With a Mean Girls reimagining around the corner, let’s take a look at the theories surrounding its iconic villain’s sexuality
BY NIC CROSARA
The 2004 Mean Girls film is a staple high school film. Decades after its release and many of us are still dressing up as the iconic characters for Halloween and regularly quoting the film. It’s a queer classic and its hopefully about to get even queerer in the 2024 musical movie imagining.
Bisexual actor and musician Reneé Rapp will be stepping into the pink high heels of iconic villain Regina George (she also previously portrayed the character in the Broadway musical). And recently the star posted a mirror selfie to Instagram with the caption reading: “Regina George was a lesbian.”
While LGBTQIA audiences around the world are expecting the upcoming take on Mean Girls to be more overtly queer than the original, there have been many fan theories surrounding the iconic villain’s sexuality. And Reneé’s recent post makes it seem that she is in total agreement.
For the uninitiated, the original Mean Girls film follows Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) as she joins a new school. She’s thrust into the world of the hierarchical high school and is taken in by “The Misfits”. The group plot and scheme on how to get Cady to infiltrate the most popular girls in school aka “The Plastics” which has Regina George (Rachel McAdams) as its leader. Regina George is many things: rich, manipulative and mean. She’s also, to many fans, a closeted lesbian.
So why do people believe that Regina George is a lesbian?
Back in 2021, TikTok user @lizzie.mchigher posted her Mean Girls theory to the platform. In it she shares that she’s convinced that Regina George is a lesbian and she has her receipts as to why that is.
@lizzie.mchigher 💖 #meangirls #girlsgaysandtheys ♬ Bomb Intro / Pass That Dutch – Missy Elliott
Lizzie stressed how prevalent queer panic is in the film. When making this point she inserts a clip of Regina saying she “couldn’t have a lesbian at the party” in reference to Janis Ian. Incase you forget, this is because she mistook Janis being Lebanese for being a lesbian.
She also points out that while Regina claims that Janis would check out girls, she herself regularly does so as she deals out critiques on their appearances and fashion choices. Lizzie points out another example of Regina exhibiting signs of compulsory cisheterosexuality and being a closeted lesbian: her apparent disinterest in her boyfriend Aaron Samuels.
Regina’s arc ends up with her joining the lacrosse team and a group of women literally jumping on top of her. Could this have been the film’s way of covertly hinting that Regina had embraced her authentic self and desires?
Mean Girls came out at a time when same-sex couples were still not allowed to marry and the words “queer”, “gay” and “lesbian” were very much often used as slurs. We see time and time again throughout the film that being LGBTQIA in school is not easy. Damian, who is openly queer, is considered an outcast and in the infamous Burn Book, which Regina created to throw shade at other girls in the school, Janis is labelled as a “dyke”.
So will the upcoming Mean Girls musical movie make Regina overtly gay?
There’s no doubt that Reneé Rapp’s version of the high school Queen Bee serves up big gay vibes in the trailer. And we know The Sex Lives Of College Girls star is certainly in support of theories surrounding Regina’s sexuality as we saw in a viral video from the musician live in concert last year. In the clip, we see Reneé acknowledge a fan’s sign that reads “Regina is a lesbian”. “She is,” Reneé told the crowd. “It’s so true, and I heard that from God. He told me.”
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