On Manic Pixie Dream Girls & Why I'm Not One
I just finished watching The Perfect Date on Netflix.
No, it was not good. Yes, I definitely enjoyed it. And, yes, of course I’ll be watching it again.
But I don’t really want to get into the quality of the film… [Though I do appreciate this resurgence of John Hughes-esque rom coms. NOT that I’m saying the dialogue or character/plot development in The Perfect Date can be compared to that of Pretty in Pink or even Some Kind of Wonderful. But still, the idea that these seemingly meaningless, coming-of-age romantic comedies (that serve no other purpose than to make viewers feel good) are making a comeback, brightens my day].
What I really want to talk about is the role of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl in this (and many other) films. More specifically, I want to talk about how, subconsciously, this persona has influenced my life. I won’t say whether for good or bad.
In this post I’ll covering:
What is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl
Why I have always been drawn to this type of persona
Why I can never be this type of persona IRL
How this has affected my interactions with people in the real world AND how it’s affected my writing
Let’s begin.
What is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl?
Pulling from Wikipedia, “A Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a stock character type in films. Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term after observing Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown [a film that I mimicked endlessly after seeing it in theaters], said that the MPDG ‘exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. MPDGs are said to help their men without pursuing their own happiness and such characters never grow up; thus, their men never grow up.”
However, for the sake of this post, I’m going to use the misconceived definition of this term to encompass any wildly dreamy, childlike, mysterious, challenging female character who is somehow in-tune with the infinite mysteries of the universe—even if she does have goals of her own.
Though not the true definition of Rabin’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl, it’s the one I’ve always associated the title with.
So, for the sake of this post, Manic Pixie Dream Girls include:
Celia Lieberman in The Perfect Date
Zooey Deschanel’s character in 500 Days of Summer
Natalie Portman in Garden State
John Green’s Alaska from “Looking for Alaska”
Gwyneth Paltrow (hear me out on this one) as Margot Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums
Kate Beckinsale in Serendipity
Penny Lane in Almost Famous
I think you get the picture.
If you’ve never seen any of these films or read any of John Green’s books, let me give you one more final character description:
The Manic Pixie Dream Girl arrives like a storm. She’s a downpour of wild notions, annoying (yet irresistibly charming) quirks, and qualities that differ from the “mainstream” or “typical.”
She’s not like other girls.
Which brings me to my second point:
2. Why have I always been drawn to this persona
Over the weekend, I was visiting friends in L.A. Friends from middle school and high school.
During dinner on our last night there, we started looking at old pictures of ourselves. Pictures that had been posted to Facebook. Why we thought the world needed to see them, I’ll never understand.
We sat there laughing at our hair, clothes, and lipstick choices. We guffawed at who had dated who (not to mention who had wanted to date who).
Though I was definitely enjoying the reminiscing, I also came to a realization:
I had been (and still am) quite different from the rest of my friends.
Not in any immediately noticeable way. I’d gotten through high school fairly unscathed. Dare I say that I’d even enjoyed my time there.
But there was something just slightly off about me. First of all, I wasn’t attractive. Not ugly. Just not beautiful (at least not in the way my friends were). My clothes had always been wrong. My body a bit awkward. And I was always sporting some off-the-wall haircut—probably inspired by some other movie I’d just finished watching.
Second, I had a weird way of thinking about things. A lot of the time I was on the same wavelength as everyone else in the group, but there would be other times when I would get really excited about something or try to say something funny that everyone else found a bit strange.
Me as a teenager. Yes, this was my idea of “Posing” for a Myspace pic and YES, that’s how messy my room was…..
However, I remember that, at the time, I’d been okay with this.
Rather than feeling like I was at a disadvantage because of my oddities, I just thought of myself as similar to those characters I loved in movies. Like Kirstin Dunst in Elizabethtown with her strange habit of pretending to take a picture of anything she really likes. Or her inability to stay out of someone’s business as they fly across the country (though, if you really know me, you know that I would be far too mortified to ever strike up a conversation with someone who obviously wasn’t particularly interested in having a conversation at all).
But in general, these odd, quirky women were well-read, had interesting hobbies, and were who I could model myself after.
And maybe the guy doesn’t notice them at first, but once they fumble into the protagonist’s life, bringing with them strange theories, drama, passion and force-you-out-of-your-comfort-zone actions—they’re irresistible.
So, I embraced (and even tried to develop) the things that made me feel like the MPDG.
I painted during my breaks at school. Read Vonnegut and Bukowski. Listened to the Velvet Underground. Tried smoking clove cigarettes.
Yep, I’m thinking it too. Yikes…
But, thank goodness, point number three:
3. Reasons Why I can never be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl IRL
#1: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a movie trope. As in fictional. As in make-believe. As in created by some indie-boy writer who put his quirky dream girl down on paper to help his male character (who, let’s be honest, is probably just himself written down in a manuscript).
