Regina’s total loss of aura in Mean Girls deserves to be studied, and I have a lot to say about this topic since Mean Girls is one of my favorite childhood movies of all time.
I’m really thinking about Regina George from Mean Girls and the way she started the movie as one of the most iconic baddies, doubling as the villain you love to hate and hated to love all at the same time, but she still ended the movie on a completely different level.
In Regina‘s world — the Mean Girls universe — aura is everything. When I think of Regina, I consider her aura as social power, complete confidence, her ability to control the room, the way she was effortlessly charming and beautiful, and the fact that she had that intimidation factor going for her. At the beginning, she intimidates just about everyone she interacts with, even her closest friends, the Plastics. Even her own parents! I’ll never forget the scene when she made her father cry while she was dressed up in her sexy bunny Halloween costume.
But Regina‘s aura had nothing to do with whether she was nice or mean to people. It was really the impossible-to-describe nature of her energy. I feel like we all saw a super clear progression between early Regina and late-movie Regina based on all the things she went through, specifically thanks to Cady, Janice, and Damian. The early Regina who exudes the most aura had control, and it was extremely easy for her to dominate people. But that doesn’t stay her reality for the entire film.
I definitely need to call attention to some of her most iconic moments that prove just how much natural aura she really had before getting into the nitty-gritty of her aura deductions. Starting with the first time Regina is shown on the screen in Mean Girls. Cady gets an explanation of her new school’s social hierarchy from Janice and Damian, and it’s shocking to her that someone in their high school runs a clique that creates such a dominating presence.
By that same token, Regina never needed to announce that she was popular. The way she naturally operated in a crowd full of people already communicated that as a fact. She started the movie as the center of attention, centering herself in the middle of the Plastics between Gretchen and Karen as well. At the lunch table, when Regina invited Cady to sit down with the Plastics and ultimately invited her to have lunch with them for the rest of the week, it gave us something kinddd of major about Regina as a character, which is the fact that she controls access.
It wasn’t about Cady making a choice about whether or not she wanted to become one of their friends. It was Regina deciding whether or not Cady was worthy of entry to their social circle. Total Blair Waldorf energy, by the way. I have a video posted here on my channel comparing Regina against Blair as the two queen bees of their respective universes, so feel free to check that out if you’d like.
A peak aura moment from Regina was the iconic “Get in, loser, we’re going shopping” car scene. Regina was driving her car, giving us the energy of her power position of control. Not only that, but she was driving an expensive convertible. Everything about the scene was giving wealthy, ritzy, bad bitch energy. She was picking Cady up in that scene. Regina controlled who had access at all times. That car scene is visually one of Regina’s most recognizable moments ever, and to me, it truly exemplifies how much aura she had. Even in the 2024 rebooted musical version of the movie with Reneé Rapp.
But moving on… Even when people were deliberately trying to sabotage Regina, her aura still dominated and made the biggest difference in her world. Like when Cady replaced Regina‘s face cleanser with foot cream. The intended result was to make Regina’s face smell like feet, but instead, Aaron got obsessed with it because her face started smelling like peppermint. Instead of making Regina less attractive to Aaron, they made her more attractive to him, which added to her aura.
Then Janice, Cady, and Damian plotted against Regina by cutting holes in her shirt during gym class. They thought it would make her look like a joke, but instead, it started an entire fashion trend. Regina is a trendsetter, so the fact that they thought cutting up her shirt would negatively impact her was actually kind of dumb.
Regina noticed the holes cut out of her shirt and said, “Ehh, okay!” She shrugged it off and wore it anyway, and all the girls at school immediately started copying her. Regina proved that she didn’t care about having haters. She knew she was a bad bitch, and she probably took that sabotage moment as a compliment because she assumed someone did that out of jealousy against her. She was capable of turning humiliation into status, which is a power move.
Regina‘s fashion sense was another source of her aura, in my opinion. She always looked good. She always made an effort with her appearance. Her clothes, her hair, her makeup, her accessories, and every little detail came together. Regina was the true definition of aura based on wardrobe alone. The way she dressed was centered around how she wanted to present herself to the world, and she presented herself with confident, bad bitch energy, always.
Another moment of peak aura for Regina was seeing the way she rekindled her relationship with Aaron with little to no effort whatsoever. Of course, she only wanted to get back together with him for the selfish reason of stomping on Cady heart. She wanted to prove she could still pull Aaron for her own ego after finding out Cady wanted him. She needed to prove that she was the most desirable girl around, who could keep Aaron’s attention no matter what. And it really worked for her, with little to no effort at all. As much as it was an evil move to make against Cady, it really did shine a light on Regina‘s aura.
Aura was the name of the game for Regina in Mean Girls… until it wasn’t.
I feel like we started seeing cracks in Regina’s aura the deeper into the sabotage Cady, Janice, and Damian actually got. A huge reason Regina had so much aura is that she felt so confident in her body and knew she was a bad bitch. So when she was sabotaged with Kalteen bars that caused weight gain, it pretty much completely flipped her entire world upside down.
She started losing aura, not because she gained weight, but because she stopped feeling like the confident, sure-of-herself queen of the Plastics everyone once knew. She started wearing sweatpants, and she stopped making an effort with her wardrobe. From a viewer’s perspective, it didn’t really look like she gained much weight. She actually looked completely fine the entire time. But from her perspective, she let the little bit of weight gain consume her and ruin her own perception of herself.
Another massive aura hit for Regina was when Aaron found out she cheated on him with Shane Oman. This was an aura deduction of like 1,000 points because it’s never cutesy or endearing to be a cheater. Cheating on someone who loves you and trusts you is the most toxic breach of trust ever, and that’s exactly what Regina did.
She ironically never really wanted to get back with Aaron since she only rekindled her relationship with him to make Cady jealous. That being said, she secretly wanted to keep hooking up with Shane the entire time her relationship with Aaron was going on, which means she wanted to have her cake and eat it too. But she was exposed for it, and Aaron dumped her. So she found herself sobbing on her bed with her besties, playing the victim. And a huge chunk of the aura viewers saw in Regina disappeared in that moment. At least in my opinion.
Another aura deduction for Regina went down in her friendship fallout with Gretchen. Gretchen stopped automatically obeying every order from Regina. Gretchen started the movie completely obedient to Regina, doing everything in her power to stay in Regina‘s good graces. She always wanted to kiss up to Regina and stay on Regina‘s good side because she was obsessed with maintaining her position as one of the Plastics.
But by the end of the movie, Gretchen stopped functioning as Regina‘s lap dog. Gretchen switched up how she was operating socially. She started questioning their social hierarchy and wondering if Regina was still a queen bee worth serving. When Gretchen stopped obsessing over Regina‘s approval, their social dynamic kinda sorta crumbled in real time.
Another massive moment of aura loss for Regina was when she had her crash-out moment, screaming at the top of her lungs with chocolate stuck in her teeth in the middle of her hangout session with Shane. She went straight home, pulled out the Burn Book she made with her friends, and drew up a very vindictive page about herself that she intended to blame on Cady.
Although I do think her crash-out was completely valid, I also feel like it was evidence of aura loss. Girlies with aura tend to be composed in the face of chaos. They let things roll right off of them because they know how powerful, dominating, and incredible they really are. But Regina stopped seeing herself that way, which led her to have such an extreme reaction with such a volatile crash-out.
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