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Can We Just Stop With 'Manic Pixie Dream Girls' In Movies?
Tell me if you recognize this character in a film: a cute, quirky woman who is there to help the (usually) white, straight male hero loosen up and enjoy life. She exists in a lot of movies you've probably seen, and she basically means ladies are there only as inspiration to the dudes and not as characters or people with their own lives or stories to tell.Film critic Nathan Rabin coined the term "Manic Pixie Dream Girl," and the awesome Anita Sarkeesian from Feminist Frequency has completely nailed this incredibly annoying Hollywood trope in this excellent five-minute summary. It may seem trivial to pick on this one character trope — what with the huge amount of problems Hollywood has with women — but the core of the issue is still the same: Hollywood needs real representations of women. That is, women playing characters with emotions, lives, and p-e-r-s-o-n-a-l-i-t-y — not always lame sidekicks to dudes.
04.23.14