Taking place in the Southern United States between Winter 1909 and Autumn 1937, the movie tells the life of a poor African American woman named Celie Harris (Whoopi Goldberg) whose abuse begins when she is young. By the time she is 14, she has already had two children by her father Alphonso "James" Harris (Leonard Jackson). He takes them away from her at childbirth and forces the young Celie (Desreta Jackson) to marry a wealthy young local widower Albert Johnson, known to her only as "Mister" (Danny Glover), who treats her like a slave. Albert makes her clean up his disorderly household and take care of his unruly children. Albert beats and rapes her often, intimidating Celie into submission and near silence. Celie's sister Nettie (Akosua Busia) comes to live with them, and there is a brief period of happiness as the sisters spend time together and Nettie begins to teach Celie how to read. This is short-lived; after Nettie refuses Albert's predatory affections once too often, he kicks her out. Before being run off by Albert, Nettie promises to write to Celie saying, "Nothing but death can keep me from it!".
In her senior year at the fictional CULA, girlish sorority president Elle Woods majors in fashion merchandising and is in love with her boyfriend, Warner Huntington III, who will attend Harvard Law School the following year. She excitedly expects him to ask her to marry him, but he breaks up with her instead, saying that he has to be with someone more "serious" if he plans on a career in politics.
In 1953, Katherine Ann Watson (Julia Roberts), a 30-year-old graduate student in the department of Art History at Oakland State, takes a position teaching "History of Art" at Wellesley College, a conservative women's private liberal arts college in Massachusetts, because she wants to make a difference and influence the next generation of women. At her first class, Katherine discovers that the girls have already memorized the entire syllabus from the textbook, so she instead uses the classes to introduce them to Modern Art and encourages spirited classroom discussions about topics such as what makes good art and what the Mona Lisa's smile means. This brings her into conflict with the conservative college president (Marian Seldes), who warns Katherine to stick to the syllabus if she wants to keep her job. Katherine comes to know many of the students in her class well and seeks to inspire them to achieve more for themselves as intelligent women than the expected convention of marriage to eligible young men. Joan Brandwyn (Julia Stiles) dreams of being a lawyer and has enrolled as pre-law, so Katherine encourages her to apply to Yale Law School, where she is accepted; Katherine finds her liberal sensibilities affronted when Joan's fiancé Tommy (Topher Grace) comments Joan "will always have that", intimating his own expectations of what his wife should be. Joan eventually elopes with Tommy, and professes to Katherine she is very happy—she had decided that what she wants most is to be a wife and mother after graduation and asks Katherine to respect her choice.
In 1988, Dottie Hinson attends the opening of the new All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame. She sees many of her former teammates and friends, prompting a flashback to 1943.
Evelyn Couch (Bates), a timid, unhappy housewife in her forties, meets elderly Virginia Threadgoode, known as Ninny (Tandy) in an Anderson, Alabama nursing home. Ninny, over several encounters with Evelyn, tells her the story of the now-abandoned town of Whistle Stop, and the people who lived there. The film's subplot concerns Evelyn's dissatisfaction with her marriage and her life, her growing confidence, and her developing friendship with Ninny. The narrative switches several times between Ninny's story, which is set between World War I and World War II, and Evelyn's life in 1980s Birmingham.
In 1918, the young Jiro Horikoshi longs to become a pilot, but his nearsightedness prevents it. He reads about the famous Italian aircraft designer Giovanni Battista Caproni, and dreams about him that night. In the dream, Caproni tells him that building planes is better than flying them.
At Middlebury College in 1969, four young friends, Elise Elliot (Goldie Hawn), Brenda Morelli (Bette Midler), Annie MacDuggan (Diane Keaton), and Cynthia Swann (Stockard Channing), are graduating. As graduation gifts, valedictorian Cynthia presents the girls with matching Bulgari pearl necklaces. As the graduates take a commemorative picture of the four of them (presumably for the last time), Cynthia makes Annie, Brenda and Elise promise that they will always be there for each other throughout the remainder of their lives.
