The Daddy’s Girl Trope - Why Our Culture Fetishizes Her

in our culture the father-daughter relationship is a romance and the daddy's girl is seen through the rose-colored glasses of a father who never wants her to grow up so who is the daddy's girl figure on screen she's an idealized but stunted version of femininity one who's focused on pleasing and getting praised for doing whatever her dad approves of i went with law enforcement detective beckett already said it's cool if i volunteered out station oh well as a member of the nypd volunteer squad i would be happy to show you the ropes she wants to be taken care of that's all i've ever wanted from you daddy for you to spend money on me and as an adult might seek a partner who substitutes for her father figure as a provider she's stuck in a childlike state hillary at your age i shouldn't have to do this no daddy no i want you to reach into that person give me your credit cards even when she comes off as a mature adult in other contexts she tends to revert to a youthful passivity when she's around her father or other authoritative male figures at the same time she's highly sexualized a male fantasy of passive sweetness mixed with sexual voraciousness well well daddy's little girl when it comes to actual parenting a recent study showed that to this day while a mother's role revolves predominantly around caring fathers get to be more involved in play in the daddy's girl this dynamic persists in adulthood as a kind of role play with the daughter as an infantilized helpless innocent and the father her heroic savior she'll be okay i'm taking tala into town this dentist blues teeth [Music] here's our take on the daddy's girl and what happens if she doesn't outgrow seeing her dad as the greatest guy in the world [Music] the daddy's little princess character is an example of arrested development stuck between girlhood and womanhood princess while these characters often rebel against and assert independence with their mothers with their fathers they stay in a childlike state often this has a lot to do with daddy's money i love you daddy i love you too angel money please the rich princess version of the daddy's girl upholds a very traditional old-fashioned view of the family where the mother is the caregiver and the father is the provider in this framework the father's value is his cash value daddy you'll get your golden goose as soon as we get home no i want one of those bunker how much do you want for the golden goose and if the adult daddy's princess doesn't want to grow out of her role she simply replaces the parental provider with a partner who will keep enabling the lifestyle she enjoys we also see how this model gets adopted in professional spaces in parks and recreation mona lisa saperstein applies this formula to tom haverford only seeing him as a potential partner when he starts to assert his authority over her and then immediately turning to him for financial support we're together now hey [ __ ] i need to borrow some money to do something that is none of your damn beeswax in 30 rock nbc executive jack donaghy sees his protege liz as someone he can mold and mentor in the absence of any children of his own and the dropout explores how young elizabeth holmes filled her theranos board with prestigious older male mentors and investors whose fatherly affection for holmes led them to both romanticize her and want to help or protect her i'm just a girl who had a dream to change the world i need adult supervision countless stories illustrate to us that remaining in this childlike state of deference toward a male provider ultimately stunts the growth of the daddy's girl in friends rachel and her sisters all begin as daddy's girls and with her wedding to bury in the series pilot rachel is on track to fill her father's role with her new husband oh come on you can't live off your parent your whole life i know that that's why i was getting married when she runs out on her wedding and emancipates herself from this future it's painful but ultimately what she needs to mature into her own skin later in the series we see a glaring contrast between mature professionally successful rachel and her sisters who've continued to be spoiled babyish rich girls which sister is this is this the spoiled one or the one that bitter daddy cut me off never mind i got it even rachel's bomb reveals that she regrets choosing the limiting daddy's girl life and she envies the freedoms her daughter enjoys as a woman standing on her own two feet this is no offense to your dad sweetie but i was thinking there might be more ultimately the daddy's girl needs to leave her father figure behind to reach her full potential but what if that's easier said than done [Music] a lot of daddy's girl narratives are linked to carl jung's idea of the electra complex in which the daughter grows hostile toward the mother and develops a quasi-sexual attraction toward the father in coming of age films about the daddy's girl we often meet her on the cusp of breaking away from the father and overcoming her electra complex i'm 16 years old i'm not a child don't you take that tone of voice with me young lady this separating from the father is mirrored by a sexual awakening in dirty dancing baby begins the movie with a childish worship of her father and i thought i'd never find a guy as great as my dad but when she begins to fall for dance instructor johnny she transfers her previous feelings for her father on to her new beau this leads to conflict with her dad i'm sorry i let you down i'm so sorry daddy did you which is finally resolved through the father-daughter relationship reforming with slightly more distance as the father bestows his approval on his daughter's new partner when i'm wrong i say i'm wrong in say anything diane's father is even more explicitly the gatekeeper of his daughter's affections what are your plans for the future spend as much time possible with diamonds before she leaves and this makes lloyds and diane's courtship difficult as lloyd basically has to break up an existing relationship in the end what acts as the catalyst for the couple getting together and diane overcoming her electra complex is her father letting her down by embezzling money and effectively being taken away from her my father's guilty he lied to me he lied to everybody i just left home i need you veronica on riverdale has a similar dynamic with her father while she starts out as a classic daddy's girl came into this world daddy's little girl learning of her father's misdeeds requires her to separate more from him if she wants to mature into a good person at the start of the little mermaid ariel is the apple of her dad's eye your daughters they will be spectacular yes and especially my little ariel so her journey toward a happily ever after with prince eric requires