What we’re about to tell you is absolutely true, whether or not you choose to believe it: “Mean Girls,” the now-iconic Tina Fey–penned film that hysterically (and accurately) portrays the inner lives of young women everywhere, turns 10 years old today. It was released on April 29, 2004. Let that sink in for a moment.
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From the very first time most millennial females saw the movie, it became an overnight classic. From Lindsay Lohan’s spot-on portrayal of a clueless, sweet girl turned evil by the shady ways of a high school clique, to Rachel McAdams‘ eerily factual take on the school’s mean queen bee in the form of Regina George, the entire film is important social commentary masked as hysterical fodder.
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To honor its 10th anniversary, we decided to re-tell the story presented in “Mean Girls” with 35 GIFs. Because what better way to pay homage to one of our collective favorite movies ever?
New girl Cady Heron arrives after being home-schooled in Africa her whole life…
… to an average American high school, where she meets Damian and Janice Ian, her special new friends.
Janice and Damian teach Cady about the three most popular girls in school, Regina George, Gretchen Wieners, and Karen Smith, informing Cady that Regina is the ringleader.
They concoct a plan to infiltrate the mean girls’ inner circle to destroy them from the inside out. Cady starts hanging out with said mean girls.
Cady’s new friends immediately start to have negative effects on her friendships with Janice and Damian.
The more she hangs around them, the more Cady learns about their constant double-speak.
Cady falls for the cute boy sitting next to her in math class, who just happens to be Regina’s ex-boyfriend, Aaron Samuels.
Regina finds out about Cady and Aaron, and immediately uses her seductive ways to win him back for herself. Regina then flaunts him around in front of Cady.
Cady plots her revenge. Learning that Regina wants to lose weight (because, duh), Cady convinces her that carb-filled exercise bars will help her shed the pounds.
As she packs on the pounds, Regina just gets meaner and meaner, thusly turning her own kind away from her.
But Cady isn’t in the clear either; her association with the mean girl clique has made her a mean girl herself.
After Regina learns that Cady has made her fat on purpose, she frames her for writing a particularly nasty page in the “Burn Book,” the tome where the mean girls write mean things about their classmates.
After the principal of the school finds out what Cady has allegedly done, Regina posts up the mean things in the book all over the school. Chaos ensues, with all the girls lashing out at each other and saying mean things about one another.
Eventually, all the girls sit down for an assembly, during which Ms. Norbury (Tina Fey) makes them get out all their feelings.
And in the end…
