Daddy Issues Onscreen - Why Our Culture Mocks Abandonment

why are daddy issues mocked or fetishized when they're a byword for absent neglectful or dysfunctional parenting I think I was important you just know something's wrong because why else are they doing it it's usually daddy issues daddy issues is an umbrella unsympathetic term for women who have a complicated or unhealthy relationship with their dad often because he was physically or emotionally absent in their adult relationships girls with daddy issues are shown on screen or assumed in real life to be highly sexual eager to please and interested in older men this place is full of girls with daddy issues and I've got the penthouse suite for these reasons they're desired but also ridiculed assumed to have no self-respect or to be annoyingly clingy and possessive daddy issues I Used to Know chicks like this they're tricky they need a lot of protect them when a child does have an absent or neglectful parent this often results in an insecure attachment style which is a serious problem to address and work through so why is this something that in girls gets treated as either a turn on a joke or a reason to to write someone off as a hopeless cause there's a long history of men fetishizing women with daddy issues because it's assumed they automatically result in promiscuity and an overwillingness to please men the only style of dancing that Uncle Mitch likes involves a big shiny Pole or broken woman with daddy issues meanwhile this rhetoric diminishes and dismisses these women as people with value basically the idea is that they're good for a low effort one night stand but too broken for a long-term relationship on the whole in pop culture the girl with daddy issues is depicted as a hot mess her life is apparently permanently derailed by the loss of her dad and that sucks for her but the story is often just using her as a side act for a more well-rounded character or pitying her you shouldn't know how difficult it is to cure a pretty girl with daddy issues one of modern pop culture's best examples of fetishizing daddy issues is Harley Quinn Joker's on-again off-again girlfriend who's been featured in Suicide Squad and birds of prey we know from the comic books that Harley's father was the reason she got into Psychiatry as she sought to better understand his neglect and infidelity as she begins her relationship with Joker she turns this highly dysfunctional male into her new dad figure Oh Come to Daddy suicide squad's marketing popularized images of Harley in her daddy's little monster crop top pushing this as a male fantasy it's not just the fact that she's played by extremely beautiful Margot Robbie but also precisely her wild volatility and unpredictability that is seen as desirable as its code for sexually adventurous or experimental you're a lucky man we had a bad blonde and Views a more tragic tone to Marilyn Monroe's daddy issues the fictional Maryland calls both her husband's Daddy and is desperate for the approval of male authority figures I couldn't imagine what to wear you look fine are you sure so again the implication is that our culture's most famous sex symbol only fashioned herself as such a desirable figure because she craved her daddy's attention but the result is a very shallow and reductive portrait of how a person with an absent father might act blonde essentially suggests that all of Maryland's insecurities and future problems stem from growing up without a father and that she's forever lacking in confidence and self-worth as a result it portrays her almost as a baby in an adult's body someone who remained forever infantilized because the lack of a father fundamentally arrested her development ultimately this common pop culture understanding of the girl with daddy issues is highly one-dimensional and pretty insulting Euphoria does a better job than most of exploring why and how our culture mistreats girls who show signs of problems with their dad Cassie who has textbook daddy issues due to her father's abandonment embodies the hot mess archetype in the eyes of her peers the guys in her school see her as hypersexualized and pursue sex with her only to shame her if she agrees her boyfriends push her into taking nudes or going on camera but it's Cassie who gets the bad reputation as a result all this gets in the way of relationships with guys who do respect her in the first season her serious boyfriend McKay defends Cassie against the critiques because he cares about her but she's subject to some much worse character assassination that even McKay sometimes succumbs to seeing her in that light and treats her badly oh you gotta make everything so sexual what so in Cassie we see both sides of this coin clearly how she's fetishized as one of the most popular girls in school but also demonized and publicly shamed as a notorious figure among her peers [Music] research has shown how attachment patterns developed in childhood can persist throughout our lives and neglectful or dysfunctional parenting can often produce an insecure attachment style in the child daddy issues specifically are linked to one of three types of insecure attachment anxious preoccupied dismissive avoidant or fearful avoidant Cassie and Euphoria embodies the anxious attachment style defined by a desire for intimacy mixed with a profound fear of rejection and low self-esteem the show dissects how the root of Cassie's issues is being let down by her father I used to visit them on weekends his study was coming and then sometimes more than a month would go by at first he's very loving and encouraging toward her but as his own addiction and financial issues overwhelm him he begins to neglect her just as she's entering her tumultuous adolescent ears on top of that when Cassie goes through puberty the other older men in her life start lusting after her so again she's let down by people who should be taking care of her while confusingly getting a sudden influx of attention for her body you really feels up sassy cast Cassie's anxious preoccupied attachment style comes out in her fearful over eager approach to romantic relationships she fell in love with every guy she ever dated she didn't like to be alone she gives too much of herself to the men she dates and ignores when they don't have her best interests at heart so it becomes a self-fulfilling cycle that her relationships don't work out and confirm her worst fears that she'll inevitably be abandoned she responds by being even more acquiescent to please her boyfriends but then people don't respect her because it seems like she doesn't respect herself she almost always said yes even though it didn't always make her feel good and she knew that most guys after she broke up with them would always share those photos or videos this culminates in her cringe-worthy season 2 Behavior as she tries to win her best friend Maddie's ex Nate the worse he treats her the more length she goes to get his attention adopting an obsessive