The male gaze through the female gaze
The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a cinematic trope intended to portray women as mythical and infallible beings, but it is instead a reflection of a society that requires her to follow the status quo. As such, even in her repulsion from the status quo, she finds herself still locked within the male gaze. This trope was created by men who perceived women a certain way. In this article, women of Toronto express their interpretation of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and how the fad has impacted them personally.
The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an emblem of systemic issues, like how men have projected and idealized certain types of “independent” women into a confining one-dimensional character whose entire purpose is to act as a catalyst that betters the main male character throughout media.
Olivia Railton: “I remember when I used to have pink hair, all of a sudden I had boys inserting themselves into my life thinking I was going to save them, telling me I reminded them of Ramona Flowers or Clementine. At first I was flattered, but then I realized where it was actually coming from. At first I was like, “woah yay I’m liked,” but it became really apparent really quickly that they wanted to be around me/liked me because of who they wanted me to be or assumed that I was, as opposed to who I actually am. It was a weird thing – and the only difference was that all of a sudden my hair was pink and the rate of being called “a free spirit” or “different” or “ethereal” increased by 50000%. But it’s not even that they’re idolizing you; they have some other idol that’s been handed to them by movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or 500 Days of Summer and then they just copy and paste you there. Like ‘a ha! I have found her in real life!’ It’s crazy how normalized and celebrated that the idea of projecting what you want onto real woman is in our society.”
Imogen Joy: “Sometimes I’d pretend to be one and it felt good, almost like I was a cartoon, and there was this man I was leading through the streets as I tried to break into construction sites and climb fences and I knew our time together was short and ultimately meaningless as he said I’m in love with your spirit and I almost wanted to scream and rip my face off revealing a seventy year old witch with pomegranate smeared across her face, but instead we had sex by a pool and I ate poutine alone at 3am.
Do I give men too much credit? Don’t they know the part I’m playing? Aren’t they playing one too? Or was that it? No basement or attic, just a bungalow of emotion for us to rent.
I can see her. A white woman, listening to The Smiths. Pretty. A digestible quirkiness. I felt like a malfunctioned version of her. Almost—but a little too sweaty. Anecdotes are a little too troubling, body a little too overweight. Unable to walk in and out of someone’s mind without leaving dirt from my shoes.
Manic Pixie Dream Girl. A kind of appetizer men get full from.”
Emma Wittman: “I think the main thing about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is that it conditions a lot of people to rely on someone, usually a woman, to take on their burdens. It’s a lot of emotional labour for them. It tends to happen when a guy likes a girl and wants an emotional connection with her because guy-guy friendships can be unemotional. Then people don’t ask her what problems are going on in her life. It’s not so much about the girl herself, but about the viewer. It’s a projection of the person observing or adoring her. It’s not a person, it’s an idea. No one is actually that archetype.”
Julia York: “Ethereal yet gloomy, a dream you didn’t realize was a nightmare until you woke up. This ‘manic pixie dream girl’ fad combines self-pity and self-obsession into a kind of harmful dichotomy that glorifies mental illness and wraps it up in a silk bow to be displayed to the masses.”
Hannah Fredberg: I understand the desire to emulate this type of personality, but I don’t think it’s healthy or productive. It’s an ideal created for a man by a man and I think it’s time we stop being for men and be for ourselves.
Pia Graham: “The “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” ideal is just another mechanism we use to objectify women by categorizing them as a muse for others as opposed to free thinking, multi-faceted individuals.”
Adara Anisman: “In middle school, Oliver *fake name* was not the first, but maybe second or third in a looong long line of men who thought my friend was their MPDG. After them not dating at all, or her not indicating any romantic interest, Oliver told her he was in love with her. She then told him that she did not love him, again, because they were literally just classmates, and he wrote a poem that he posted on Facebook where he implicated her for breaking his heart and crushing his spirit. He then proceeded to bully her for the rest of the school year because she “broke his heart” and would not let her focus in class and would talk shit about her to his friends. This pattern was repeated multiple times throughout the school years and university.”
Sarah Bavington: I’m glad to see that it’s becoming less common in films, and that we’re starting to see far more well-developed female characters. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is on its way to becoming a thing of the past, marking a particularly shitty era for romantic comedies.
