‘So Fetch’ — The Book About ‘Mean Girls’ 20 years after the movie

Two decades after it first debuted, the movie ‘Mean Girls’ has never been more popular. A cinematic remake has just been released — along with “So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We’re Still So Obsessed With It” ( Dey Street, out Tuesday) by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. The book tracks the meteoric rise of “Mean Girl,” which has become such a quotable pop culture mainstay that even Hilary Clinton used a “Why are you so obsessed with me” quip against Donald Trump a few years back.

‘Mean Girls’ quotes have become a shorthand in the Internet lexicon — and the movie’s themes about friendship and fitting in remain as relevant today as when it first debuted. “ ‘Mean Girls’ would connect with millions by taking young women’s problems seriously while also being very funny,” Armstrong writes, adding that the humor is the “quotable kind of funny” that had previously been found in male skewing comedies like “Caddyshack” or “Anchorman.” Armstrong argues that this quotability keeps the film relevant, especially as it launched right before the GIF era.

“It became one of Web 2.0’s massive cult hits, growing the film’s influence as its GIFs fluttered across the world,” Armstrong explains. “Mean Girls” also helped launch the careers of Lindsay Lohan, who plays new girl turned queen bee Cady Heron, and Rachel McAdams, the villain turned victim Regina George.

As their reputations took shape in real life — Lohan as a precocious party girl, McAdams as a sweet ingénue — Armstrong sees parallels between the movie’s key themes and society’s treatment of women. “In ‘Mean Girls,’ you could consider any of the main female characters to be the movie’s villain or hero, depending on your perspective,” she writes.

In this way, “Mean Girls” tackled complex notions about feminism, dressed in a hot pink wrapper with endless sharable moments. Beloved by millennials, Armstrong notes that the movie has also become a Gen Z favorite. And Armstrong insists the film’s appeal will continue to stand the test of time.

“As long as kids keep worrying about fitting in and fretting about what their peers think of them,” Armstrong writes, “there’s a good chance they’ll be saying, “You can’t sit with us.”.