Janis Ian from “Mean Girls” Should Have Been Gay
She could have been the early-2000s lesbian representation we needed.
A few weeks ago, I made my girlfriend watch Mean Girls. She’d never seen it before, and since it’s one of my favorite movies, I always enjoy getting to see someone experience it for the first time.
As I predicted, she loved it. In fact, after it was over, she tweeted, “Just watched Mean Girls. Y’all have [Ellie] to thank for opening my eyes to the true meme masterpiece.”
There’s a reason this film has spawned countless memes. Its cleverly written dialogue has led to some lines that have become iconic in pop culture. October 3, which was actually the day my girlfriend watched the movie, has unofficially become “Mean Girls Day” due to a brief, haphazard line mentioning that specific date.
As fun as it still is to watch this flick, even 16 years after its release, it stirs up mixed feelings in me.
On one hand, it’s genuinely one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. It has a great message. The soundtrack and wardrobe choices are so painfully early 2000s, and I love it. As someone born on the cusp of the millennial/Gen Z divide, I’m quite nostalgic for that era.
But then, there’s the gay representation in that movie.
It might be silly to try and unpack the social politics of a rom-com chick flick. Some might say I should just shut up and enjoy the movie. But I’m a lesbian and a highly political one at that. I can’t help but analyze how gay people are portrayed in the media.
And as great as virtually every other aspect of Mean Girls is, that’s the one area that leaves something to be desired.
Then, the other day, I read a great piece by another queer writer named Till Kaeslin, in which he discusses how it’s great to have a positive (i.e., non-tragic) representation of a gay character. However, I agree with his interpretation that Damian was pretty much a walking stereotype.
He has a stereotypical gay male manner of speech, he passionately sings Christina Aguilera songs, and he prefers being friends with girls rather than guys. He even goes so far as to use the women’s restroom and sneak into an assembly for all of the junior class girls.
Whenever these moments occur in the film, we’re meant to laugh. It’s as if the idea of a gay boy just being himself is meant to be funny.
I highly recommend reading Till’s article for yourself.
It got me thinking about another aspect of the movie, something that has frustrated me for years.
Why didn’t they also make Janis Ian gay?
In addition to naming her after a famous lesbian singer-songwriter (because boy howdy, does Tina Fey love a stereotype), the film already has a queer storyline for Janis set up.
About halfway through the movie, we find out that in middle school, she was actually best friends with queen bee Regina George. At some point, rumors started flying about Janis being a lesbian. Regina then ended their friendship, and Janis returned on the first day of high school sporting a shaved head and stereotypically lesbian clothing.
From there, Janis was pretty much an outcast. Before the protagonist Cady shows up, her only friend is Damian.
Now, I understand that it can be common for a gay man and a straight woman to be best friends. But realistically, I don’t think that’s the case here.
At the start of her freshman year, Janis presumably had no friends because of the gay rumors about her. One could easily assume that Damian, who appears to have no friends except Janis (and later Cady), understood what she was going through, being a lonely gay outcast himself, and befriended her.
The film takes place two years later, during their junior year. When introducing Damian to Cady, Janis says he’s “too gay to function.” Later, this line returns when they find out it was written in the Burn Book, and Janis exclaims, “That’s only okay when I say it!”
While this could be a case of Damian telling Janis, “Okay, I’ll let you make fun of my gayness because you’re my friend,” I can’t really picture a straight girl doing this. As a lesbian myself, I tease my queer friends about being gay all the time. Specifically, I often use the phrase “too gay to function.”
This sentiment seems to have been popular in queer spaces for quite some time. A famous Sappho poem fragment even reads:
“Sweet mother, I cannot weave —
slender Aphrodite has overcome me
with longing for a girl.”
Sappho was the OG “too gay to function.”
To me, Janis teasing Damian about how gay he is seems like something that one gay bestie would do to another.
Maybe it’s just me, but if a straight friend of mine teased me about my gayness that often, I would start to suspect at least a little bit of homophobia under the surface.
Speaking of homophobia, Janis suffers from this kind of prejudice throughout the movie.
