Jesse Pinkman But a Girl
Gender. Boy. I don't know.
Without spoiling it too much, there is a scene in season 2 of The Other Two where one of the characters gets invited on a dreaded “Women’s Issue Panel” filled with people like a famous director, a high profile lawyer, trailblazing women in the industry, etc.; you know what I mean. Every question asked by the panelist is something big and meaningful with a lot of words and all our character says in response is, “Pass.” Later on, after some classic shenanigans, she tries to get everyone to start chanting “women can suck.”
In a nutshell, this is my relationship to women in fictional media.
Gender is a weird thing. It’s different for all of us, both internally and externally, based on how we perceive society and how society perceives us. All women are women but the experience of womanhood is different between not only large groups like white women and women of color and trans women and trans women of color and these groups can be subdivided even further until we’re at an individual level. There are, of course, some broad similarities in our experiences but we’re also different people. My experiences won’t be the exact same as yours. Not everything I say will be relatable to you, but we can of course understand where the other is coming from and form an understanding.
Keep this in mind when I say the only characters I relate to in fictional media are the middle aged white men with failing marriages, or their younger burnout but kindhearted counterparts.
When I say “relate to” I don’t mean “think are the best written characters” (although there is a large overlap), I literally mean “relate to.” I see myself in Don Draper and his selfish self-destructiveness. I see myself in Jesse Pinkman’s desire to do good at conflict with his desire for a father figure who loves him. Where I don’t see myself is in… well, we’ll get to that.
There are two big reasons why I think I feel this way, and they’re quite tied into each other. The first is pretty obvious: male characters are written better.
Let’s talk about some of them first. Let’s talk about Don Draper.
If you haven’t seen Mad Men, consider it! If you have and you hated it, then, well, okay. At the start of the series, Don Draper is the creative director at an ad agency with a dark drink in his hand and a dark secret in his past. He’s a womanizer, he’s a bad husband, he’s a liar, he’s all these things, but he’s also a person trying to find his place in the world.
His dark secret is that his entire life is based on a lie — he stole the identity of his superior officer during the war in order to escape his home life and since then, he’s been unable to sit in the present. He’s always running, always pushing people away in search of contentment. He ruins his marriage with his wife because he can’t commit himself to one person, and he ruins his second marriage for similar reasons. At a certain point, not even the work is enough to keep him rooted in place and he runs away from that too. It’s not until the series finale that we see Don sitting, eyes closed, not doing anything. And he smiles.
There are, of course, a lot of plot reasons that I’ve skipped or have misrepresented (it’s been a while since I’ve seen the show and they took it off Netflix so what’s a guy to do?), but I think I’ve made my point clear: the idea of trying to search for contentment is relatable. I sure as hell feel it right now, I’m in a miserable place in my life and I have been known to push people away while I try to find something that will make me happy. It’s a human story, with masculine elements.
Let’s talk about the reason I started thinking about this essay: James Bond. Now I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, “What is so relatable about a secret agent who runs around the globe having sex with gorgeous women and saving the day?” Well I’ll tell you: wish fulfillment, duh.
But also, on another level, Skyfall is a very human story. Bond leaves his job and comes back for “one last mission” and has to contend with the fact that maybe he’s getting too old for this. Maybe the world is moving on without him, maybe he should consider backing out and retiring quietly. Bond’s past is rarely explored, due to the nature of his character, but we see a lot of whispers of it in this movie, until we get to the part where we meet the man who took care of Bond most of his life. We learn a little about him, a little tidbit about how as a child he hid in the dumbwaiter after his parents died. Then we get to the part where Bond’s childhood home literally burns down. And then we get to the part where one of the only people who has ever truly understood him dies in his arms.
It’s a story about loss, it’s a story about moving on, it’s a story about a spy that I find to be a very human one, even with all the masculine elements. You are, of course, under no obligation to watch either Skyfall or Mad Men with this lens but I do, and that impacts how I see these stories and how I relate to them as a person.
What is a human story? And what is the inverse of a human story? Or at least, what do I feel is that definition?
People like to give this advice to writers: write what you know. Apparently, Mark Twain said this. Also apparently, was born when Halley’s comet passed Earth and said he would die when it arrived again, and then he did, so I understand the inclination to take his advice. It seems pretty obvious to me that if you don’t know something you want to write about, you should do your due diligence and research it until you know enough to write about it. Or, you can take the risky approach and fake it from the beginning based on what you think it’s all about and hope for the best.
And boy oh boy do people love picking that second option when it comes to characters who aren’t literally them or someone in their immediate orbit.