Beauty routine overtly copying Maddie's looks just to catch his eye and offering to let him completely control her clothes and behavior aren't you afraid people are gonna look down on you at least I loved in Cassie and Other Extreme examples there's a sad irony but in giving themselves away they're making it impossible for someone to love them as they truly are moreover they're missing the fundamental truth that there's nothing we can do to make someone love us just as there's nothing Cassie or the others could have done to make their dad stay or be more attentive but it's this emotional fallacy a subconscious belief that their dad wasn't there because they did something wrong or there was some thing wrong with them that drives the dysfunctional adult relationships on the other end of the spectrum the neglectful father can also cause an avoidant attachment style you were going to cut me out well kind of instead of manifesting his clinginess a once neglected child might act dismissive and emotionless to prevent getting hurt again this is epitomized in the aloofness of Margot Tenenbaum who was not only abandoned by her biological father but also emotionally hurt by her distant adopted father as an adult Margo's behavior is defined by secrecy none of the tenant bombs knew she was a smoker which he had been since the age of 12. she's emotionally distant from her husband and resists being vulnerable with the person she loves most her stepbrother Richie tragically even when adult partners are supportive or trustworthy a person with daddy issues who's developed an insecure attachment style May struggle to accept a devoted partner or actively seek out Partners who treat her badly you can't keep trying to rescue me all the time they was trying to grab you a lot of people try to grab me in Forrest Gump the abuse Jenny endures from her father as a young girl leads her to dangerous self-destructive Behavior with a series of men who are bad news while exists getting close to Forest someone who does love her deeply I'm not a smart man but I know what love is it's also important to note that an absent father might not look the way we think in you love Quinn's family background is pretty comfortable and she doesn't experience any Financial or physical neglect but at the root of her family problems is that she and her brother felt her father to be distant we're actually already in soft prep for a film we're trying to get going he could pretend to care if you wanted to look from the female's perspective at how unhealthy behaviors later in life can stem from a dysfunctional early relationship with one's father that haven't been properly examined in train wreck Amy's father teaches her lessons when she's a kid that act as the origin story for her later hard drinking hard partying promiscuous lifestyle monogamy isn't realistic monogamy isn't realistic in the flight attendant Cassie's father drinking with her at an inappropriately young age also leads to her adult drinking problem she may have fond memories of her dad but it takes looking honestly at what was wrong with his behavior for her to break out of unhealthy Cycles watching a lot of these stories it's hard not to wonder why is it so often assumed that a woman with daddy issues can never overcome this and is basically doomed for Life thankfully more modern examples show their characters working through these past issues and understanding how to develop more healthy adult behaviors even Jenny and Margo make progress though it's not really the story's main focus why all their versions of this character like love and Harley also counter our expectations by proving their strong presences who are not to be dismissed in you while at first we might worry about love as she comes into contact with serial killer Joe it becomes clear that she too is violent possessive and unpredictable so she can hold her own hey Gil Harley Quinn and birds of prey too finally gets a life of her own outside of Joker Meanwhile if we look harder we can also find numerous positive examples in pop culture of women who had abs and fathers and aren't defined by this anything that you need you I don't need anything from you some react to an absent father by taking on more traditionally masculine traits in themselves like fearlessness courage and strength be brave live Meredith Gray's relationship with her father is almost non-existent to the point where she effectively denies that he's her father when talking to her half-sister Lexi we do not have the same dad my dad disappeared when I was five years old and I never saw him again does that sound like the daddy you grow up with but she has channeled this lack of parent into becoming fiercely independent and single-minded in pursuit of her goals we can even see a similar theme across a number of Disney films which often star heroines who lack fathers or both parents and have to fill the void themselves do you have daddy issues I don't even have a mom neither do we Rapunzel has no Father Figure and an evil false mother one but she's daring and takes risks in pursuit of the truth about the floating lights that appear on her birthday princess Tiana is also fatherless but is hard working and career focused even Cinderella whose father remarried after her mother's death and hasn't defended her against an abusive stepmother finds tenacity strength of Will and a clear sense of her values within herself kindness is free Love Is Free so in the absence of an ideal father or sometimes of either parent these heroic Role Models can create an imaginary version of that figure attempt to embody it and parent themselves attachment patterns are born out of relationships with either parent not just fathers they can also be influenced by relationships with siblings teachers and anyone in a caregiving position because effectively they're about trust you and your father are obsessed with each other you're diagnosing me with daddy issues to reduce this complexity down to a reductive highly gendered concept like Daddy Issues removes all the Nuance when we look closer we see characters who don't need mockery but support and some who have developed impressive resilience and ways to cope we can all look deeper at how to address our deeper attachment issues and no matter how many times we get it wrong there's always an opportunity to reflect and change the pattern I keep making mistakes and not learning from them foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Take

Views: 262,482

Keywords: Riverdale (Veronica), Euphoria (Cassie), 30 Rock (Jenna), You (Love Quinn), Suicide Squad (Harley Quinn), Trainwreck, Everything I Know About Love (Maggie), Forrest Gump (Jenny), Royal Tenenbaums (Margot), Greys Anatomy (Meredith), Princess and the Frog (Tiana), Tangled (Rapunzel), Cinderella, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed (Macy), Doctor Who (Rose)

Id: NKg_7j-7bUU

Length: 13min 34sec (814 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 03 2022