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Being compared to a beautiful actress is usually a compliment, but the one time that sticks with me most was when it wasn’t. That time, it was clear that the underlying message wasn’t that I had big eyes or cute bangs or looked like I could play a mean ukulele riff, but that I was two-dimensional—a character trope.
This one instance sticks with me because despite my best efforts to be appreciated as a full, three-dimensional human being in my interactions with men, I am often treated like Zooey Deschanel in her most reductive of roles—the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
The term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” was coined in 2007 by film critic Nathan Rabin. The most popularly cited examples in film include Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State, Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown and, of course, Zooey Deschanel’s character in 500 Days of Summer. Some other famous examples, like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’s Ramona Flowers or the eponymous Ruby Sparks, were intended to critique the trope, but inevitably contribute to the robust canon of female characters designed as vehicles for male wish fulfillment.
The essential feature of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is that she has no depth of character—her story exists only to further the protagonist’s. She dances into his sad, empty life and gives it meaning, usually by being pretty and quirky and liking cooler music than he does. Then she usually dances right back out, ephemeral, while he lives happily ever after with his character development. Though she plays an important role in the overall story, her thoughts, feelings, and motivations are rarely more than superficially examined because they are not important to the story.
I realized relatively recently that my longest-term boyfriend viewed me this way. Although I sincerely loved him, his feelings for me exceeded the scope of anything I could have realistically reciprocated. He told me he loved me a week after we started dating. He started dropping hints about marriage after a few months (I laughed those comments off, even though he seemed sincere—how do you respond to something like that at twenty?). A year into our relationship, I went away to Berlin for a month to study abroad. When I returned he told me, lovingly, that he had missed me so much he hadn’t talked to a single person face to face the whole time I’d been gone.
My true self wasn’t, and couldn’t be, an equal partner in that relationship. I’m not a believer in love at first sight—it’s just not realistic. It’s impossible to know a person deeply enough to tell them you love them within a week of knowing them. The idea that someone could reach that conclusion about me in such a short span of time cheapens the whole experience for me, and the intensity of this man’s affection did not indicate a person who loved me back, but one who put me on a pedestal.
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Image | Hana Nikcevic
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When our relationship ended ten months later, the volatility of his feelings became apparent. The night I broke up with him, he told me he would never love another person and fled the city to live with his parents for two months. When he returned, he pretended I didn’t exist. I still cared about him and wanted to at least maintain a polite rapport, since we worked in the same office. He refused to even meet my eye. He immediately left any room I entered, and if we happened to pass each other in the hall he’d turn away from me. To truly punctuate the completeness of my exit from his life, he entered a (Facebook official) relationship with one of our coworkers less than a month post-breakup. His last interaction with me was a mean text he sent on my birthday.
The inherent unhealthiness of this relationship and its fallout is obvious, but looking back on it always feels like a punch in the chest. To love someone earnestly only to realize they loved an idealized version of you—a role that could be filled by any girl—is devastating.
I would love to blame experiences like this on my physical resemblance to Ms. Deschanel, but I think the real reason is that a lot of guys really do think a girl can be the solution to all their problems.
Unfair expectations of emotional labour hide easily within the context of romantic relationships, since increased emotional support is a conventional element of these relationships. However, I know plenty of women who have experienced a similar level of emotional dependency from men they aren’t even in relationships with—myself included.
Recently, someone I was attempting to distance myself from told me, “I know you didn’t ask to be, but you’ve become such an important part of my life.” This person was a friend, not a romantic partner, and I had spent the past several months struggling to get him to treat me like one. He had constantly promised that he really wanted to be my friend and that he would set aside his unrequited romantic feelings to preserve that friendship. Still, he followed his alienating statement by saying, “I can’t lose you again.”
The friendship had been unhealthy from the start. Only a few months after we met, I had to ask him for space because he had been offloading his mental health problems onto me. This crossing of boundaries only escalated the longer we knew each other, and it evolved from demands of emotional support to appeals for physical comfort and attempts to negotiate with me to agree to date him. Periodically, I would beg him to turn to other friends, family, or a therapist for support, and his replies were always the same: I was the only one who truly understood him, the only person he could truly be himself around, and he didn’t know what he would do without me.
I should have cut him off much sooner, but I always relented, because when he was treating me like a human being, not a would-be girlfriend, I truly enjoyed our friendship. The burden of supporting a man who has made you the most important person in his life without your permission is exhausting and terrifying. The onslaught of his emotions left no room for my own feelings. I felt, at times, as though I would lose myself in the friendship.
Despite enduring the pressure of standing in for his social circle, his therapist, and (emotionally speaking) his girlfriend on and off for nearly two years, things only recently came to a head when I had an epiphany about how little my emotions mattered to him.
One night in early January, I broke up with my boyfriend. By coincidence, I had plans the same night to make dinner with this friend. I was sad about the breakup, but not devastated, so I didn’t bother to cancel. I found myself distracted and agitated, however, so I eventually let him know why I wasn’t feeling my normal self.
Armed with the knowledge that I had broken up with my boyfriend mere hours before our dinner, as I walked him out of my house, he stopped and said, “I think I’m in love with you.”
It shouldn’t have been surprising, after everything, but the sheer tactlessness of the timing floored me. I managed an awkward “I love you too”—hoping my tone could convey both “as a friend” and “I’m very uncomfortable right now,” because I lacked the emotional fortitude to say much else—and ushered him out of my home. Then I spent half an hour crying over my kitchen sink.
Later, over Facebook, he asked if he had made things worse for me, if it had been inappropriate. He was sorry if he had caused me stress but said that I had been “radiating good vibes” that night, so much so that he simply had to share his feelings, right then and there.
It hurts so much to genuinely care about a person who doesn’t see you. It isn’t romantic when a person looks at you and sees only positive things. It’s willfully ignorant, and it denies you fundamental elements of your humanity.
A person I used to know once told me they would only say they were in love with someone if the feeling was reciprocated, because being in love is a team effort. Without the consent of both parties, it isn’t really love. I think this applies to all healthy relationships. In real friendships and romantic relationships, both people are equally invested. There is give and take, a gradual development of mutual affection and support that benefits both people. When a guy Manic Pixie Dream Girl-zones you, he denies you a say in this process. When a guy makes you his Manic Pixie Dream Girl, you become responsible for his emotions without being granted the space to assert your own.
So many hallmarks of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Zone are played off as romantic gestures, but in practice, they strip women of their emotional agency. There is nothing flattering about a man who barely knows you telling you that you’re “the girl of his dreams.” There is nothing romantic about a man burdening you with his deepest fears and insecurities because “you’re the only one who gets it.” There is nothing loving about a guy waxing poetic about how “perfect” you are before you can even decide how you feel about him.
It has taken me a long time to accept that I am not responsible for anyone’s emotions but my own. After realizing, that night, that my friend would never see me as a real person and would never take responsibility for the way he felt about me, I had a much easier time finally letting go.
I don’t know what I can do about people comparing me to Zooey Deschanel. But I have decided not to let any more men cast me as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl in their story.
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