a fairly traumatic severing from her father's world she has to willfully disobey her dad and incur his disapproval and wrath before he finally lets her go then i guess there's just one problem left and what's that your majesty how much i'm going to miss her in a number of these stories the maternal figure has actually died so there's a gap in the family unit that needs to be filled into all the boys i've loved before lara jean's relationship with her father has a sweet romantic quality because they're bonded in grief so her father dotes on lara jean while lara jean and her sisters play a maternal role within the house you know your mother and i used to come here all the time we were dating really i i didn't know that in emma and its 90s update clueless the daddy's princess character even more explicitly tries to step into her deceased mother's shoes and take care of her dad daddy you need your vitamin c and don't try sneaking out of the office dr lovett's coming by to give you a flu shot but she's really play acting a maturity beyond her years and still has a lot of growing up to do finding a serious love interest who challenges her helps her move beyond this sheltered initial state and become a more fully realized adult meanwhile in other stories tension comes when there's something that prevents the electra complex from being overcome or when the romantic partner feels too similar to the father monica's relationship with richard and friends feels uncomfortable at first because richard is her dad's friend someone who knew monica when she was a child it seems your daughter and richard are something of an item that's impossible he's got a twinkie in the city and any unusually close adult dad and daughter relationship may instinctively make some of us a little uncomfortable i've said that if ivanka weren't my daughter perhaps i'd be dating her oh it's so weird when this is taken to an extreme it becomes horrifying the climaxes of old boy and audition both speak to this in old boy the revenge seeking ode sue has been inadvertently tricked into a relationship with his daughter while in audition violent asami lures in older men who court her because of her innocent child-like qualities in orphan this is even more explicit the film's monster is a psychopathic woman who disguises herself as a child and gets herself into adoptive families to kill the mother and seduce the father she's dangerously ill violent he got seven people that we know of but the real reason these stories are so unsettling is because they play with an existing discomfort and push the boundaries of what's acceptable [Music] the sexualization of daddy's girl comes from a fantasy of a submissive woman who treats her man as a hero i think it's really great to like support females particularly female entrepreneurs today this old-fashioned power dynamic is less prominent but it still holds a certain power and appeal for people so more and more the daddy's girl is getting embraced with a tongue-in-cheek tone in queer communities daddy's often a name given to the more dominant partner in a relationship and now daddy or even zaddy has become a general term of endearment for hot actors and celebrities the first word that comes to mind daddy kelly bray junior eve paiser argues that this mummification of daddy is laced with irony a grown woman says daddy with intention self-assurance and lots of cynicism we claimed daddy as our own which allows us to gently mock the patriarchal structures we're playing into oh my god how did you swing la mamia did you get a secret zaddy arguably one of the knock-on effects of this has been the rise of sugar daddies and sugar babies where the relationship is viewed as almost entirely transactional but nonetheless enjoyable if there were no pimps then hookers would be badass sugar babies don't have [ __ ] well then sugar babies are bad ass the modern daddy's girl appeal can also be seen in the harley quinn joker relationship harley's suicide squad costume features a shirt reading daddy's little monster all this can still veer into territory that makes people uncomfortable fifty shades relationship dynamics have garnered a lot of criticism over the years and while in suicide squad the daddy's little monster aesthetic was played for sex appeal the follow-up birds of prey made a statement about harley's need to get out of her toxic relationship with joker i lost all sense of who i was i only had eyes for pudding in shiva baby a college student ventures into the world of online sugar daddies but finds the experience more disempowering than she expected and cassie on euphoria is a textbook example of how being too hung up on a daddy fantasy especially if your real dad is absent or neglectful can make a young woman insecure and too vulnerable to attention from guys she sees as a father substitute she also never saw her dad again she fell in love with every guy she ever dated in real life megan fox received backlash when people found out she referred to her partner machine gun kelly using that term fox said i was being celebrated as being a feminist until i had the nerve to call my boyfriend daddy i was like whatever you say daddy whatever daddy says but that case where it was clearly a mutual love language between fox and kelly speaks to how overall there's growing acceptance that this dynamic can be a female fantasy too and there's nothing wrong with it if everyone's into it daddy what's taking so long hey babe i'm on the phone and uh i would prefer if you didn't call me that in public but i call all my boyfriend's daddy so much of our culture operates on the great man theory of history where male archetypes are transformed into these mythic heroic creations and arguably there's no greater male archetype than the father so in a sense women are conditioned to fall in love with them however in cultural depictions of the daddy's girl leaving this hero worship behind becomes an important even necessary step to become her own woman she can't be defined by the power dynamic she was born into she has to take charge herself i had to find a new identity a new me thank you for watching the take don't forget to subscribe and let us know what you're watching [Music] you

Channel: The Take

Views: 132,244

Keywords: Castle, Arrested Development (Lindsay), Fresh Prince of Bel Air (Hilary), Parks and Rec (Mona Lisa), Palm Springs, Friends (Rachel + sisters), High School Musical 2 (Sharpay), To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, Lady Bird, I Know Where I’m Going, I Love You Daddy, Gossip Girl (Serena), Orphan, Old Boy, Audition, Shiva Baby, The New Romantic, 50 Shades of Grey, Secretary, Couples Retreat, Insecure, The Dropout, 30 Rock (Liz Lemon + Jack), Suicide Squad (Harley + Joker)

Id: U-fDnMNW6Bo

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 11 2022