Perhaps it is time someone tracked the manic pixie dream girl, the chatterbox, the chulbuli nubile young thing celebrated in films and books. She began long ago as a stock character, as a foil to the leading man, and then couldn’t stop from tumbling into newer productions and versions of herself.
A frozen frame of femininity at a particular age. The tomboy who will soon turn utterly-butterly delicious when she dons the frills. There is audience consensus on her necessity as a trope and distraction, but has anyone wondered what happens when she grows up?
The strong and silent man she is usually matched up with is already appropriating middle age when they meet. It is she who must choose whether to remain this chit of a girl who talks nineteen to the dozen or let nature take its course and be disillusioned now and then, stop waxing, and take a nap. And when, because of nature or nurture, she does not change at all, and is the same giddy-headed ingenue who speaks her mind, she starts to occupy the role of a ditz.
Now that she has reached an advanced age, she is considered, at best, eccentric and, at worst, suffering early dementia. At an age when the menfolk expect her to sedately hand them their glasses when they pick up the newspaper, off she goes on yet another escapade. Films and books rarely go after her, to track this medical condition of permanent girlhood as the years roll by.
TV series The White Lotus brings us Tanya Mcquoid, the befuddled unstable heiress played by actor Jennifer Coolidge to such perfection that she bagged awards and much praise. And suddenly we watch this female Peter Pan in a later-life scenario come to life in ways that are in keeping with how her character must have been in her youth.
Conditioning and male appreciation can make it mandatory for women to adopt a certain vacuousness that could feel even complementary to the coupling process, and if that famed air-headedness becomes a habit, psychological repercussions should follow. Any real-life decisions—about money, real estate, vacations, children’s education, and the future—must surely suffer from this determined immaturity. What was once her dazzling innocence may now become a sign of stuntedness. Dealing with an overgrown woman who sulks or throws tantrums or overreacts brings up a ‘what’s-to-be-done-with-her?’ question.
The scene where Tanya tells her boyfriend Greg in the first season of the series that she is ‘a very needy person, and deeply, deeply insecure’ brings out the crazy in a safe atmosphere, because Greg is not put off. And we heaved a sigh of relief; here she is, the girl who won’t grow up, so many years later, and she’s doing okay.
Shinie Antony
Author
shinieantony@gmail.com