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Is The Mean Girls Musical Giving Us Gay Regina George?! Here's Why Fans Think It Is
The new collab between Reneé Rapp and Megan Thee Stallion is raising questions.
The road leading up to the feature film adaptation of the Mean Girls musical has been a bumpy one, but we may have just gotten a clue that will make it all worth it—are we getting a gay Regina George??
Reneé Rapp, who is reprising her role as the The Plastics’ queen bee, and Megan Thee Stallion dropped a single from the movie this week that has fans clawing for answers.
“Not My Fault” riffs on one of Mean Girls’ many quotable lines—Cady solidifying her role as a mean girl by telling former friend Janis Ian, “It’s not my fault you’re like in love with me or something!”
The line, as delivered by Lindsay Lohan in the original movie, is sampled at the start of the song, and the lyrics make good use of the phrasing as well. But it also evolves into something more specifically Rapp, as the chorus hears her sing “It’s not my fault / You came with her but she might leave with me,” and the second first gets even more explicitly queer, ending on “Kiss a blonde, kiss a friend / Can a gay girl get an ‘Amen?’”
Regina George has been presumed straight in every canonical iteration of Mean Girls so far, and it’s entirely possible that “Not My Fault” is simply tied to Rapp’s own bisexuality rather than meant to be a clue about where the character is headed. But because it does have such deep ties to Mean Girls canon, is the first single released from the soundtrack, and sung by one of the stars, it’s literally impossible for fans not to wonder if we’re getting a gay Regina George for real.
There was a time when irredeemable villains were constantly queer coded, which was undoubtedly not the greatest thing to make up the majority of LGBTQ representation in mainstream media.
But since then, pop culture pendulum has seemed to swing from “Bury Your Gays” to the backlash prompting overly sanitized and safe depictions of queer characters and relationships. But with films like Bottoms and Do Revenge, it feels like we’re finally getting the chaotic queers so many people have been desperately craving on screen. And if Mean Girls wants to throw Regina George in the mix in all her hideous glory, we welcome it.
Rachel Kiley is presumably a writer and definitely not a terminator. She can usually be found crying over queerbaiting in the Pitch Perfect franchise or on Twitter, if not both.
Rachel Kiley is presumably a writer and definitely not a terminator. She can usually be found crying over queerbaiting in the Pitch Perfect franchise or on Twitter, if not both.