When I said male characters are written better, that’s true from a perspective. It’s mainly that female characters are written worse.
Women accounted for about nineteen percent of writers in the top 100 grossing films of 2019. That number is likely around the same for female writers in TV. [1] This leaves a lot of male writers who are writing something they (for the most part) don’t know: women. And boy oh boy does it show.
Often you’ll get a big grand sweeping story about a guy who does things and somewhere in the sidelines is his wife or girlfriend or love interest who is mostly there so you know he has a soft side. You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it. The wife from Ford vs Ferrari. Carey Mulligan in Drive. Liv Tyler in Ad Astra. Margot Robbie in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Most dead moms or dead wives. A lot of women on Supernatural if they’re in only one episode. You get it.
(Fun fact: all throughout college, I ate mac and cheese exactly the way Brad Pitt does in this movie, because I didn’t have a car. So, you know. This essay is starting to make a lot more sense.)
Sometimes, these decisions are tactful because of the narrative the piece of media is exploring – yeah, I’m defending The Irishman here, because regardless of the movie itself, the issue of having one token women isn’t really an issue given the narrative role she serves, although the issue of having a female character be the paragon of innocence is a real issue but I digress – but – wait also Daisy Buchanan because she represents the American Dream but also she’s a pretty three-dimensional character but again, I digress – for the most part, they’re mostly just…Women.
The storyline these women have are either very barebones to the point of no storyline, or if they have one, it’s based heavily on gendered stereotypes. Think Black Widow in Age of Ultron – her whole narrative arc was about her relationship with Bruce and the fact that she can’t have kids. I’m sure more can come to mind if you think about it, female characters whose stories are about how they’re female but they’re written by men who probably cheat on their wives.
I love the meme and I use it a lot but rarely will you ever see a character who is actually Don Draper but a girl, because for some reason, the moment a character is a woman, her whole storyline becomes incredibly gendered. This storyline can be written in a human way but often, it isn’t.
Consider this thought experiment: if Jesse Pinkman identified as anything other than a cis man, the storyline would remain relatively the same. Hell, there are a bunch of Tumblr posts about how Jesse is a trans man based on evidence from within the show which just goes to prove my point. Same with Don Draper, there was a whole Tumblr account devoted to pointing out how his character could easily be read as trans.
Now consider: what female character would you describe as Nick Miller but a girl? Tony Stark but a girl? Dean Winchester but a girl?
If you actually came up with a good answer, consider the character traits of this character: are they a slob? Are they kind of an idiot but not in a “hot” way? Do they sleep around but aren’t called out for it? Are they headstrong and kind of an asshole? Do they have a complicated history with their parents, mainly because their parents set certain expectations for them but died before they could meet those expectations and now it’s just weird? (This one is probably the easiest one to get a yes to.)
What I’m getting at here is this: male protagonists are allowed to be varied. Female protagonists have to, largely, be “good.” Any high school centric movie will tell you this: the main girl is kind and sweet and has a good heart, and the mean girl is a backstabbing bitch. Rarely will you get a film like Jawbreakers that centers its story around the bitch, and even when it does, the story must make it clear that this character can never win and you are bad for wanting her to. It’s almost always the good girl.
This idea comes up a lot in horror movies, particularly with the idea of the final girl. To paraphrase Carol J. Clover’s definition of the term, the final girl is usually the embodiment of what society believes is womanhood: virginal, intelligent but subservient, waiting to be rescued by a man. Modern variations of the trope have challenged this idea: Sidney Prescott from Scream has sex and survives the movie. Samara Weaving in Ready or Not is allowed to smoke and essentially murder her husband. But the prevailing themes of this trope remain: the “good” woman is the one that deserves to win.
There’s another side, one that pushes it to the other extreme: women who reject this definition of womanhood but either still fit into stereotypes or just feel unrealistic. They have sex, they curse, they drink, but they don’t feel very genuine. Think Pitch Perfect – the characters, in my opinion, feel like they’re trying to “we’re not like other girls” the We’re Not Like Other Girls idea. They’re still conventionally attractive, they’re still fitting into the mold of what a woman should be – just a different one. In the end, it’s still more of a gendered storyline than a human one.
But what about when they’re well written? What about good gendered storylines?
They do certainly exist – stories in which the characters’ narrative is intrinsic to their identity but explores it in a unique or just well-written way. For example, what I like to call The Big Three Blonde Wives: Carmela Soprano, Skyler White, and Betty Draper. Yes, their whole narrative centers around their relationship to a man, but they’re written in a way that doesn’t necessarily conform to the stereotypes mentioned before and, most importantly, the audience is still allowed to root for them. They can cheat, they can get a divorce, they can fuck up in their own ways – and they still deserve to find happiness. You can still want them to win and the narrative won’t punish you for it.
