<p>I asked this in the essay forum but thought I would get some input from parents. In one of
my D’s short essays she is thinking of making a reference to the movie “Mean Girls”. Do you think that ad coms would know of this movie? Thanks!</p>
<p>Probably, yes. But whether the reference will work might depend on how specific it is. People are more likely to be familiar with the general concept of “mean girls” than with specific plot points or characters.</p>
<p>I don’t know. You don’t know who is reading it.
Some middle school girls I know were kidding around reciting lines from this movie to each other as a joke. A teacher did not recognize the reference and, thinking they were serious, sent them to the principal who also did not get the joke. I don’t know what your D is writing, but not knowing the reference could lead to misunderstanding. Perhaps she could cite the movie as a reference to make things clear, or use another way to explain her topic.</p>
<p>Pop culture references are OK only if they are explicit, or if they are so well-known and trans-generational that you can be certain people know them. If you want to compare someone to Darth Vader or Madonna, I think that’s pretty safe. Just dropping a Mean Girls line like “Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen” is not.</p>
<p>There was just a meme going around wrt the Obama/Romney debate that borrowed a speech from Mean Girls. My D read it to me, laughing, as she got it. I’ve seen the movie several times, but didn’t recognize it. I think you’d need to be pretty explicit in calling it out and making it understandable for someone not familiar with the movie.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t do it. I’ve never seen the movie and never will (doesn’t sound like my type of movie - sounds like a teenager type of movie) so any references to it would be totally lost on me if I was the adcom. </p>
<p>I don’t see a point in referring to a movie as if everyone’s seen it. Instead, make your own point without using the movie as some kind of standard, supporting argument, or whatever the reference is for.</p>
<p>S’ main essay included references to John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin) and John Entwhistle (of The Who). Since both were important parts of the essay and necessary to making his point, I suggested he treat those references as if the reader didn’t know who either musician was. </p>
<p>He took that advice without breaking the flow of the essay, I felt. </p>
<p>Perhaps if the Mean Girls reference is in doubt but important to the writer, a clarification can be added.</p>
<p>I don’t think most adults know Mean Girls as well as most kids do 
so I wouldn’t, unless it was written really explicitly. It’s a really funny movie but it’s bigger among teenagers and kids than adults.</p>
<p>“She doesn’t even go here!”</p>
<p>We can do Mean Girls references in our house alllllll day long. She’d get into OUR college :D</p>
<p>4 for you Glen Coco, you go glen coco!</p>
<p>^ hahahahahahahaha!</p>
<p>That’s why her hair is so big; it’s full of secrets.</p>
<p>“I don’t see a point in referring to a movie as if everyone’s seen it.”</p>
<p>Some movie references are so big that you don’t really need to have seen the movie. I really did work on an outstanding essay with a Darth Vader reference. I can’t believe there’s anyone employed in an undergraduate admissions office who doesn’t know who Darth Vader is, and the reference added a lot of humor and color to the piece. It would have ruined the rhythm of the essay to take a sentence to explain that Darth Vader is a helmeted movie villain from the “Star Wars” series. (It would have treated the reader like an idiot, too, IMHO). I think it would also have been fine to refer to Jaws, Scarlett O’Hara, Godzilla stomping on Tokyo, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore,” etc. Those are a matter of cultural literacy.</p>
<p>My Darth Vader kid got into Stanford, Princeton, Duke, Swarthmore, etc., so it turned out well. But much as I love Tina Fey, “Mean Girls” ain’t “Star Wars.”</p>
<p>“I’m not a regular mom.” I’m a cool mom!</p>
<p>Stupid question: where is the essay forum to which you are referring?</p>
<p>^^ [College</a> Essays - College Confidential](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-essays/]College”>College Essays - College Confidential Forums)</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>
Hanna:
Maybe I’ve been living under a rock or something but I think ‘Mean Girls’ isn’t nearly as big of a movie as and has a much more limited target audience (i.e. teenage girls) than the others you mentioned. I’d bet far less than 50% of adcoms (based on gender and age) have seen it or know detailed references to it.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen it…only know that was the name of a book Tina Fey wrote but I had/have three boys. What if it’s a guy adcom reading the essay…will a young to middle age guy get the quotes?</p>
<p>Recently, a guy approached me for a job, sending me a cell phone message (meaning too short, lacking punctuation and filled with abbreviations) asking me if we needed an MD for Europe.</p>
<p>I was wondering why we needed a doctor in Europe. Eventually, I figured out that he wasn’t a Medical Doctor, and wanted to become the Managing Director for our European subsidiary (and we don’t have a European subsidiary).</p>
<p>I was thoroughly confused, and this guy’s lack of clarity made him look like a buffoon.</p>
<p>The same goes for your daughter’s essay. Unless the movie reference is so much a part of everyday speech that everyone with an 8th grade education or higher will recognize it, she needs to assume that the admissions committee member hasn’t seen the movie. In that case, she’ll need to provide context from the movie so her essay will make sense. Mean Girls isn’t a movie where every phrase (or any phrase) has become part of the American language.</p>
<p>If her essay won’t work if she has to take a paragraph to explain Mean Girls and the scene from which her reference is coming from, she should leave that reference out of her essay.</p>
<p>I have a college freshman son who is fluent in Mean Girls, and had a heyday on Oct 3. The movie is huge among this generation of teens. </p>
<p>Still, I suspect this would be similar to quoting a a totally cool movies from my youth, I don’t know what, maybe Rocky Horror, Repo Man – (none of which I saw until they were long past cool) that I would probably not have expected an admission rep to be familiar with. </p>
<p>Agree that if you have to explain it, it isn’t working as an expression of yourself.</p>