One of the mesmerizing things about Hair and Makeup Design is how creating subtle, everyday looks can be equally as impactful as creating gregarious looks and spending hours in the makeup chair. The new Mean Girls is no exception to this rule. With an adept hair and makeup team, the artists have created a look that is honest to teenagers of our times while keeping the one factor that never goes out of fashion: the blonde bombshell.
They have found their new muse in Reneé Rapp, the glamorous and seductive pop artist, a modern teen sensation, and a blonde who can fully embody who the contemporary version of Regina George will be. A Queen Bey of sorts comes to mind. Regina has to be the queen reigning over the high school system. Who’s a better source of inspiration than Beyoncé herself to portray an air of supremacy without veering into the hot-ice queen-woman trope that is usually harmful to women? Arguably, Regina has to be an insidious version of all the torturous, beautiful girls we’ve seen, befriended, and fallen victim to in school. But, the 2024 film’s tone is more subdued and family-friendly than the original.
It has an abrasive nature to it, mending some of the underlying racism of the original, allowing queer-coded characters like Janice (now played by Auli’i Cravalho) to be openly queer, which is a major upgrade from the original. Conversely, it underplays how genuinely cruel girls can be toward one another. By alleviating the negative undertone of women on women meanness stereotypes, it eliminates the fact that for a film about mean girls to thrive, girls have to be mean.
But setting the context aside, the film excels aesthetically by relying on the modernity of the times. The excessiveness next to naturalism. Acne scars next to perfect press-on nails and makeup perfected after TikTok tutorials. This modern Mean Girls reimagining succeeds in transporting the modernity and vignette-specificity of young Gen-Zers as much as the original stayed true to the early aughts, what with casting Teen Queen Lindsay Lohan, with her cute but diva personality that both polarizes and creates a complexity of Cady, unlike Angourie Rice whose innocence remains and retains throughout the film.
So, what do the hair and makeup tell about the story? Regina’s Queen Bey-coded, meaning she is a diva, a queen, but never an actual mean person. That’s not what the Beyoncé brand is all about. Modern beauty at the top of the hierarchy system is more Ana De Armas and Sydney Sweeney than Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Women are sweet, empowered, willing to lift other women, positive, and girl power-y. Pop stars of the 2000s were more vicious and snide, more aware of their alienation from the crowd. Regina’s timeless, gorgeous, but unthreatening. She’s a beauty queen, but her look feels recreational. Something about the modern hair and makeup culture, recreating celebrity looks and aesthetics, makes this modern reimagining very culturally appropriate, one that we can reflect on ten years from now with renewed respect.
The girls’ skins look healthier but also more time-specific. In the original, actresses have had the full makeup circle, contouring, highlighters, and matte involved. Here, it’s all about skin tint and retouch concealer. Janice is no longer goth because goth is dead, but an artist experimenting with her looks a true TikTok hair and makeup sensation, but from the other side of the tracks. Cady is very clear-skin and no-makeup makeup, a stark contrast to the original, where Lindsay Lohan had her face chalked up with highlighters and contouring to blind the viewers, although very fitting of the times when the Kim K. makeup routine of excess was on the rise. Regina’s tank top is not sabotaged (circa the 2004 original), but her makeup, giving her the TikTok trendy runny mascara and bright eyeshadow.
Mean Girls uses hair and makeup to tell the story of a self-dependent and expressive generation, which may be too expressive for the critical eyes of millennials. Their version of Mean Girls is not a shadow of the original but a retelling of the narrative in washed-up but highly aestheticized notes. In other words, a Gen Z movie is an ode to the times, snippets, filters, and edits in check.
