Ramou Sarr of Hello Giggles watched Mean Girls on MTV and was displeased to discover that the channel had bleeped out the words “homosexual”, “gay”, “lesbian”, and “vagina”.
It was particularly interesting that in a movie whose message was about the problematic ways in which young women behave towards one another, “lesbian” and “vagina” were censored, but “whore” and “slut” were not. This is sending an incredibly complicated message to viewers. We’re encouraged to not use words like “homosexual,” even if we self-identify that way, and to be ashamed to call our vaginas vaginas, but you’ve got free rein to call girls sluts and whores, folks!
I’m especially baffled by the removal of “homosexual”, which has come to be a fairly clinical word now that self-identified homosexuals prefer to call themselves “gay”.