Madison James
Girl Next Door. Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Cool Girl. Sally Rooney Girl. Waif Girl.
Throughout media history, female characterisation has been carved up into a neat set of identifiable tropes, served with a generous pinch of the male gaze.
Female Archetypes
We have the dutiful, Doris-Day types, mild and loveable, perhaps the most prevalent female archetype that has shown its face everywhere from 50s blockbusters to 90s and early noughties sitcoms (think: Rachel Green, Pam Beesly).
On the other side of the coin, we have the quintessential Dream Girls, the Summers and the Clementines. Wild and unpredictable, they ostensibly have no goals of their own but serve only to further the character development of the main male protagonist.
Female Infantilisation
Even the use of ‘girl’ is suspect, an infantilising noun, the equivalent of which it is hard to imagine would ever be used to label a mythical male persona. It all reeks of the type of common-or-garden sexism that most of us overlook, but for others, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth, perhaps without even knowing why. Exhausting, but very much unsurprising.
Female protagonists in the media have always been subject to an undue amount of scrutiny and stereotyping, with real-life women inevitably being pigeonholed with the same criteria if they are perceived to fit the mould.
Their male counterparts have rarely been given the same treatment. Now, new iterations of these stereotypes are popping up, including the Sally Rooney and Waif girls, centred around the Rooney novels.
Examples In Literature
This is strange perhaps, given that Rooney’s novels have been praised precisely because her women characters are three-dimensional, with complex relationships with themselves and others, refusing to shy away from discussions of politics, class and sexuality.
“She’s the not-like-other girl, teetering on the fence between quiet intellectualism and enigmatic seductiveness.”
But, lest we forget, all of this actually serves to reinforce a woman’s inherent waifishness, both physical and mental. She’s the not-like-other girl, teetering on the fence between quiet intellectualism and enigmatic seductiveness.
She has a difficult relationship with her parents as well as with food, and struggles with her own identity, judging herself to be inferior through frequent self-comparison with her peers.
For this, these types of characters are called “insufferable”, “deeply insecure” and “inadequate” by those that have given them their monikers.
By extension, the real women who know and love these characters, and maybe even find them relatable, are tarred with the same brush. And so, consumers of media made by women and targeted at women enter the tired cycle of ridicule.
For or Against?
Perhaps some of these criticisms are justified. This wave of Rooney-bashing has clearly been a way for readers to vent their frustration towards a style of character development that forces women into a box.
Perhaps the depiction of men is somewhat different, generally more complex with less of a reliance on stereotypes. Perhaps these nicknames do not solely represent an attack on these characters and those who relate to them, but a demand for more – for a media that better represents diverse characterisation and narratives.
But surely there’s a better way to go about it.
Problematic Labelling
Following the release of the Conversations with Friends BBC series, the main protagonist Frances was shoved into the spotlight as the Internet’s favourite waif. Since most of the book’s narrative actually takes place via Frances’ thoughts, it does not translate well to the screen.
Throughout her airtime, she is often timid, passive and inarticulate. Her strained attempts to exchange a few words with her parents and even her love interest, Nick, are almost painful to watch.
It is easy to see why her character in particular has been labelled this way.
Digging Deeper
Below the surface, however, we see that Frances’ world is altogether more complex, filled with the much-derided suffering of the archetypal waif. We witness her overwhelming feelings of exclusion and inferiority, at several points boiling over into self-harm or the desire for it.
This mental torment is coupled with the physical pain of undiagnosed endometriosis, a condition that 1 in 10 women in the UK experience yet is rarely discussed, much less as a key plot point in a popular novel.
The Cause Of Misery
As is a theme across all of Rooney’s works, the most common cause of misery for her female characters is the dominating presence of a powerful man. Frances constantly downplays the emotional consequences of coming from a broken home with a violent, alcoholic father.
Nick, both married and eleven years senior to the 21-year old Frances, unwittingly or not takes advantage of the younger woman to enter into an affair – a situation for which Frances constantly blames herself.
It is only when Nick admits that he still loves his wife, essentially having played Frances for a fool throughout their entire relationship while still feeling entitled to criticise her outwardly cold and emotionless behaviour towards him, that she almost realises the truth: “That night it was clear to me how badly I’d underestimated my vulnerability,” she confesses, ending the chapter by chastising herself for expecting any reciprocal feelings from him.