At a national a cappella competition, Barden University's all-female acappella group, the Barden Bellas, perform well until Aubrey Posen (Anna Camp) vomits on stage during her solo. They are publicly humiliated, losing any chance of winning. Four months later, newly arrived Barden freshman Beca Mitchell (Anna Kendrick) has no desire to attend college, but she is forced to do so by her father (John Benjamin Hickey), a professor at the university, with whom Beca has a strained relationship. Wishing she could instead pursue a career as a music producer, Beca spends her time making mash-up mixes of songs and takes up an internship at the school radio station, where she gets to know fellow freshman Jesse Swanson (Skylar Astin).
Emma Allen (Anne Hathaway) and Olivia 'Liv' Lerner (Kate Hudson) are best friends who have planned every detail of their weddings, since first witnessing a wedding 20 years ago at the Plaza Hotel. Therefore, they both have made it a lifetime priority to be married in the same location in June.
Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda) is forced to find work after her husband, Dick (Lawrence Pressman), runs off with his secretary. Judy finds employment as a secretary at Consolidated Companies. The senior office supervisor, Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin), introduces Judy to the company and staff, including Mail Room Clerk Eddie , Alcoholic Margaret Foster and the sleazy Franklin Hart, Jr. (Dabney Coleman), and Roz Keith (Elizabeth Wilson), Hart's executive assistant. Violet reveals to Judy that Hart is supposedly involved with his buxom secretary, Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton). Hart exploits and mistreats his female subordinates, with backstabbing and sexist remarks. He cruelly yells at and threatens Judy on her first day after an equipment malfunction and sexually harasses Doralee, spreading rumors about an affair that never happened.
Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman) is a successful reality television executive producer. She is fired after her latest project, a show called I Can Do Better, where spouses choose between each other or prostitutes, results in one of the jilted men going on a shooting spree and attempts to assassinate Joanna, and she has a nervous breakdown. With her husband Walter (Matthew Broderick) and their two children, they move from Manhattan to Stepford, a quiet Connecticut suburb.
The film begins with the Spice Girls performing "Too Much" on Top of the Pops, but they later become dissatisfied with the burdens of it. Meanwhile, sinister newspaper owner Kevin McMaxford (Barry Humphries) is attempting to ruin the girls' reputation for his newspaper's ratings. McMaxford dispatches photographer Damien (Richard O'Brien) to take pictures and tape recordings of the girls. Less threatening but more annoying is documentarian Piers Cuthbertson-Smyth (Alan Cumming), who stalks the girls along with his camera crew, hoping to use them as subjects for his next project. At the same time, the girls' manager, Clifford (Richard E. Grant), is fending off two over-eager Hollywood writers, named Martin Barnfield and Graydon (George Wendt and Mark McKinney), who relentlessly pitch absurd plot ideas for a feature film for the Spice Girls.
Annelle Dupuy (Daryl Hannah), a reserved and ditzy beauty school graduate, is hired by Truvy Jones (Dolly Parton) to work in her home-based beauty salon in northwestern Louisiana. At the same time in another part of the neighbourhood, M'Lynn Eatenton (Sally Field) and her daughter, Shelby (Julia Roberts), are preparing for Shelby's wedding day, which is taking place later that day. They arrive, along with Clairee Belcher (Olympia Dukakis), the cheerful widow of the late former mayor, to have their hair done. Suddenly, Shelby, who has type one diabetes, falls into a hypoglycemic state but recovers quickly with the help of her mother's persistence and quick thinking. M'Lynn explains that Shelby was recently informed by doctors that she isn't able to have children.
In the 1960s, a young woman nicknamed Babydoll (Emily Browning) is institutionalized by her abusive widowed stepfather (Gerard Plunkett) at the Lennox House for the Mentally Insane after she is blamed for the death of her younger sister. The stepfather bribes Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac), an asylum orderly, into forging the signature of the asylum's psychiatrist, Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino), to have Babydoll lobotomized so she cannot inform the authorities of the true circumstances leading to her sister's death. During her admission to the institution, Babydoll takes note of four items that she would need to attempt an escape.