42 Life Lessons From ‘Mean Girls’

Mean Girls is nothing if not a fountain of knowledge, passed down from Tina Fey as a gift to girls, gays and all gentle humanfolk for the ages. Fey’s magnum opus instructs us about how to live and in this crazy world, one where you could get diarrhea in a Barnes and Noble or be mistaken for Danny DeVito. This list details but a few of the wisdom nuggets Tina Fey hath bequeathed to us. Learn from it, and go forth and make girl world a better place for all.

1. You can’t wear a tank top two days in a row, and you can only wear your hair in a ponytail once a week. This teaches us to keep it fresh every day, in order to better shake that thang for Kevin Gnapoor.

2. You have your cousins, your first cousins and your second cousins. Although I’m still not sure which it’s okay to make out with. (Answer: none of the above, really.)

3. Someone had to invent Toaster Strudel.

4. Sears carries clothing for women of all sizes, which is great if you’re unknowingly eating 5,000 calories a day.

Mean Girls
Mean Girls

5. You can be African and be white, but you cannot ask people why they are white. Also, never assume that the black girl in your class is the African exchange student. She could be from Michigan.

6. Also, if you’re an exchange student from Africa, don’t assume the black students speak Swahili. You might think that saying “Jambo!” is a token of being down, but it just makes you look like a weirdo.

7. Joining Mathletes is social suicide, but you do get some sweet jackets out of the deal. If you need a last minute ensemble for the Spring Fling.

8. If you want to create a burn book but don’t want people to think it was you, just call yourself a “fugly slut.”  No one will ever suspect.

9. There are two kinds of evil people in this world. Those who do evil stuff and those who see evil stuff being done and don’t try to stop it. That’s a Martin Luther King quote, right?

10. Everyone in Africa can read Swedish. Except for Charlize Theron: she reads minds.

11. If you don’t want to get busted for having a party, don’t leave your mother’s fertility vase of the Ndebele tribe under the sink. Rookie mistake.

12. Just ask Andrea Dworkin: feminism has rules. Rule #1: Ex-boyfriends are off-limits to friends.

13. To attend a school rally, you don’t even have to go to that school. All you need is a lot of feelings. (In other news, you can bake a cake out of rainbows and smiles, but what would it taste like?)

14. Sometimes that word vomit is actual vomit.

15. If you cut off all of your hair, you might look like a British man. (See also: Miley Cyrus.)

16. You can be too gay to function. (See also: Taylor Lautner.)

17. “Frenemies” are enemies that act like friends. You may also refer to them as “enemends.” Friends who secretly hate you are called “fraitors.”

18. If you’re on an all-carb diet, you can’t go to Taco Bell. You also probably shouldn’t go to Taco Bell (like, ever) if your intention is to lose three pounds or any weight at all.

19. Forecasting whether it’s already raining with your breasts is a marketable skill.

20. If you have sex, you will get pregnant. And die. This fact is backed up by science.

21. To fit in with the popular girls, all you need to do is talk about hair products and Ashton Kutcher. And, no, Ashton Kutcher is not a band.

Mean Girls
Mean Girls

22. Being named after a bisexual folk singer doesn’t make you a lesbian. You could just be Lebanese.

23. You can be half a virgin and still give someone everything. I’m assuming “everything” means anal.

24. Xylocarp is a real word that you now know how to spell. I think it’s a fish?

25. If you want to break up someone’s relationship, all you need to do is prank call their mother and pretend to be from Planned Parenthood. Haven’t you always kind of wanted to do this?

26. If you have a heavy flow and a wide set vagina or are gap-toothed, it’s not your fault. Baby, you were born this way.

27. Brutus is just as cute as Caesar. Brutus is just as popular as Caesar. People totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar. Because Rome is not about one person being the boss of everybody. This is the foundations of democracy, and I think it might be somewhere in our Constitution.

28. Butter is a carb. Also science.

29. Chase Visa only has one representative and his name is Randy.

30. You can be a high school student and still do car commercials in Japan. Allegedly.

31. It only counts if you saw nipple.

32. Fetch is slang from England, but it will never happen in America. Other things that will never happen in America: Jason Statham.

33. If you make out with a hot dog, it’s defensible if it’s only one time. Call it the Oscar Meyer Defense.

34. When communicating with your superior, you should do so when your shirt isn’t see-through.

35. If you break up with your gay BFF, he will want his pink shirt back.

36. Cady might look like its pronounced “caddie,” but it’s actually pronounced “Katie.” However, that doesn’t mean your best friends won’t still call you “caddie.” And if you have a nephew named “Anfernee,” calling him “Anthony” makes him almost as mad as you get when you think about the fact that your sister named him “Anfernee.”

37. When you like a guy, “grool” counts as a real word.

38. On the third day, God created the Remington Bolt Action Rifle so that man could fight the dinosaurs and the homosexuals. Luckily, the homosexuals had something to fight back with. We have Ellen.

39. Your hair can be full of secrets and insured for up to $10,000. Also, both your Nana and Tina Fey take their wigs off when they are drunk and a wig can be made out of your mother’s chest hair. This fact makes you look at Tina Fey very differently.

40. In girl world, you cannot buy a skirt without asking your friends if it looks good on your first. However, if it’s the “ugliest effing skirt [she’s] ever seen,” she might lie to you and say she likes it. Girl world is tricky like that.

41. If something is 120 calories with 48 calories from fat, that’s 40 percent calories from fat, which you can figure out if you cross-multiply. Girls CAN do math, sexists.

42. How much can you quote and paraphrase Mean Girls in one article?  The limit does not exist. TC Mark

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