Translating Fiction Into Reality
It’s a tale as old as time. A man has an affair, and somehow it is the ‘other woman’ that is vilified.
Her character certainly is not a saint, even at times unlikable. However, it is never the characterisation of the powerful men who abuse their power with impunity who are criticised.
Rather, it is the women who are blamed for their vulnerability, as if the very act of suffering leaves them open for ridicule and martyrdom in a way that their male counterparts miraculously seem immune to.
Fictional characters are just that: not real. But how we talk about female protagonists matters. It is undeniable that the media we consume has an impact on our real life behaviour.
“The level of vitriol directed towards female protagonists, and women like Rooney who created them, is without a doubt unparalleled by their male counterparts.”
A Dangerous Tool Of Socialisation
Many of the tweets and TikTok’s about Rooney’s women are flippant, bordering on cruel, but take on an altogether darker symbolic meaning when we consider the context in which they were created.
We live in a world where access to abortion is backsliding, violent misogyny is on the rise and where the abuse trial of a high-profile woman was treated like a reality TV show for the world’s entertainment.
Why shouldn’t our popular literature reflect these themes, and why shouldn’t we talk about them? How much of Johnny Depp’s behaviour was excused because we’ve been socialised through our media to believe that it’s just what we should expect from men like him?
Comparatively, social media reactions to Rooney’s men has been more forgiving. Characters like Nick and Connell go through more than their fair share of suffering.
Despite initially being popular, Connell struggles with low-self esteem and problems with self-image that intensify once he attends college. He struggles to express any physical or verbal affection towards Marianne, yet retains his place as the dominant figure in their relationship.
Like Nick, he suffers from depression, culminating in an incredibly emotive therapy session in which the stoic character finally opens up about his torment. Few who have watched Normal People could forget that scene, which received widespread praise by its audience – some even described it as ‘ground-breaking‘.
Unparalleled Vitriol
On the other side of the coin, Marianne’s own mental health troubles were treated less favourably.
The submissive nature of her character has been ridiculed online, despite the fact that her own struggle with identity and social ostracisation occurs in exactly the same way as Connell’s.
“There’s always been something inside her that men have wanted to dominate, and their desire for domination can look so much like attraction, even love,” Rooney writes, referring to Marianne’s string of toxic relationships which have a less-than-subtle link to the horrific physical and psychological abuse that she endures from members of her entire family.
Another TikTok, with over 14K likes, finds a way to make light of it: “Do you want to hit me? Oh sorry, I thought I’d cut to the chase. So you don’t want to hit me? Because you can.”
No one is suggesting that male stereotypes in the media do not exist, even if they are never given names for the sole purpose of vilifying them.
Rooney’s depiction of men as uncommunicative and controlling, yet all the same occupying a godlike status in the female protagonists’ lives, is perhaps part of the problem.
But the level of vitriol directed towards female protagonists, and women like Rooney who created them, is without a doubt unparalleled by their male counterparts.
Unpacking Objectification
The Instagram account menwritewomen does a fantastic job of picking apart the way that many male authors objectify women through their female protagonists. However, there is still more to be done to reduce the disproportionate pressure on women writers to create the perfect representations of contemporary femininity.
It seems that the Perfectly Imperfect Woman, in some critics’ minds, is a character that all authors should aspire to. She’s loud, assertive, independent, confident in her sexuality and from a background that isn’t always rich and white, with a great relationship with food.
Not only should there absolutely be a place for these women in the media – they should be celebrated.
But there is also room for the Waif, even though in a perfect world we would get rid of these condescending archetypes altogether. She both adroitly observes and is an undeniable participant in the narcissistic individualism of our times, reflecting the desperate loneliness that often goes hand in hand with the life of a young modern woman.
Yes, she experiences suffering – you know, that thing that art has attempted to imitate for centuries, being that it is in fact an immutable part of the human condition – and why shouldn’t she, as all of the predominantly male protagonists of the literary cannon do?
Most importantly of all, she is a symbol of how we, as a society, condone the inexcusable actions of men – often without even realising it.
Image courtesy of Alexander Popov via Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here.
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