How is twenty-first century femininity being re-defined by popular literature?
Ultraviolence hums softly on a vinyl player as her red fingertips flip through a Sally Rooney novel. A cigarette burns in her other hand, smoke swirling above her Sofia Coppola film poster. Sat on her bedside table is a stack of books that the internet told her to buy. She is femininity re-defined.
Female rage, female melancholia, and unlikeable female protagonists are rising in popularity among young women. This cultural phenomenon explores the more ‘deviant’ side of the female experience that the literary canon has traditionally ignored. Alongside ‘Hot Girl Books,’ niche internet aesthetics such as ‘Dark Academia’ and ‘Cottagecore’ have become ways in which girls model their identity, transcending the world of online media. With the help of BookTok and Pinterest, for twenty-first-century women, reading is officially cool again. ‘Hot Girl Books’ are now cultural capital within the world of womanhood, and she who has read Gone Girl, The Virgin Suicides, The Bell Jar, Normal People, and My Year of Rest and Relaxation etc. is the coolest of them all.
Though an average reader may not relate to framing their husbands for murder, Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne resonates with a female audience through her pent-up rage against patriarchal structures. Amy would most probably be a diagnosed psychopath in the real world but she is not just another Mad Woman—the archetypal female character suffering from hysteria. Her insane actions are, ultimately, rationalised and understandable. Her iconic ‘Cool Girl’ monologue illustrates the horrors of womanhood, in which femininity is a cruel and murderous performance under the male gaze. Similarly, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar documents the depravity of gender performance, and Plath herself has also become a martyr for the woman scorned. It is pervertedly satisfying to see Amy achieve what she believes is vengeance—even if it is through terrifyingly grotesque and immoral means—as it liberates the ‘unacceptable’ side of the female experience. Alongside films such as Promising Young Woman that exist within the same ‘Good for Her’ genre, ‘Hot Girl Books’ embody the Unhinged Girl’s fantasy of acting out against the patriarchal institution with unbridled rage.
Female tragedy has always been romanticised by predominantly male authors, with some notable examples stretching as far back as Shakespeare’s Ophelia in Hamlet. In fact, one interpretation of the novel The Virgin Suicides is that it specifically critiques the dangers of the male gaze and the sexualisation of female melancholia. Although there remains an undying fixation on female melancholia, twenty-first century ‘Hot Girl’ readers investigate the causes of female tragedy and how it affects their social relations rather than the romanticisation of sadness itself.
Sally Rooney’s novels have met such success, arguably because of her depiction of female melancholia and sexuality. Marianne of Rooney’s Normal People is insecure and self-destructive; however, she is not our twenty-first century Ophelia. Despite her self-destructive tendencies and over-reliance on male validation, Marianne remains an empathetic, intelligent, and initiative woman who eventually gains strength and confidence. Marianne, like Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag, is a sexual person, but not a sexualised character. The current focus on women as sexual agents is distinct from the obsession with feminine sex appeal under the male gaze. Instead, it is a cultural paradigm shift toward the female gaze where women dissect their social identity through experiences of love and desire. It is, fundamentally, a reclamation of female sexuality.
Marianne and Fleabag actively enjoy sex and at times, have sex for reasons that would traditionally mark them as ‘bad feminists.’ While they eventually underscore the destruction it could bring, they do not pretend that the momentary reward and the subsequent shame of doing so do not exist. They do not ignore the existence of the male gaze. At the beginning of their arcs, Fleabag gets upset when she is not catcalled and unashamedly wishes for the so-called perfect body. Meanwhile, Marianne only seems to feel a secure identity when she is validated by male sexual attention. Twenty-first century women are not looking for the next Wonder Woman or Joan of Arc girlboss. Instead, they crave a flawed character who struggles with their womanhood and often falls victim to the same structures they critique but, ultimately, still tries their best to be a ‘good’ person—in whatever sense one would like to define that.
Female characters that teeter on the edge of being relatable and unlikable have also gained an increasingly large spotlight. Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation divides readers in which some claim that it is simply an ostentatious display of privilege while others feel they resonate with the protagonist who suffers from the lethargy of modernity and depressive episodes. She is the mouthpiece for our most intrusive, insufferable, and insolent inner voices of the Global North. Appropriating the archaic Eve trope that has historically demonised women, the semi-ironic internet trend of young women entering their ‘Villain Era’ destabilises and discounts the sexist archetype by simply welcoming it. Because of its absurd premise, it is arguable that Moshfegh’s bestseller is a great satirisation of misogynistic comments that display women as ignorantly melodramatic. It is The Catcher in the Rye for twenty-first century women.
Though ‘Hot Girl Books’ are still mostly written by white female authors and depict white heterosexual female protagonists, there has been massive pushback for more diverse literature. Examples include Pachinko, The Vanishing Half, and Crying in H Mart, where diasporic and POC experiences are incorporated into the discussion of womanhood. Furthermore, while many women may have found comfort and resolution from reading ‘Hot Girl Books,’ there also comes a potential danger. The fixation on these books among young girls and women may reinforce the age-old idea that pain and suffering is an inevitable feminine experience—feeding into the very same ‘Sad Girl’ fetishisation that The Virgin Suicides condemns. Indeed, women suffer horrifically under patriarchal structures, but the regurgitation of solely traumatic stories may simply fuel the fires of Eve and Ophelia retellings. Although the existing pioneers of ‘Hot Girl Books’ are absolutely vital to the conversation about the modern woman, it would also be curious to see more feminine joy hit the shelves of readers in the near future. The beauty of the female experience is just as valid and worth exploring as the tragedies of it.
Ultimately, it is through these books that young girls and women see their not-so-pretty social realities represented, helping them dissect complex relationships with the people around them and possibly working to resolve traumas of their past. The ‘Hot Girl Books’ trend is the newest cultural manifestation of the twenty-first century woman, where the skeletons of femininity are excavated, examined, and proudly exhibited no matter how grotesque the rotting skull may be.