The film’s plot centers around new girl Cady pretending to be friends with Regina and her cronies so she can spy on them and report back to Janis and Damian. Despite her best efforts, Cady gets sucked into the toxic high-school popular-girl drama and transforms into a sort-of clone of Regina.
At the height of Cady’s popularity, Janis (with Damian in tow) confronts her after a party that Cady threw on the night of Janis’ art show and kept secret from them.
Janis basically calls Cady out on her bullshit until Cady retorts, “You know what? It’s not my fault you’re, like, in love with me or something!”
After Damian lets out a stereotypical “Oh no, she did not,” Janis yells at Cady and they angrily drive away.
In this scene, we’re led to believe that even being implied to have a same-gender crush is something to be ashamed of.
That same night, Regina founds out Cady has been sabotaging her the whole time. On Monday morning, she releases her Burn Book, where she and her friends have been privately roasting other girls (and Damian). Of course, next to Janis Ian’s name was just the word “dyke.”
Chaos ensues, and all of the junior year girls (plus Damian in disguise) are assembled into the gym. As a trust exercise, each girl stands on a podium, apologizes for being mean to the other girls, and falls into the crowd, letting the rest of the girls catch her.
When it’s her turn, Janis reveals the plan she and Cady devised at the beginning of the year to infiltrate Regina’s group and bring them down. She ends her speech by explaining why she was so “obsessed” with Regina, giving us the iconic line, “I guess it’s probably because I’ve got a big lezzzzbian crush on you. Suck on that!” She falls into the crowd of girls as they cheer for her.
Fast forward to the climax of the movie, the Spring Fling. Not only has Janis gel-sculpted her hair back, but she and Damian are wearing matching tuxedos that are purple, a color that has historically been associated with homosexuality. (Remember the kerfuffle about the Teletubbies because people thought the purple one was gay?)
She’s going to the dance with a gay man as her date. They’re bearding for each other.
Out of nowhere, mathlete Kevin Gnapoor starts dancing with Janis and asks her, “What are you? Puerto Rican?” (Earlier in the movie, he mentions that he only dates women of color.) She replies, “Lebanese.” She looks disgruntled the entire time, but she continues to dance with him.
In the final scene, they appear to be a happy new couple, and we see them kiss as they eat lunch with their friends.
I first watched this movie back when I thought I was straight. I had a very heteronormative mindset. Still, having Janis end up with a random male character always rubbed me the wrong way.
I’ve seen popular social media posts claim that the rumors about Janis started because someone heard her say she was Lebanese and misheard it as “lesbian.” That she wasn’t actually gay, she was just “alternative” or a “tomboy.”
For a while, I believed that interpretation. But as I started to come to terms with my own queer identity, I began to recognize signs of queerness in Janis.
Obviously, bisexuality exists. That could easily explain how she ends up with Kevin. But personally, I see her as a lesbian, not bisexual. After all, she looks absolutely disgusted when Kevin dances with her.
Plus, there’s the fact that she and Damian briefly succumb to the romantic atmosphere of the dance and share a kiss. However, they instantly pull back, realizing how wrong that was. They have very similar reactions of revulsion after kissing someone of a different gender.
To me, it seems likely that Janis only agreed to date Kevin in order to get the lesbian rumors off her back. That could be why she acts so lovey-dovey with him in the epilogue. She wants to give a convincing performance.
Honestly, I would have preferred if Kevin came up to dance with Damian instead. Because he is relegated to the role of Gay Best Friend, he has no romantic interest at any point in the movie. Personally, I think he deserves more.
I think Janis deserves more too. She’s been through so much homophobic bullying in her life, and we’re supposed to believe that a relationship with a random dude will magically fix that?
Lastly, I think that queer women who are fans of this movie also deserve more. Granted, this was the early 2000s, and most people seemed to harbor at least a casual amount of homophobia. But queer women deserve to have our identities not seen as something that warrants bullying, harassment, or ostracization. Queer women deserve to be celebrated as the beautiful, complex human beings we are.
