Notes: This article comments on misogynistic and sexist language/topics. Also, there may be some TV show/movie spoilers!
We are relentlessly subjected to seeing women torn apart in the media. As a young woman, it becomes a fact you are acutely aware of. Nearly every time I open social media, I see prominent women in the spotlight — actresses, celebrities, influencers, pop culture icons, and even just regular women — carefully inspected before being maliciously torn apart. Minute details — from their clothes to their vocal inflections to the intricacies of their personal lives — offer insight which others use to judge their characters.
Their likeability is then debated in videos, comment sections, newspaper articles, and on television. People say things like: there’s just something about her… I can’t put my finger on it but I really don’t like her. She may seem perfectly nice and beautiful, but she is secretly a huge b*tch. She’s just learned to hide it really really well. Yet, while exhaustive attention is paid to how women dress, act, talk, and present themselves, we rarely see the same scrutiny and attention applied to men.
This discrepancy becomes particularly evident when it comes to fictional female characters, who have become focal points for societal criticism. As Bogutskaya points out in Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You To Hate, this fixation is due to the fact fictional female characters act as malleable blueprints for gendered expectations. For example, in childhood, we are constantly shown narratives featuring female characters that are meant to shape our own moral compasses. These films’ female characters also work to reinforce gender stereotypes; take Disney’s Cinderella– she is endlessly kind, effortlessly beautiful, soft-spoken, thoughtful, and is never ever angry at the unjust suffering that befalls her. She is part of an assembly of childhood characters who have laid the groundwork for society’s feminine ideals.
Bogutskaya argues that audiences tend to like women who conform to gender norms and dislike female characters who outwardly refuse or fail to adhere to them. These unlikeable characters cross the bounds of “moral acceptability and appropriateness,” with nine core unlikeable tropes being the Bitch, the Mean Girl, the Angry Woman, the Slut, the Crazy Woman, the Psycho, the Trainwreck, the Shrew, and the Weirdo. These characters can exist as archetypes (think of the stereotypical mean girl in a romcom with little to no dimension) but there are also endless female characters with flaws, who exist as complex, nuanced, and morally gray people reflective of real people. Bogutskaya argues that when audiences consume these morally ambiguous and gray female characters, they want them to suffer, be punished, or taught a lesson for crossing unacceptable lines.
On the other hand, when these nuanced characters are male, there is a blatant double standard. If a man is upstanding and angry at injustice, he is heroic, powerful, and worthy of praise. Yet, if a woman is angry at injustice, her anger is misplaced and she is just bitchy. On a similar note, when a man is a psycho, he is compelling, gritty, and emotionally complex, but when a woman is psycho, she is hysterical, weak, and lacks control. Another example is when a man sleeps around or cheats; to audiences, this is perfectly acceptable because he is just a player or “just a man” — I mean, what else did you expect from him? A woman is a slut and a terrible human being. Similarly, when a woman is driven and smart, she is just annoying and attention-seeking whereas a man is treated with the utmost regard. The list of double standards goes on.
From my own observations, it is these full-rounded, morally ambiguous female characters whose actions draw the most dislike and scrutiny. Think about morally complex or flawed protagonists who, while beloved by some fans, receive endless hate from others: Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls, Issa in Insecure, or Hannah in Girls. There are also renowned, deeply flawed protagonists who are beloved by female audiences yet whose actions are still openly criticized or even hated by non-target audiences: Devi Vishawakumar in Never Have I Ever, duo Maya and Anna from Pen15, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are also villainous central characters like Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones or Villanelle in Killing Eve who are openly hated.
Carrie Bradshaw, Rory Gilmore, and Issa from Insecure, are all hated by audiences for a variety of flaws but the most prominent one being their choice to cheat or engage in an affair with a married man. Carrie Bradshaw is openly ridiculed on TikTok for her poor relationship choices, with one extremely popular TikTok, liked by over 1.1 million people, compiling all the times she knocks on Mr. Big’s front door and tries to impress him with a witty joke and outfit. People are infuriated by her obsession with Big and furious at her for cheating on her boyfriend with Mr. Big. Rory Gilmore is also openly scrutinized and hated by viewers for having an affair with her ex boyfriend, with her inability to reconcile with this wrongdoing commonly pinp-pointed as her ultimate downfall. Similarly, throughout the course of the show, she goes from being ambitious, smart, driven, and school-obsessed to being ridden with self-doubt and emotionally fragile. She drops out of Yale the first time someone tells her she is not cut out for her career, has an affair with her ex-boyfriend, helps another boyfriend steal a yacht, treats her best friend Lane like shit, and refuses to acknowledge her privilege as the granddaughter of extremely wealthy, influential people. Issa similarly cheats on her reliable, stable boyfriend Lawrence; she can be messy, awkward, and falls in and out of unhealthy relationships. She is deemed annoying by many for her repetitious, personal mistakes. She similarly goes through a complex friendship break-up with her best friend Molly and floats adrift in her career. She keeps making mistakes over and over. Like Carrie and Rory, she is most openly criticized for cheating.
Every time I have heard criticism for these characters’ infidelity, it strikes me how little blame the male characters share for engaging in the same behavior. While we are obviously most invested in the morality of our protagonists, women who engage in affairs end up shouldering almost the entirety of the blame while radio silence enshrouds their male counterparts. Everyone hates Carrie for cheating and constantly points out her immorality, belittling and making fun of her while Mr. Big’s behavior receives no comment in spite of the fact that he is cheating on his new, young wife. Similarly, Dean made the choice to sleep with Rory even though he was just married, yet Rory ends up assuming most of the blame for their mutually initiated affair. Issa also is fiercely judged for cheating on her boyfriend, yet her college friend Daniel, who cheated with her, receives no criticism.
I am not saying that audiences cannot critique this behavior but rather, there is a clear double standard in the amount of blame appropriated to female versus male characters in these shared infidelity narratives. For male characters, cheating and poor romantic behavior is the expected norm and can be forgiven if the character is compelling; for female characters, it is an ultimate and profound failure of their person, rendering them unforgivable, poor protagonists.
However, I would argue that when it comes down to it, these are all realistic people and it is okay to find them unlikeable at times but on the other hand, how many women do you know just like them? How many women have at one time been a poor friend, sucked away into the black hole of a toxic situationship like Carrie? How many women have cheated? How many have made poor, self-destructive choices rooted in self-esteem issues? How many young women and girls like Rory have made mistakes because of years of pressure, letting their encroaching self-doubt and insecurity get the best of them? How many people have been lost and floating adrift with their career and romantic life like Issa?
Flawed female characters teach us we are not alone in our mistakes, fears, insecurities, struggles, and experiences. They teach us it is okay to be all the things society thinks women should steer away from becoming and make all the mistakes we should supposedly never make; they teach us it is okay for women to be outspoken, brave, angry, ambitious, confident, upstanding, selfish, horny, sexual, super girly, imperfect, loud, insecure, and that it is okay to be mean (a word we as women fear being called) and not take people’s sh*t. If we were only presented with ‘perfect’ female characters, we would lose some of our most compelling protagonists. Without these flawed, even unlikeable women, we would begin to wonder about our own experiences. We would hope there were other women out there like us, who feel all the things we feel and who exist outside the tiny spaces society permits women to exist in. To lose our flawed female characters would be to lose the profound, relevant and human experiences of women everywhere.