Gone Girl is another example. It’s a very divisive movie, but I personally like seeing a female character allowed to be completely insane and not have the narrative constantly tell me I’m a bad person for wanting her to win. He made her move to Missouri!!! Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects also fits the bill, in that Camille’s story didn’t rely so heavily on what the conventional idea of womanhood is, and this in turn allowed her character to have depth, especially in her interactions with her mother. I hate myself for making this comparison but it’s like every time Dean Winchester talks with his dad. I don’t want to elaborate further, I’ve already said too much, but I hope my point has come across.
(Fleabag is a big one that I bet some of you thought of while reading this. All I have to say is that Fleabag should’ve only had one season. Her arc just felt very complete in that one season and it shouldn’t have had another one, even if it would’ve left us bereft of Hot Priest.)
There are many more examples, but this is where the third paragraph of this essay comes into play: I can recognize and respect it, but I just don’t personally relate to it.
My experience with womanhood isn’t the same as the womanhood experienced by these women. In my experience, it’s been defined more by absence – absence of sexual attraction, absence of acknowledgement, absence of being perceived by others as a woman. It’s kind of funny, really, how as a Muslim woman, my outward appearance is incredibly gendered and yet I never feel like a woman when I’m around other people. I know this isn’t the same for everyone, but that’s how it is for me. Probably because I’m also not that attractive (and to all my friends who will rush to my inboxes to try and tell me otherwise, it’s fine! I’ve accepted it and it’s part of my identity not! It’s actually quite liberating).
Female characters who have to deal with sexism in the way it’s conventionally portrayed are, to me, unrelatable. Beyond the normal amount of empathy I can give someone going through a rough time (and considering I have described myself repeatedly in real life as definitely noted empath Don Draper and Guy From Ad Astra……………), I don’t see myself in these characters as clearly as I do in male characters. The human part of those stories rings out more clearly than the human part of even the most well-written gendered stories.
There is, of course, an issue with society in general of male narratives being treated as default and for all other narratives to be “othered,” but it’ll be a while before we get to a point where it’s only incidental what your identity is in relation to the story. I’m sure there are stories out there like that and if I thought hard I could even list a couple, but for the most part, if there’s a woman in a story she is a Woman in a Story, and all the stereotypes and tropes that come with it, and I just don’t find that relatable.
There is an issue in this essay that I haven’t addressed yet. You may have already noticed it: every single character mentioned has been white.
The fault lies mostly with Hollywood not giving enough roles to people of color, period, but there’s a second fault which is that they don’t give enough varied roles to people of color. We all know of the stereotypes surrounding people of color and the narrative role these characters fill and the racism surrounding it, but there is also an inverse to that. To combat this racism, characters of color are given arcs similar to the final girl that are, for the lack of a better word, virginal. They’re not allowed to have flaws because flaws might open up the writers and creators to criticism and no one wants to be cancelled in this day and age. So they overcompensate and make a character with little to no flaws who contrasts with the other (white) characters with a myriad of flaws who, well, act like real people.
I may not be perceived as a woman in public but I sure as hell am perceived as a Muslim in public, and as a Muslim, I appreciate seeing my identity portrayed onscreen as someone who isn’t a terrorist. But as a person, I hate these Muslim characters inserted solely for “woke” points but have absolutely no personality. I don’t want a cardboard cut-out saint, I want to see a person, warts and all.
I haven’t seen We Are Lady Parts yet (there are like a million and one movies and tv shows coming out each day, it is hard to keep up, especially when you’re writing your own movie and you aren’t getting paid to do it (yet)) but I have heard good things about it, particularly in the way it allows its characters not to be defined solely by their identity as a Muslim or as a woman. They’re allowed to mess up and just be people.
And that’s really what it all comes down to. It isn’t enough to see a character whose outward identity mirrors mine, but it matters what’s on the inside. A complex character, who is allowed to have warts, who can be flawed even to the point of being a bad person, but not to the point where they’re the villain. Just a person, one I can relate to because of what they’re going through. One I can look at and go, well, if they can deal with their shit then so can I.
If I were to impart a lesson, it would be this: a well-written character doesn’t have to be relatable. But a relatable character absolutely has to be well-written.
Great essay also I think Misato from Neon Genesis Evangelion is Dean Winchester but a girl. You don't need to know that I think this but you do now. C'est la vie