We’ve all heard the phrase, “You are what you eat.” This article doesn’t have anything to do with eating, unfortunately, but it does have to do with what we consume. The media we consume. From experience, I can distinguish fiction from reality, but when enough of one medium is consumed, this line may begin to blur. Resonating with things we see in the media can bring these ideas out of fiction and into our reality.
I’m sure you’ve seen at least one rom-com in your life, or maybe even hundreds if you’re an avid lover of this genre. Romantic comedies have a way of causing such emotional anguish from “Aww, I love love” to “No, why are you making that decision!” and back to “Aww, I love love.” Although a roller coaster ride, rom-coms are comfort movies for a lot of us because their central plot features sweet romance. However, is this romance all that sweet?
Growing up on movies such as Dirty Dancing, 10 Things I Hate About You, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days reinforced a certain idea of love and how to attain it. Is it possible that these film classics have fed us unrealistic perceptions of romance that have, in return, caused us to unreasonably change our standards?
The Not-So-Perfect Perfect Man
Within rom-coms, there’s generally this perfect male love interest (following the heteronormative rom-coms of specifically the 1980s to early 2000s), but he doesn’t start out so perfect. Of course, the female leads have some imperfections themselves, but a portion of their screen time involves attempting to change their love interest in some way to mold them as the “perfect lover.”
It’s true that we all change and grow, but this concept of romanticizing “bad boys” isn’t necessarily a great message to send to audiences. This matters especially since the audience is generally young girls.
Certain rom-coms project this “I can fix him” mindset, which can create a lower standard for finding a romantic partner and might even involve finding someone with shifted morals because of this idea that they can “be fixed.”
Johnny Castle (Dirty Dancing), played by Patrick Swayze, goes from a cynical and rude person to a kind and emotionally available person. Patrick Verona (10 Things I Hate About You), played by Heath Ledger, goes from a guy who dates a girl only because he’s paid, to a full-on lover boy.
Benjamin Barry, played by Matthew McConaughey (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days), goes from a self-centered, egotistical man to a compassionate and caring individual. As if it happened overnight, we see these “bad boys” and “rascals” transform into the ideal partner.
By casting conventionally attractive or “big name” leads as these problematic men, audience members can focus on the individual’s attractiveness rather than the problems their character represents. In return, these “bad boys” are associated with conventionally attractive men, creating the idea that “bad boys” are something to be desired or obtained.
Thus, in this form of cinema, characters with problematic tendencies are glorified and romanticized because we see them as a familiar face (popularized celebrities). We focus on the ending where they’re kind and loving while ignoring the complexity of their personality.
We know the “bad boy” stereotype isn’t good, so why else — besides familiar male celebrity faces and the character’s small displays of affection that outweigh his bad characteristics — do we fall for it?
The Quirky, Stubborn, Relatable Girl
Now that we’ve discussed the “not-so-perfect perfect man,” there’s one more character template that we need to talk about: the quirky, stubborn female lead. In the classic rom-coms from the 1980s to the 2000s that we’ve been discussing, there’s always a headstrong, stubborn girl with certain quirks that make her “stand out.” Generally, these girls follow the “weird girl” stereotype, but make it “cute” and “attractive.”
Frances Houseman (Dirty Dancing), Kat Stratford (10 Things I Hate About You), and Andie Anderson (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) are all determined, stubborn, conventionally attractive, and quirky individuals. They all have moments of complicatedness, but at the end of the day, they closely represent the “ideal girl.”
These characters tend to be more relatable, and this is the reason why the demographic of rom-com lovers tends to land in the realm of women and young girls. There’s an amount of relatability women can find in this genre of film with the female lead. When the male interest has that “bad boy” or “emotionally unavailable” persona, it makes this distortion from media to reality even more difficult.
If the female lead is seen as inspirational or someone to look up to, shouldn’t the male love interest be something as desirable as well? Distinguishing these fictitious romantic films from real life poses a bigger issue when we so badly want them to be true and live in our own rom-com movie.
At the end of the day, of course, these films are pieces of fiction. However, because of how much these rom-coms follow real life, the underlying stereotypes of problematic love interests (generally problematic men) become hard to note as unrealistic.
It’s easy to look at a rom-com and, as a woman, identify with one of the female leads. This can lead us to view the corresponding love interest (who generally follows the “bad boy” stereotype) as one to romanticize and even aspire to have for ourselves.
Unfortunately, we don’t all live in our own rom-com, and things in real life don’t work out to the perfection that we see in cinema (I know, news flash!). In all seriousness, some people truly can’t change or even want to be changed.
I aspire to be like the stubborn, determined women of rom-coms, but without the need to view romantic interests as something that must be altered to reach a level of perfection. People aren’t projects. Upon review, I think I might change my New Year’s resolution to relinquish the phrase, “I can change him,” from my vocabulary.
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