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Essay: Odd Girl Out

Movie and Bullying.

Note: This essay analyzes the movie “Odd girl out” which treats topics such as bullying, peer
pressure, teenage suicide attempts, high school cliques among others that are discussed
throughout the analysis of the movie and its characters.
Essay: Odd girl out movie.
Bullies are well known social cliques in a high school society. These people (teenagers) are
responsible for what is known as bullying or teasing.

The American society sees this kind of behavior as some inevitable part of growing up, but
the truth is IT IS NOT. No kid should be bullied at school or suffer from constant teasing,
hard core pranks and even humiliation. Schools have to ensure a safe environment for
every single kid and teenager and as well, protect their integrity and personality, because
“when you’re teased or bullied it seems like you brought it on yourself for being different
or for not fitting in”1.

The movie Odd girl out is the story of an ordinary girl named Vanessa who goes to a public
school and belongs to a clique known as the popular girls. Their Queen bee (leader) is
Stacey, who happens to be Vanessa’s best friend, and there is Nikki who is secretly jealous
of Vanessa’s and Stacey’s friendship but pretends to like her in order to be part of the
group. However, even though Vanessa and Stacey are BFF’s, they are completely
different. Stacey has a very high social status and isn’t such a good student, as for
Vanessa, she’s a straight A’s student but does not have as much money as Stacey. The
problems begin when Nikki tricks Vanessa into inviting Tony (Stacey’s love interest) to
Stacey’s birthday party in order to make it look as if she was interested in him and create
resentment between Vanessa and Stacey.

After this, Stacey starts rumors about her and teases her about her weight, her hair, and
any other thing such as boy secrets or kiss and tells via internet (messenger or web page)
and during school hours. This brings Vanessa to a huge depression and to become anti-
social, worrying her mom and making her doubt her parenting skills. However a new
character comes in Emily, she proves to be Vanessa’s real friend and is the only one who
visits her at the hospital when she gets an overdose of sleeping pills. In a way Emily tries
to protect Vanessa from Stacey, Nikki, and the new member of the popular group Tiffany,

1
OBAMA Barack, It gets better campaign against bullying. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geyAFbSDPVk

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a former wannabe. They all do mean things to Vanessa and pretend to be her friends
afterwards. Vanessa is too naïve and believes in everything they say, forgiving them every
single time. In the end, Vanessa gets tired of all the bullying and takes a stand for herself.
She becomes BFF with Emily and develops a closer relationship with her mom. Stacey
leaves the school out of embarrassment and the popular clique without a leader.

If we analyze the film, we could divide the characters in the following way:

Primary Characters: Vanessa and Stacey.

Secondary Characters: Nikki, Tony, Tiffany, Vanessa’s mom, Stacey’s mom, and Emily

Next, we will analyze how the action of every character defines its position in the high
school hierarchy.

Primary characters are completely opposite personalities, which help to create the climax
of the story, but most importantly the problem. Stacey is the bully and Vanessa is the
bullied.

Stacey’s actions are the ones that place her in the bully position. She’s air headed, sweet
but evil has money and knows how to own the place when she enters it. She likes to have
things done her way and likes to criticize anyone that’s different.

Vanessa, on the other hand, has different types of actions and reactions. Even thought
she is a popular girl at the beginning of the story, she’s neither airheaded nor evil. She is
sweet and innocent and only owns the place when Stacey does (she lives under Stacey’s
shadow), but has some personal opinion and stands for what she believes. For instants
she is embarrassed of her straight A’s but she still stays humble, even when she knows all
her friends have straight F’s.

Secondary Characters are a medley of personalities. These help either to the resolution or
the climax of the story, but are not primarily the ones involved in it. They are like
accessories.

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Nikki is the second of Stacey’s BFFs. Her actions put her in the position of the mean girl of
the story. She feels resentment because she is not Stacey’s first BFF and is jealous of
Vanessa even though she is “poor” she has that desirable spot. Her actions towards
Vanessa (trying to get her out of the popular group, and humiliating her after she is out)
are the ones that place her in the position of the bully and as well the follower of the
strongest and most popular girl around (Stacey).

The next secondary character is Tony, who plays the stud or hot boy in the movie. He
earns this position by being part of an apparent basketball team. His actions show a lack
of personality because he only does what everyone else wants him to do. He appears to
be in love with Vanessa, but teases her when all the rumors appear. He follows Stacey’s
and Nikki’s command afterwards and pulls awful pranks on her. His actions during this
situation and along the whole movie classify him as the jock without a personality as well
as a bully.

Another secondary character is Tiffany. She does not belong to the popular group but
would do anything in order to enter it, even stand horrible comments from Nikki and
Stacey about her. She is what we would call a wannabe. When all the rumors about
Vanessa appear, she uses the scenario in order to enter the group and to stay in it she
follows all of Nikki and Stacey’s orders without questioning, even if this means harming
Vanessa.

Then we have both Stacey’s and Vanessa’s moms. They both defend their daughters to
the bone, but Stacey’s mom is a controlling b*!@ch that does not care at all about
Vanessa or the harm Stacey is causing her. Vanessa’s mom wants her daughter’s best
interest and helps her through her hardest times. At moments she feels like there is
nothing she can do, but overall she is just a good mother who thought that the best way
to avoid what was happening was if her daughter was popular, unlike her when she was in
high school. She realizes that she was wrong all along in forcing Vanessa’s friendship with
Stacey and she sees it better when Emily appears and proves to be Vanessa’s real friend.

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Finally, the most important secondary character, and the reason for Vanessa’s way to act
through the situation is Emily. She is an outsider that has always thought that that
popular girl group was made by stupid girls that only feel good about themselves when
hurting others. She helps Vanessa get a boost in her personality and in the end she is the
reason why Vanessa decides to confront Stacey and her little group of sluts. In my opinion
she is the character that best helps the movie develop the way it did. Without her,
Vanessa would have probably end killing herself or changing schools.

If I were in Vanessa’s situation I wouldn’t have let them do so much emotional damage on
me. First of all, in the moment Stacey pulled the first prank one me I would have sat her
down and set things straight. If she decided to continue teasing me, I would have gone to
adults to let them solve the problem, because I believe that violence does not solve
anything. If that didn’t work, considering that both Stacey and her mom is a couple of
controlling b*!@ches, I would have simply ignores all the stupid pranks via internet they
made. Vanessa mistake was that she let those girls get to her and every time she received
one of the pranks via online she opened them and cried instead of using that as a prove of
all the bullying and showing it to the principal. The best way to not let these kinds of
people hurt you is not caring about what they say because you are so much better than
them and they are not worth your time or your tears.

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Sources:

1. OBAMA Barack, It gets better campaign against bullying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geyAFbSDPVk
2. E! Investigates bullying.
3. The white house’s letter on bullying (Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Joe Biden)

http://www.mslbd.org/White_House_Letter_on_Bullying.pdf
4. It gets better. White House campaign against bullying. http://www.lacp.org/2010-

Articles-Main/102310-ItGetsBetter-WhiteHouse.htm
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_Girl_Out