Mean Girls is 20 years old – but here’s what Jesus would write about me in the Burn Book

As Lindsay Lohan’s classic teen romcom turns 20, writer and mega-fan Lauren Windle shares her thoughts on why the cult classic film has stood the test of time.

Get ready to choke on your tea… as of 2024, Mean Girls is 20 years old! That is so not fetch. It’s been two decades since Lindsay Lohan introduced us to the ‘cliques’ and ‘freaks’ of North Shore High School and the cult classic film still endures. 

To mark the anniversary, there’s a new behind-the-scenes book out and the hit Broadway musical Mean Girls is coming to the UK. I don’t know if I’m proud or ashamed to tell you that I saw it when I was in New York in 2018, on a Wednesday, wearing pink.

All jokes aside (for a few paragraphs at least) I’ve been thinking about popularity of the teen movie. It was released at the tail end of a run of 90s and 00s high school romcoms that saw Drew Barrymore never be kissed and Freddie Prince Jr. reassure a woman that she was all that. We remember them, but aside from the OG (of course, I mean Clueless), none of the others stand out in our affections in the same way as Mean Girls.