Theories

Marcel Danesi believes that youth is seen as very precious and important and from this some mature adults act immature to try and hold on to that youth. People can get this idea of that you should hold onto your youth as long as possible from the media that surrounds us. An example of this is one of the mum characters in the teenage girl film 'Mean Girls'. The way the character dresses and her style is very influenced by the way her daughter dresses. This gives the impression of the character trying to be a 'cool' mum and wants to not act her age. The character even says in the film "I'm not like other mums, I'm a cool mum", this adds pressure onto mature women to try and keep up a youthful appearance. We also learn that the mum has had plastic surgery to enlarge her breasts which shows again how important to the mum character her appearance is and she doesn't want to be seen as a regular mum and she has even gone to the extremes of having surgery. For mum's that have seen this film they must feel that they have to try and look young to not embarass their children and to give their children a 'cool' mum they need to act in this way. The mum character also talks to her daughter and daughters friends as if she is their friend and not a responsible adult. She uses abbreviations such as '411' when she wants to hear the latest gossip from the girls. This shows her dialogue includes shortened words that youngsters use and by using them herself she feels that she is keeping up with the trends, this shows that she is acting immature to appear as a 'cool' mum. She also says "You girls keep me young, ahh i love ya so much" when her daughter tells her to go and fix her hair. This dialogue definitely proves that this character wants to keep young and act like the teenage girls. I think that in this film the character has been exagerrated but mum's watching may feel that they need to keep their youth too to be able to have a closer relationship to their children.