Regina George, C.S. Lewis, and Inner Rings

It's hard to believe that after high school, people are still wrapped up in being in "The Inner Ring." Weather it's at work or at school people are so focused on getting into to this fake VIP club that they perceive as eternal popularity. But what's so great about Inner Rings anyway? C.S. Lewis explains that after you have final joined these people you have longed to be friends with, they push you to do things you may have not expected. "you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit." Why would you want to be a part of a group that pressures you to make decisions you're not comfortable with? I can relate the inner ring directly to the movie Mean Girls. Once Cady joins the Plastics she mus conform to their rules such as wearing pink on Wednesdays. Now Cady doesn't want to really become a member of the Plastics, she is just spying on them to dig up dirty laundry. But as C.S. Lewis says once you enter you never want to turn back. Cady becomes a Plastic through and through, she knows she's being fake and two-faced , but she can't help it. Lewis says that "of all the passions the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bed man do very bad things." Cady, a sweet girl from Africa is now a backstabbing Plastic.

Here is the main reason I believe people stay in their inner rings instead of being individual and breaking out, "one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside." Just like one of the members in the plastics, Gretchen, who knew that being in the Plastics is better than not, even if the Ring leader, in this case Regina George despises her.

I guess no matter where we go we will always have this want to conform to the Inner Ring, we just have to remember that it's not always worth it to become a member and it's much more fun to find a group you mesh well with and where you can be yourself.