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S1E6 Women's Tropes: Cool Girl, Mean Girl, Sad Girl, Manic Pixie Dream Girl

  • Writer: WOMEN OF DOLOR
    WOMEN OF DOLOR
  • Jun 8, 2020
  • 2 min read

Updated: Jun 23, 2020

Where do types of women originate from and why do women inevitably choose to fall into them?


  • Origin Story 

    • Find myself fitting into them 

    • Seeing how women inevitable always ascribe to one of these without meaning to 

    • Find yourself switching into one of these depending on situation 

    • The real time “male gaze”

      • Olivia Gatwood: world-renowned poet and one of my favorite women of all time

    • Olivia’s poetry is described as contemporary feminist. It is autobiographical, informative, and razor-sharp. She really prioritizes the lonely experience of being a girl and romanticizes teen girlhood as a way to subvert the male-dominated view of girlhood. 

    • Life of the Party is a poetry book about true crime and how culture romanticizes violence against women.

    • “i'm a good girl, bad girl, sad girl, dream girl / girl next door sunbathing in the driveway / wanna be them all at once, i wanna be / all the girls i've ever loved”

  • Cool Girl 

    • "When used to describe women, 'coolness' refers to the adoption of typically masculine ideals of behaviour, such as liking football or gaming." 

    • Defined by desirability but is being reinvented by trends (patriarchal)

    • Street girls/ street wear → nonchalant, emotionally stunted

  • Mean Girl 

    • “Reality shows, low-carb diets, low-cut jeans, and mean-girl mania. Especially mean-girl mania. I'm tired of the trend that says not only are girls bad, but bad is good, or at least a good way to get attention. As if the only choice a girl has today is to be mean or meaningless”

    • that sly, somehow socially acceptable excuse to brand young females as irredeemably cold, manipulative and vicious

    • Regina George vs. Bianca (10 things I hate about you) vs. Cher (clueless)

  • Sad Girl 

    • “The stereotypical sad girl is someone tweets her sorrows and publicizes her vulnerabilities as a way of putting herself out there”

    • Girl version of e-boy → mysterious, depressed, super deep--often seen as “beautiful” but tragically so 

    • Winona Ryder played this role all through the 90s

  • Manic PIxie Dream Girl

    • The term was coined by critic Nathan Rabin in his review of 2005's Elizabethtown

    • Rabin claimed 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."

    • Women once again grow up expecting to be men’s ‘id’ and the physical depiction of the pleasure principle 

    • Penny Lane (Almost Famous) and Marla Singer (Fight Club) and Lorelai Gilmore (Gilmore Girls)

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