There was a time in my life where I wanted to be Ramona Flowers. She was so cool in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World with her colored hair, her pithy remarks, and her success at attracting romantic partners (which is all I wanted as a twelve-year-old girl.) However, upon revisiting the concept of Ramona Flowers, I realized how annoying and awful the concept of her is. (Granted, I base this characterization of the movie and not the comics.) The concept of Ramona Flowers is completely subservient to male desires. She completely represents the pseudo-strong female who all the boys desperately want, but can’t have; however, in actuality, Ramona Flowers symbolizes the patriarchal belief that women exist solely for men to conquer.
Film critic Nathan Rabin––who coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl––describes the MPDG as a girl who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”
The concept of the manic pixie dream girl also plays a dangerous role in the romanticization of mental disorders in women. John Green’s debut novel Looking for Alaska and his later novel, Paper Towns, directly points to the flaws with this sort of adulation and infantilization of mental disorders. In Looking for Alaska, Pudge is “in love” (see: infatuated) with the idea of Alaska: a mysterious, rebellious teenage girl. However, throughout the novel, Green constantly points to Alaska’s depressive and suicidal tendencies: smoking, drinking excessively, seeking attention through sex, and other self-destructive behaviors. Even though to the reader these obvious red flags flash violently on every page, Pudge transforms Alaska into this perfect manic pixie dream girl, instead of a depressed teenager who desperately needs help. In the end, this ignorance towards Alaska’s obvious problems leads to her suicide. Furthermore, in Paper Towns, Q becomes obsessed with Margo’s cool, don’t-give-a-crap attitude and willingness to have wild (and illegal) adventures. This perceived notion of the perfect manic pixie dream girl led him to search for her all over the place; yet, when he finds her, he becomes disillusioned to her facade and sees her for who she is: inconsiderate and afraid.
The same serves for Summer in 500 Days of Summer and Penny Lane in Almost Famous: the male character becomes obsessed with their quirks and instabilities, but fail to see the troubled person inside. When they do, it’s either too late––as in Looking for Alaska––or they no longer want her because she isn’t their picture-perfect girl.
The stereotype of the manic pixie dream girl is incredibly damaging towards women. It reminds us of the era of “damsels in distress” while also portraying mental disorders as sexy quirks. Lacking real motives, her only discernible trait is her flaws, which the male protagonist deems beautiful. She gives off the false impression that women have no lives away from men.
In Olivia Gatwood’s poem “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” she criticizes the concept of a manic pixie dream girl, both as a knuckle-slapping for men and a warning to the girls who want to be this infantilized, 2-D character of a woman. Gatwood discusses how in all the movies with MPDGs, the plot is all about the man’s love story and the woman is only “there to teach you to love.” In fact, she claims the MPDG is barely a worthwhile character, even inquiring at one point, “You want to know my name? You never call me by it.” Noting the MPDG is thrilling, the character exists to turn the male character from boring to well-versed in the world, but he leaves her as soon as she does. She’s a puppet. The audience also a) roots for the man to succeed, and b) roots for him to supersede his need for her and leave her. My favorite quote from the poem is, “Let me build myself smaller than you. Let me apologize when I get caught acting bigger than you.”
Last year, after a boyfriend who essentially viewed me as a manic pixie dream girl and then left when my anxiety became too much for him, my literature class talked about this painting of Ophelia from Hamlet by John Everett Millais. My teacher instructed us to write a response. Due to feeling particularly angsty over the dumbass boy who said some truly awful words before cutting me out of his life, I wrote this, partially inspired by Gatwood’s poem and partially inspired by the painting.
She is your manic pixie Shakespearean fantasy
Broken by your desire for a perfectly quirky mate
With a mind on the run right into the river
And a brain full of rosemary, pansies, and fennel
But she wasn’t your manic pixie Shakespearean fantasy
Just a girl once obedient to a fault
The perfect porcelain doll
Only here to look pretty and act sweet
You relished her lack of control
Were seduced by her submissive air
Felt giddy when she uttered “I shall obey my Lord”
Cause you pulled her strings and pushed her dainty pink buttons
You are her abusive misogynistic nightmare boyfriend
She can’t fight back when you label her a breeder of sinners
Smear her as a cuckold before the bells start to chime
And exclaim “get thee to a nunnery” when you’re too masculine to deal with the demons of your own mind
But now she’s your depressed deluded dream girl fantasy
She speaks of sex and shame
Feels deflowered and forgotten
Destroyed by the patriarchal court that raised her
She is your off-the-rocker, total babe love affair
You let in a maid, that out a maid departed no more
Now she dances for the king and queen of fools
Singing hey nonny nonny nonsense
She is your suicidal perfect desperate martyr
Her lips blue like the river she lies in
And you’ve never loved her more
Than when she’s six feet under, choking on dirt
She was your manic pixie Shakespearean fantasy
Because you wanted her that way
Through all of these experiences with the concept of the manic pixie dream girl in movies, poetry, and my own life, I’ve realized it’s an attempt to tie the purpose of women to awakening men, which then allows men to move on with their life. For women, this manifests as an attempt to embody a Ramona Flowers or Alaska-type attitude enables them to be used in their romantic relationships. Instead of their partners seeing them as full-fledged, three-dimensional humans with real thoughts, motivations and feelings, they become conquests to attain, explore, but then leave when a) the partner has gained the experience they need or b) the demons in the MPDGs mind becomes too real and too human for the partner to handle.
We are not edgy girls who listen to records because they make us feel alive and romanticize our own depression. We don’t exist to be the “other” in a man’s life, to make him see the world in a new, extreme way, but then leave us when he outgrows us. We are not (and should not try to be) manic pixie dream girls. We are strong, confident women, and above all, real people.