t started with Valley Girl. In 1984, I was Nicolas Cage's Randy on the outside, Deborah Foreman's Julie on the inside. The previous year I had memorized Fast Times at Ridgemont High like every other guy in my class, but when I saw Valley Girl, something happened inside my Spicoli-aspiring soul. I was transformed.
    Valley Girl's New Wave take on the Romeo and Juliet story stirred my soul in ways I knew I shouldn't talk about with my friends. Somewhere between the opening credits and the final chords of Modern English's "Melt With You," I had fallen under the spell of a love that dared not speak its name. Sure, I would watch Repo Man and Mad Max and all the other teen guy films of the day, but then I would sneak off by myself to watch teen girl movies like Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink.
    Nearly ten years later, by the time Clueless rolled, I was out of the closet as a fan of teen girl movies. I loved watching these smart, sassy heroines overcome peer pressure and social obstacles to reach self-realization and get the hottie. From Bring it On to Ten Things I Hate About You to Legally Blonde to Freaky Friday (the new version), if there was a plucky teenage girl heroine, Hollywood could count on me plunking down good money to sit in the theater and cheer her on. I could identify. My inner sixteen-year-old girl was achingly lonely and needed some encouragement. She was still waiting for someone to take off her glasses, give her a makeover and turn her from bookworm to prom queen.
    

promotion

And then came Mean Girls. Apparently, somewhere along the way, my inner sixteen-year-old girl grew up into a guy. I sat in the theater on a Saturday morning, surrounded by teen girls and their parents, and I suddenly felt like a dirty old man. Partly because a single man my age in a sea of underage girls tends to look suspicious, and partially because, as I watched the movie, I didn't identify with Lindsay Lohan. I lusted after her. I sat there thinking, "Damn, she's hot," and not in my normal, "Damn she's hot in that fabulous outfit!" kind of way. After the movie ended and the lights came up, I walked the streets trying to figure out what had changed — the movies or me?
    Mean Girls is a significant milestone in the teen-girl movie genre. First, it is a departure because of the way it treats its subjects. In Valley Girl, the Teen Girl Group comprises mostly benevolent enforcers of social conformity who gather primarily to talk about guys. From Heathers to Jawbreaker, the Teen Girl Group is something to be feared and marveled at, but its power is undercut by the essential vapidity of the members. In Mean Girls, however, we not only see the importance of the Girl Group. But the ways in which its power is constructed and wielded in the community at large. While Tina Fey mocks the girls' pettiness via the "Burn Book" (wherein the girls rage against their peers and teachers), she reveals that these preoccupations as only surface manifestations of deeper concerns. These are smart, powerful girls. (Well, with the exception of Karen Smith, who feels her breasts to divine the weather forecast.)
    The other major breakthrough in Mean Girls is Lindsay Lohan's interpretation of Cady Heron. She is much more "real" than most of her predecessors. Where Alicia Silverstone's Cher Horwitz and Reese Witherspoon's Elle Woods were clever, Cady is actually intelligent. And where Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink managed to convince Andrew McCarthy to fall for her because of her quirkiness, Cady is the first girl to be quirky, smart and hot. The kind of hot usually reserved for the slutty archrival. Because of this unprecedented mixture of different social types, Cady is a new heroine. She can choose how she presents herself socially; she must live with the consequences of those choices.
    

I've been living as an out gay man for nearly fifteen years, but watching Lindsay Lohan gave me a strange new erotic charge.

But let's get back to how hot she is. Ah, Lindsay, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lindsay Lohan. She stands alone among the current crop of nubile nymphets (and I mean that in the full Nabokovian sense of the word). Only Ms. Lohan has found a way to sit perfectly in the enigmatic middle of the Madonna/whore spectrum. On one side we have the blatant, unthinking sluttiness of Britney, Christina and Jessica; on the other we have the near-Mormon purity of the Olsen Twins and Hillary Duff. And then there is Lindsay Lohan. Only seventeen and already possessed of a stunning, adult beauty from another era, akin to a young Ann-Margret. (Ann-Margret, by the way, went to New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, which I believe is the model for the high school in Mean Girls. She also went to Northwestern University, also featured in the film. I'm not suggesting Tina Fey made any meta-meta-references to Ann-Margret, but it is kind of eerie).
    Lohan's Cady is a remarkable union of opposites. She is a Mathlete, she is a vixen, she is a tomboy, she is a Plastic. She is simultaneously voluptuous and awkward. I choose to believe this makes her more real — and never before have I felt more like Humbert Humbert.
     While I have, over the years, come to consider myself polymorphously perverse, never before has the object of my lust made me a criminal. (Except, perhaps, once upon a time in Georgia and/or Texas.) But watching Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls gave me a strange new erotic charge. I've been living as an out gay man for nearly fifteen years, and although I have, on occasion, had momentary indiscretions with the fairer sex, I generally know where my predilections lie. But in some ways being gay is like being trapped in ninth grade for the rest of your life. By and large, being in the company of adult gay men is like being in a teen girl movie, complete with ogling dreamy guys and worrying about outfits. We are a small, stateless tribe of Peter Pans, the embodiment of Jung's archetype of the puer aeternus. At the same time, we are men often devoted to a life of sexual adventurousness. I have personally been around several blocks with many people of both sexes in various permutations. Trust me, it's exhausting.
    As I sat in the theater watching Mean Girls I no longer wanted to be a sexually jaded Peter Pan. I wanted to be a grown-up. I wanted to be innocent. I suppose this is the classic midlife crisis, only I've never actually grown up. But I wanted Lindsay Lohan and all that she stands for. I flashed back to those first furtive fumblings of high school, when two people are poised at the edge of the unknown, when the geography of the body is still uncharted.  n°

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Andy Horwitz is a writer and performer living in New York City. His monologues have been called everything from "high-octane, raucous comedy" to "inquisitive and insightful." His writing has appeared in Heeb, The Seattle Stranger and various anthologies. He edits the alternative performance blog Culturebot.org and in 2005 ran for Mayor of New York City, a performance project documented online at andyformayor.org.