Since I am a human being and not a fictional character, I cannot be the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
#2: Though I like to imagine that, like me, Manic Pixie Dream Girls are perfectly average in the looks department (pretty but not beautiful), this is not the case.
[Note: This misconception was most likely due to the meet-cutes between characters in films like Elizabethtown, Garden State, and The Perfect Date, where the lead male protagonists show little-to-no interest in the MPDG at first.]
However, in reality, these actresses are all stunningly beautiful. They are all Hollywood actresses after all… and having just come back from L.A., the expectations of physical perfection there are just not something I’d ever be able to manage.
I mean, my idea of a skincare routine is buying the skincare product and then wiping dust off of it months later to see if it’s past its expiration date.
#3: Then, in books like “Looking for Alaska,” which acknowledge the heart-stopping beauty of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl—there’s the fact that—in order to push the male lead to where he needs to go—she has to be somewhat damaged and unstable. There has to be something wild and unpredictable about her nature.
[Note: Reading “Looking for Alaska” is probably when I first became obsessed with the notion of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I loved Alaska’s brutal realism, ““Ya'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.” How her raw thoughts opened the reader and the protagonist to the pain that can be felt in this world. The darkness in her was beautiful. It drew the other characters to her like a magnetic force. Destructive, really. But what’s more attractive than destruction? We all secretly love to watch a car crash. And I, for one, love to watch 90 Day Fiancé—and there’s nothing more destructive than those relationships. Fact is, chaos is enchanting.]
I wanted to be that magnetic force of unbridled energy that everyone came to like a black hole.
But alas…
Though I wish I could be some spontaneous being who pushes boundaries and challenges uptight (though also surprisingly attractive) men to leave their corporate jobs to go backpack across Patagonia, I can’t.
I love stability.
Though I love the thought of throwing together a suitcase of items and booking a one-way flight to Morocco, I would have a meltdown once I got to the airport. My mind would race.
First of all, I don’t speak Arabic. Second of all, I’m pretty sure that I would spend all my money at first stall of the first Souk I went to (because the vendor asked me to). And third of all, we all know about my stomach issues… I’d be in a cold sweat halfway through Souk.
Before I’d even boarded the plane, I’d be thinking about how quickly I’d lose my money in a Souk while trying not to shit my pants unable to find the nearest restroom because I don’t know any Arabic.
Not exactly my idea of fun. And not nearly as romantic as it seemed when Penny Lane did it in Almost Famous, leaving behind the men who saw her only as, well, their Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
4. How this has affected my life in the real world
Though I am aware of the factors that make it impossible for me to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, I’ve never truly been able to escape my desire to be her.
In meeting someone new
I find that whenever I meet someone new, I’m suddenly lost in a “what if we met in a movie instead” thought bubble. If we had, I would do something like ask to read their palm. Or I would say something like, “sometimes being here is like drowning in air, you know?” Or maybe I would just quote Vonnegut and then compare our hands to fish.
Of course, this is real life and not a movie script in which one obscure phrase is then bounced back and forth with pithy dialogue.
No, none of this would be particularly intriguing or charming.
It would just be annoying. And affected. And downright concerning, to tell you the truth.
So, mainly, I remain silent.
And I think maybe this has stopped me from living my life to the fullest. I’ve already imagined interactions with people that I encounter—and it’s not great, so why would I try to have a real interaction?
Then I’m left imagining these moments instead of having real ones. And perhaps that’s the way it will always go. An insouciant, dangerous, life-changing Manic Pixie Dream Girl in my head and a cautious, stable, mute girl in real life.
2. In writing my own characters
Perhaps worse than my stunted personal development is the fact that when writing my own stories, I have—over the years—tended to write these types of characters.
The problem, here, is that this often leads to a story that is “trying to hard.”
I force situations or moments to happen between two characters because I want the Manic Pixie Dream Girl to say something particularly clever. Or for a secondary character to have an “aha moment,” and realize that there’s more to life than whatever stereotype I assigned him.
It’s a very juvenile way of looking at character development.
Something for teen novels. [Not that I have anything against teen novels. I love them. I’ll probably read them until I’m 80. They’re just not what I’m trying to write.]
So, rather than create dynamic personas who react to real situations in their environment, I try to sound enlightened and intriguing and mystical through the voice of my Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
Its quite annoying, really.
So, here I am stuck trying to be myself while always tempted to act ultra-quirky or in-tune with the universe. Luckily, the universe doesn’t seem to want much to do with me, so I stay grounded the majority of the time. Hopefully, my characters will too. I suppose you’ll have to wait and see.
