...of charm and strange: the blog

Since the day I emerged from my mother's womb 21 years ago, I have known that I was going to see Mean Girls on opening night. The question was, who else would be there? Would it be teenage airheads drawn to the movie because it's set in high school, smarter adults drawn by the fact that it's written by Tina Fey, or people named Eric who think Lindsay Lohan is the Second Coming?

As we entered the movie theater, the answer to this question became obvious, and it wasn't promising. IT WAS ALL MEAN GIRLS! Orange girls! Prostitots! Plastics! Sometimes I feel like an old man sitting on his porch in a rocking chair shaking his fist at the young, out-of-control hooligans. This was one of those times. The theater was packed with high school girls, and it was absolutely chilling how closely they all resembled tiny little porn stars. Bleached hair, fake-tanned skin, raccoon-like eyeliner, six-inch heels, amounts of cleavage that would make Erin Brockovich weep. And those horrid little skirts that are half cheerleader-pleats that don't so much cover butt cheeks as frame them. THESE GIRLS WOULD NOT BE SHOWING MORE SKIN IF THEY WERE STARK NAKED.

I am only three years older than some of these girls, but sitting there in the midst of them, I felt like I had come from a different planet. Luke, Katie, Marianne and I huddled together among them like frightened hostages, trying not to make eye contact lest they become enraged and text-message us to death. Was it possible that these girls had seen the trailer for Mean Girls and thought the Plastics were the protagonists and Lindsay Lohan was the bitch, not the other way around? What exactly would they get out of a film that is basically lampoons girls like them? Would they learn to change their ways?

Well, when the lights came up after the movie ended, I still didn't have any answers (besides an answer to the question, "Should Mean Girls sweep the Oscars next year?" and the answer is, "Oh hell yes"). But as the four of us shuffled out of the theater, rubbing elbows and god knows what else with the Plastics around us, I saw the most terrifying thing of all: a little girl, she couldn't have been more than 11, wearing a butt cheek skirt and a shirt that showed off her midriff.

To prevent my face from freezing permanently in an expression of horror, I'm telling myself that her parents were smart enough to explain the right message of the movie to her. That message being "Be yourself," not "If someone is giving you a hard time, you can always push them in front of a school bus." Actually, either one would work for me.