Mean Girls turns 10 this week. But how to write a tribute to such a constant friend? 

I have a special bond to the film because it brought Amanda Seyfried to a world stage and so gave friends, acquaintances and on occasion complete strangers the opportunity to say “has anyone ever told you that you look like Karen from Mean Girls?” (Subtext: If you would stop sitting in your room eating cheese all day and start a hair-care regime beyond “washing it sometimes” you would look like what the stupid one from Mean Girls would have turned out like if she had gone off the rails and “done a Lindsay” instead of becoming Cosette and getting to snog Eddie Redmayne.)

Mean Girls jump-started the careers of so many great female actors. Amanda Seyfried, Rachel Adams, and Lizzie Caplan all got a huge boost from the film. Poehler and Fey showed exactly why their stints on SNL are thought of as the show’s golden years, going on to make proper funny, acerbic TV (Parks and Rec and 30 Rock hollah) with cool girls in it, rather than the mass of whingy girlfriends and bitchy schoolteachers that women are so often reduced to. Fey writes fully-rounded female characters and can interact with the societal pressures put on women to look good without reducing her characters or their worlds only to that limited concern. And of Lindsay, dear sweet Lindsay, can we not just look fondly back and say aye, it was a better time for thee? 

Mean Girls provided an answer to the tricky teenage question of “getting a film that both boys AND girls can watch”. As everyone knows, girls are reluctant to watch films about cars that have a single woman with pneumatic breasts being alluring and running in impractical shoes and teenage boys are frankly allergic to feelings. But Mean Girls is so achingly funny that everyone always enjoys it. Not to mention the fact that it provided us with a truly diverse range of heart-throbs from the strong armed, deep-eyed and surprisingly muscular Mr Duvall to the mathematically challenged Zac Efron-alike Aaron Samuels to the sexually ambitious (and surprisingly uplifting pep talk giving) Kevin Gnapoor. 

Mean Girls is blisteringly funny, but it also makes a serious point. Contrary to what Gretchen Weiners might assert, the “rules of feminism” are not “ex-boyfriends are off limits to friends”. The film came before the crest of fourth-wave feminism that we’re now experiencing, but when Ms Norbury says “You’ve got to stop calling each other sluts and whores; it just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores” she made a point about mutual female respect that endures. It also made clear the relentless stupidity of judging people based on how they look and how much women have to offer one another in terms of friendship and support: “I’m sorry I called you a gap-toothed bitch; it’s not your fault you’re so gap-toothed.”

So yeah, serious point aside, Mean Girls is just a proper funny film. You glean new little nuggets of filth from it on each re-watching; I can’t have been the only 10 year old who didn’t really understand why it was funny that the Coach gave out rubbers at the end of the abstinence-only Sex Ed class or spelt chlamydia “k-l-a…”. So on this, it’s 10th birthday, crack out the DVD and give yourself an exam term treat. Just remember— it’s Wednesday. I hope you’ve dressed accordingly.