How TikTok Beauty Trends Influenced The Makeup In Mean Girls
The musical movie’s makeup team also reveals the secret to Regina’s “face breast.”
2024 has ushered in a new era of Mean Girls — and with it, a new set of Plastics (& co.) with enviable beauty looks.
Though the musical movie — starring Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, Chris Briney, and returning fave Tina Fey — keeps the flair of the 2004 film makeup alive, Mean Girls’ makeup department heads tell Elite Daily that their team couldn’t completely ignore the trends and influences of the last 20 years.
“We did ask the actors about the [influencers] that they looked up to [on TikTok and YouTube],” says Mean Girls lead MUA Shannon Renee, to get a sense of the cast members’ personal preferences. But many of them, including Rapp, were “open to anything that we were willing to do,” some of which were viral trends Gen Z audiences will already know and love.
An IRL TikTok Filter
Take Regina George’s homecoming court moment in which her hair and makeup were ~sabotaged~ by Janis, Damian, and Cady as an example. (“All we’ve done is make Regina hotter and revive the wet look,” quipped Damian in the trailer.)
Though this particular trend was hot in the ’90s, the lewk came back in recent years in large part due to the TikTok filter that makes it appear as if the user has runny mascara and bright eyeshadow.
“We wanted to make sure that we didn’t go too trendy, but we still referenced what these kids are looking at,” says fellow makeup department head Jenn ‘Jorge’ Nelson. “It’s a fine balance of acknowledging it, but not taking it literally.”
Mean Girls Meets Clean Girls
Though you won’t find any Kim K-level contouring in the film, Renee — who served as the key MUA for Rapp — does point out the inclusion of the viral no-makeup makeup, clean girl aesthetic.
“Never matte, we didn’t do a lot of contour and highlight,” she says, which is a stark contrast to the somewhat chalky looks from the Lindsay Lohan-led movie. “Instead, a lot of dewiness; we wanted the youthfulness and their skin to come through.”
The Sickest Beat
One character who had a major makeup overhaul from the early ’00s film was Janis Ian: 2004 Janis (played by Lizzy Caplan) was a moody Goth; 2024 Janis (played by Auli’i Cravalho) is a nonconformist artist — so the beauty team played around with more artsy, “far-out” makeup looks on Cravalho’s character.
“It wasn’t just Goth anymore,” says Nelson, who worked extensively with both Cravalho and Rice. “It was just like being a bad*ss and feeling free to express yourself and your art on your face, so that was a lot of fun.”
It’s Not Her Fault
Despite maintaining Rapp’s natural beauty — limiting her makeup to glossy lip oil and winged eyeliner for most of the film — the beauty team found a lot of pleasure in one of her not-as-picture-perfect moments.
According to Renee, they tried a lot of different special effects ideas to create Regina’s pimple; the one that stuck was made with small pearls that were flat on one side. “We tried different shapes of them and they were perfect, because you could just put foundation around it and the whiteness of the pearl just came through,” she says.
In the words of Avantika Vandanapu’s Karen Smith, it was “sexy, like a face breast.”
Makeup might not be the main character of the revamped version of Mean Girls, but it still plays a pivotal role in curating scenes that pay homage to the OG and introduce the classic to a new generation.
Mean Girls (2024) is now in theaters.
