***Spoiler Alert***
When thinking about all of your friendships, whether you
have been friends for a week or sixteen years, they all had to start
somewhere. College is a time when many
new friendships are formed simply because students are surrounded with a brand
new group of people. Establishing these
new friendships is key to the college experience. Even being at a small college campus, I still
establish new friendships on a regular basis as a sophomore. New friendships can be complex even though
they are just getting started because of the potential problems that could
arise, which makes them the perfect basis for many television shows and movies.
Mean Girls has all kinds of conflict throughout the film. The film provides
many conflicts in the context of new friendships and Communication Privacy
Management Theory.
Communication Privacy Management Theory is simple. It is centered around the idea of how private
information is managed in a relationship through boundaries.[1] You can have a personal boundary around
private information that you want to keep to yourself.[2] When you share your private information with
someone else, there is now a collective boundary around that private
information because more than one person knows.[3] There are boundary rules that are either
implicit or explicit depending on the relationship. This is that moment when your friend says, “don’t
tell anyone,” or you just know not to tell anyone. The different relationships that you have are
going to have different boundary coordination, which is how the boundaries in
your relationship are understood amongst one another. Naturally, when someone violates these
boundaries, conflicts occur due to what is called boundary turbulence.[4]
These concepts can be easily seen in the film Mean Girls. First, Cady meets Janis and Damien on her first day in
class. The two take her under their wing
to show her how the school operated through a map that displays all the
cliques. Cady has been homeschooled her
entire life, so making new friends is something that she was afraid of before
starting high school. Janis and Damien ultimately
convince Cady to become fake friends with “The Plastics,” a group that they have a deep hatred for, so they can get
inside or private information. She does this by sitting with them at lunch,
which can be seen in a video clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re5veV2F7eY
. Janis, Damien, and Cady’s friendship
has a collective boundary about this fake friendship, and it is implicitly understood
that they should not reveal this to anyone else.
Janis seems to have a history with Regina, but never shares
this with Cady. Janis keeps a personal boundary around this private
information. However, this private,
background information that Janis seems to have been hiding is revealed by
Regina from her perspective in this scene here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LORyEX_5czg
. Janis and Cady now have a collective boundary that Janis is not aware of. Boundary turbulence occurs when Cady makes Janis aware of her knowledge of the private information.
Cady also learns about “The Plastics’” Burn Book at her
first visit to Regina George’s house one day after school. The Burn Book is something that they made
with insults regarding countless girls in their high school, including
Janis. However, when Cady reports to
Janis and Damien with her new Burn Book information, she leaves out the part
where Janice is included in the book, even when she explicitly asks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-4RMv9gGv4
. Cady causes boundary turbulence between
her and “The Plastics” by sharing this private information that is supposed to
remain within their friendship.
After learning about
the Burn Book, Janis and Damien see the opportunity to capitalize with their
new inside source within “The Plastics” and intend to ruin Regina George’s life
to make her pay for all of her wrongdoings.
Their first step is to attack her relationship with Aaron Samuels. (Fun
fact: I'm meeting him in a few weeks!) Their
second attack is to trick her into eating these protein bars to make her gain
weight. Their third attack is to get her
fellow “Plastics” to turn against her.
One by one, Cady is able to implement this plan, but conflict arises as
she slowly becomes more and more like a “Plastic," which can be seen in this
video clip:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aseG7TIElGI
. This causes Janis and Damien to question their boundary coordination. Of course this plan is private
information between Cady, Janis, and Damien.
Cady involves herself in two competing new friendships. Backstabbing is the central conflict within Mean Girls where they use the private
information that they know against the other side. If there are not rules set, it can be hard to
tell what is fair game to share with others. Cady has to balance Communication Privacy Management Theory is a good way to look at new
friendships because determining rules in the friendship are crucial to long-term
success. It has even been found that
boundary turbulence leads to the termination of friendships new and old.[5] As you are establishing new friendships, be sure to talk about what your boundaries are regarding private information. This can prevent many unwanted conflicts and strengthen your new friendships, so that they can become life long friendships.