#14: Welcome to the Girl World

Watch your back: They're your friends.

Who do you trust when your own friends are sneakily making you gain weight and stealing your boyfriend?

 In the movie Mean Girls, themes of revenge and distrust are taken to a whole new stage, your average high school. As the new girl, Cady, moves to town and begins to attend high school, she befriends Janice and Damien, who convince her to seek revenge on Regina George, in the form of weight-gaining bars, clothing malfunctions, and lies told over the phone. The revenge gives Cady awesome satisfaction at the beginning of the plan, but as the story unfolds, she finds herself becoming a plastic. Revenge backfires on Cady, as I predict it will with my dear Hamlet, should he seek it in some abrupt form. 

Who knows what he is up to these days? I did hear him speaking to himself after our hasty yet true wedding. He talks of things that worry me lately. "My father's brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules" (1.2.154). I fear that he believes Claudius as a replacement for his own father, which is not my intention. Perhaps guilt and jealousy is propelling him forward in his endeavors, just as the jealousy of Regina's power and popularity in Mean Girls ignites Cady's plot for revenge. Later, I did hear my dear son murmur to himself, "But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue" (1.2.161). What is Hamlet holding back? He must have someone that he can discuss the weighty matters of the world with. Who shall be that person? I hath found that in times of revenge, even in Cady's case, it is hard to discuss truly pressing matters with those close to you. And I doubt that what is bothering my Hamlet is "no other but the main; / his father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage" (2.1.56-57). This must be the stressor for Hamlet, as plots of revenge often require one, as I have seen in Mean Girls.

I sometimes think that only Ophelia's love may bring my dear son out of his present gloom. Polonius hath showed me his letters to Ophelia, accompanied by his misgivings. He loves her, however, "so he does indeed" (2.2.160). Just as Cady's love for Aaron who eventually recognized her transformation into a Plastic and brought her back down to Earth, perhaps Hamlet may have a similar realization. I hath heard Hamlet mumbling just earlier today about his "players" who will "play something like the murder of [his] father" (2.2.523). Oh why must I concern myself with these deadly thoughts? A woman must only charm and bathe, and smell like flowers after all. Perhaps I shall just continue watching my Sunday afternoon chick flicks.