Friendzone endzone: Manic pixie dykes within the male gaze

Picture this: its at some point into the 2010s. I’m a loner within my very early 20s. You will find no buddies, so I start attending online game evenings – board and video.

I come to be somewhat familiarized within these male-dominated places, and end up forging certain contacts. We book, we video game, we’ve got various excursions.

Typical people material! I’m carrying it out! I’m generating fri—

“You’re giving blended signals.”

“the reason why wont you actually give myself a chance?”

“You

friendzoned

myself.”

N

ow, fast-forward to the current. The way I want i possibly could get back to that point and reply, “Sir, i will be merely gay.”

Absolutely already been countless discussion all over myth of the ‘friendzone’. Its a lot more commonly recognized that relationship is not a consolation reward. No body owes you their own thoughts or affections, and grappling with getting rejected is a vital section of mental literacy.

Simply speaking: the misogynistic notion of the friendzone is bullshit.

Undoubtedly, I not any longer have many cis-het males during my relationship group. In addition will imagine the friendzone has been debunked and think-pieced to passing at this point.

But, here I am! Because it works out, I have some thing more to say.

I

n my personal previous youthfulness, the concept of the friendzone had been socially recognized and regurgitated in daily life and pop music culture as well. Especially among the ‘geeks’ – men whoever obscure ‘nerdiness’ gave all of them a chip from the neck regarding their perceived lack of enchanting prospects, however so aggressively that they could not still think about themselves ‘nice men’.

When males leveraged accusations of ‘friendzoning’ at myself, I took it to center –

serious

. I internalised their particular story as my breakdown, as well as their hostility compounded collectively man I ‘hurt’.

Baked into these accusations was the hope that i’d at some point let some one in to the relationship zone.

“you may possibly have friendzoned myself, but without doubt you aren’t attending friendzone

him

also.”

We certainly did, albeit anxiously waiting to feel the ‘right thoughts’ for my male peers. Lest I continue to be a “friendzoning bitch”.

W

hen I found myself a single woman, “No, I am not curious” typically was not enough to securely reject a man, but “No, I had gotten a sweetheart” was. Generally, males respected the concept of me choosing another male suitor, nonetheless they did not respect my choice to-be solitary and

perhaps not

prepared socialize.

The conflation of ‘boyfriendless-ness’ with availability meant that I found myself always viewed as readily available. Even when I felt so far from readily available, and I also failed to completely understand why.

We chalked my personal chronic decreased interest around personal failure because the rationale associated with friendzone intended I couldn’t deduce the greater number of affordable – much less misogynistic – summation: that perhaps I becamen’t chat with bisexuals. Possibly I happened to be only gay.

I

t’s taken me personally quite a while to realise the friendzone isn’t only fuelled by misogyny, but by mandatory heterosexuality. All things considered, let’s say we have never a boyfriend? Really does which means that i will never ever validate my personal insufficient supply from inside the eyes of males?

Can you imagine all We’ll

actually ever

desire from their website is friendship?

To complicate situations more, the friendzone fallacy had been often paired with a trope that more flattened my personhood: the ‘manic pixie dream girl’. This trope ended up being solidified by swathes of films about a downtrodden ‘nice guy’ busting without any the friendzone and locating a brand new rental on existence with an overly ‘quirky’ love interest.

The manic pixie dream girl typically lacked degree beyond a finely aestheticised sense of ‘weird’. And perhaps ‘clumsy’. Simply to be certain that she had been

#relatable

.

This trope ended up selling a similar dream compared to that a current-day influencer offers when attempting to hit the evasive stability between ‘
aspirational’ and ‘real’
. But whilst the influencer hinges on the layperson aspiring is

like

all of them, the manic pixie fantasy girl trope depends on the layman aspiring to, well, put this lady.

T

he manic pixie dream girl’s life is bright and contrived, however with adequate believability feeling achievable. She abides by traditional charm expectations (frequently astoundingly thus) but might designed to look dorky or renewable. This woman is shiny, but friendly.

And ultimately – above all – she is present to meet a man’s
primary figure syndrome
.

In (

500) Times Of Summer Time

, Tom, a whiny protagonist, plans his needs onto an unbiased and free-spirited really love interest, Summer. This movie is normally commonly misinterpreted as an account of a nice guy unjustly finishing last, all thanks to a “friendzoning bitch” who willn’t serve the anticipated function of the trope. Summer time dares to truly have the trappings of a manic pixie fantasy girl without reciprocating Tom’s love, and her some other passionate efforts are used as a punishment to him.

In

Scott Pilgrim vs. The Entire World

, Ramona’s sapphic connection is actually treated as something which helps make this lady sexier and more interesting, but never ever something to exist beyond this lens. And undoubtedly, never ever a threat to the woman endgame with Scott. Rather, its reduced into the stereotype to be ‘just a phase’ – or worse nevertheless, a “sexy phase”, as embarrassingly explained by Scott.

(500) Times Of Summer

in addition plays into this cliché, making use of a previous sapphic commitment that Summer is claimed getting got as a throwaway gag to appeal to the cis-het male gaze.

In both of the movies, the manic pixie dream girl’s sexual company is actually used by their customers as something tends to be tamed by a person, or weaponised against him.

Regardless, the target is to ‘win’.

W

henever we ‘friendzoned’ a male pal, I was a female failing continually to fulfil the pledge of a manic pixie dream lady. I dared to be aloof but type, spirited, vaguely nerdy, but… romantically uninterested.

How could I dare to-fall someplace inside this archetype, but nevertheless rebuff the ‘nice guy’? Exactly how can I dare to not end up being attracted to a guy when, without doubt, I

must

manage to attraction to guys?

By heading off-script, I became viewed as the one harming males. Yet ,, they certainly were those becoming punitive. Their unique need usually felt incorrectly added to me personally, and gendered norms supplied no space to take into consideration why I became repulsed because of it. Or why i might sporadically ‘select’ crushes on non-threatening and unavailable men with the unfortunate desire of a ticket to normalcy, but would freeze-up as long as they failed to hold their particular range.

T

the guy heteronormative male gaze chooses everyone else in automatically, but it’s specially pernicious to the people afflicted by misogyny. It generally does not start thinking about nuanced things such as real desire and reciprocal interest, or even the a lot more standard premise of permission.

This might be exemplified by the chronic fetishisation of sapphic interactions (though femmes just, definitely, simply because they for some reason are unable to appreciate a beautiful butch). Its a lens maybe not built for the complexity of human beings. It isn’t built for “no” to imply “no” without pity or even worse, and for the friendzone in order to become the endzone.

These a few ideas, nonetheless festering during the collective psyche, play a role in the culture of compulsory heterosexuality. This really is additionally exactly why some my buddies within 20s and thirties are coming out in a different way each and every time, self-discovering aided by the likes in the
Am I a Lesbian Masterdoc
and stepping out from behind the many noxious veneers of heteronormativity.

The manic pixie fantasy girl can still end up being a guy’s fantasy of fundamentally escaping the ‘friendzone’. But, for me personally, this is where they will remain.

Alex Creece is actually an author, poet, pupil, collage artist, and typical kook residing on Wadawurrung area. She additionally tinkers together with other people’s poems as Production Publisher for Cordite Poetry Review. Alex was actually given a Write-ability Fellowship in 2019 and a Wheeler Centre Hot table Fellowship in 2020. A sample of Alex’s work ended up being extremely Commended into the 2019 Then section design, and she had been shortlisted the Kat Muscat Fellowship in 2021.