you get the basic idea. I couldn't find a short, simple clip of the scene online.

As Darwin says, “varieties in order to become in any degree permanent, necessarily have to struggle with other inhabitants of the country” (106). He goes on to say, the species that becomes “dominate will be the most likely to yield offspring which, though in some slight degree modified, will still inherit those advantages that enabled their parents to become dominant over their compatriots” (106). Perhaps the girl’s motivation wasn’t procreation, but I once reaaad a sketchy Psychology article that explained how humans are attracted to people who would enable them to produce their societies’ standard of the strongest offspring. In the case of Mean Girls, the society standard would be beauty. Though the article had no substantial evidence to prove its point, the message has always stuck with me. I’m not sure why, aside from the fact that it simply makes sense. We strive to be the best we can, and, translated into our current standards, that means the most wealthy and, though some could argue, the most beautiful. However, why do we do this? We do we spend the better part of our life trying to get so rich we have more money then one person could reasonably spend in a life time? Why do we spend thousands on improving our bodies, when their already headed down hill? Self-preservation- not in the literal sense, rather in the ideal sense- we want to be on top, and, when we’re too old and decrepit to maintain that position, we want someone to hold it for us. That someone would be our offspring.


Though this family is slightly creepy they are beautiful and rich. They're at the top of the metaphorical food chain.