Snips & Specs: Manic Pixie Dream Girl Edition

Hi friends!

This week I wanted to share with you all an AWESOME (seriously, take the time to read it) article by one of my current feminist idols, writer Laurie Penny.

In her piece I Was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, she breaks down the modern indie female archetype as exemplified by familiar characters LIKE:

Sam from Garden State, Ramona from Scott Pilgrim, Summer from 500 Days of Summer, and Clementine from Eternal Sunshine

This article was hard for me, because the MPDG is a bewitching notion. And for those of us women who are smart and maybe a little, or a lot, quirky, it may feel like the only shoe that fits. But Penny points out that the MPDG exists only as "a submissive, exploitable, transcendent ideal of the other," created by sad lonely nerd boys who need rescuing.

She says, "Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else's." And she's right.

Why do away with the Manic Pixie Dream Girl? So that, in Penny's words, we can allow for "the creation of new narratives, the opening of space in the collective imagination for women who have not been permitted such space before, for women who don’t exist to please, to delight, to attract men, for women who have more on our minds."

In conclusion, everything will be fucking awesome forever:

Image courtesy of Moonfruit Comics.

 -Meg