“The problem is, if they think you’re attractive, you’re either stupid or a whore or a dumb whore. The instinct among girls is to attack the jugular.” - Megan Fox
We’ve all heard to the ‘girly girl’. A girl who may be associated with traditionally feminine values, vanity, stupidity, self-obsession, the colour pink, cattiness or gossiping. At her core, the girly girl really just enjoys embracing femininity. So how has the girly girl been portrayed in such a harmful and negative light?
Hollywood likes to represent ultra-feminine women in films as the villain, giving them sexist stereotypes that make her be viewed superficial. One of the main problems with the ‘girly-girl’ trope is its implication that femininity and value/worth are mutually exclusive. There is a pattern where overtly feminine characters are seen as the mean girls of their respective film, while the more modest, plain girls are the protagonist who are praised for being ‘different’ and not conforming to mainstream femininity. Gendered stereotypes are so engrained in our culture that they often even go under our radar. Let’s take a look at some examples of 2000s films that show this.
Sharpay Evans, from the High School Musical trilogy, is the character viewers love to hate. Although the other female character in the franchise have some feminine characteristics, they are palatable and not ‘over the top’, femininity is a spectrum. It is not a coincidence that she is a hyperfeminine character, and is portrayed as the villain of the franchise.
Sharpay’s bold style reflects her diva personality. Her confidence is labelled as vanity and she wears feminine clothes with sequins, floral patterns, and lots of pink. Her car, her school locker, and even the golf car she drives around in HSM 2 is hot pink. This extreme hyperfemininity comes with the assumption that we should mock and reject these characteristics. This is emphasised by female protagonist Gabriella and her best friend Taylor, who are rarely shown wearing pink and are seen mocking Sharpay.
Having the most overtly feminine character of the movie trilogy as the villain signals that an excess of ultra-feminine energy is to be reigned back and rejected in order to gain respect.
Another classic example of the girly girl trope can be found in the iconic, cult-classic, Mean Girls. This movie pushes the hyperfeminine 'mean girl' stereotype to the extreme, with main character Regina George and her two sidekicks Gretchen Weiner and Karen Smith, AKA ‘the Plastics’.
Yes this film is self-aware and is meant to be a satire, dramatising the high school experience of female friendship dynamics, however its archetypal character portrayal reflect on our society as a whole. This film frames femininity as a negative trait.
The plastics have a bubble gum pink aesthetic and fit perfectly into the ‘mean girl’ trope, similar to Sharpay. Julia H Chappell and Malerie Young argue the mean girl is ‘almost without exception, white, straight, and economically privileged. She is frequently blond, always stylish, and quite often overtly sexualised.’ The main character, Cady Herron, slowly becomes influenced by the plastics and grows more and more feminine throughout the film, while also becoming more bitchy.
This negative association with femininity becomes even more highlighted at the end of the film, when in order to redeem herselves and see character growth ‘mean girl’, Regina George sheds her overtly feminine persona and therefore, loses her bitchy personality and becomes more likeable. This is problematic because it insinuates that hyperfemininity is something to avoid and that stereotypically feminine characteristics are bad.
The demonisation of hyperfemineity is so second nature to us, we almost expect the villain to be a bitchy girly-girl. Think of some movies you know, there’s probably one ultra-feminine character you're encouraged to hate!