Text by Berit Anna Rojer
Image by Alžbeta Szabová
I’m a true romantic, a die-hard ‘The Notebook’ fan. Ideals of passionate love have been ingrained in me my entire life. Binge-watching romcoms since childhood, I was introduced to the whimsical world of “meet-cutes’’, “enemies to lovers’’ and forbidden romances. I’ve often envisioned myself meeting a charming boy on the street who would go to great lengths to make me smile, or being chosen by a bad boy who somehow I could change. Slowly, these false tropes of imaginary love interests began to seep into my consciousness. But in reality it’s not that simple... There are a few ‘main character’ attributes I was expected to adopt in order to find this perfect man.
First, she is a nice, quiet girl. Not necessarily shy, but also not loud. She should possess social competence, that he can subtly draw out of her. Normally, she remains silent, overshadowed by her ‘sassy black friend’. She dresses in a cute yet simple manner, not stylish enough to be intimidating though not revealing enough to be considered slutty. She is never too tall, but also never too short and has the ‘perfect body’ - which, if we are being honest, essentially translates to being skinny. She is smart and quite talented too, but not enough to be considered a nerd. A wild night of partying? No, she'd rather stay at home and read a book. She is an unattainable balance of perfection, dancing on the edge of contradicting characteristics. She remains a perfect wallflower who blooms when he sees her. Her angelic innocence consumes her as she waits for him to sweep her off her feet, as she waits for him to push and break her world open.
The contradiction of the expectations perplexes me: how could any girl truly possess all of these attributes? Even worse, after each film I started questioning how she could be me? And more importantly, how could I become her?
The problem is: I don’t look, act, nor sound like her. I am loud, mixed-race and have ‘‘crazy’’ curly hair. I am taller and louder than almost all the guys around me. Sure, I am skinny, but never curvaceous in the right places. I checked more of the ‘sassy black friend’ boxes than for the lead. According to them, I don’t possess 'main character material’. I was written out of this character arc, long before it hit the writer's room because I could never be her. And so, I assumed finding the perfect man was just not in the cards for me.
Frankly, I hate this trope. Next to its deep roots in the patriarchy, the overwhelming heteronormativity it conveys makes me feel uneasy. Why should I only fall for a man? And why do I have to change almost every aspect of myself as a woman to do so? The main character's obsession with displaying hyper-femininity is ultimately only in pursuit of male attention. Yet, it falls flat when applied to the real world. She ends up feeling as if she is written solely from the perspective of the male gaze. Through her the gaze is not trying to convey femininity; instead, it is attempting to imprint an unattainable ideal onto young girls. The gaze's attempt at complexity renders her one-dimensional, confined to a delusional dimension at best.
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