The Difficult Woman Trope: How The Label Evolved & Why It Sticks

when a man puts himself first without worrying about what Society thinks he's an aspirational character but give those same ATT tributes to a woman and she becomes difficult okay she's tough but if Miranda were a man no one would notice anything about her except how great she is at her job the difficult woman has cropped up on screen for decades perhaps because with her empowerment and potential ruthless streak she represents something that people fear she's historically been portrayed as a villain or someone who needs to learn a lesson but more recently the way we read her is changing as we begin to question our own gender double standards so where does the difficult Woman character really come from and importantly how is she evolved and what do recent portrayals show us about the changing ways women are viewed and are viewing ourselves here's our take in pre-code Hollywood women often played multi-dimensional characters complex fully formed people with richly realize storylines and these female characters were presented without comment allowing audiences to make up their own minds but then in the 1930s the patriarchal Haze code came along and began forcing women into very specific boxes closely defin tropes that restricted their behavior thoughts and clothes and which they were never allowed to deviate from these restrictions didn't mean the end of interesting female characters it just led to a change in the ways in which they were allowed to exist whereas before a woman who spoke her mind and didn't put up with anything was framed as aspirational during the code era these same traits made her difficult she could still be hard-headed or tough or a bit of a troublemaker but now she was going to have to hear about how that was a problem for the entire movie and have to make her way back into a more acceptable Box by the film's end take kathern Hepburn's lawyer Amanda in Adam's Rib who calls out the double standard between men and women in a murder trial where she's defending a woman who shot her cheating husband now look all I'm trying to say is that there are lots of things that a man can do and in society's eyes it's all hunky dory a woman does the same thing the same mind you and she's an outcast meanwhile her husband Adam also a lawyer can't handle going up against her in court he feels humiliated by her Talent as a lawyer and how she criticizes the way men behave he tells her he wants his wife back he didn't sign up for a competitor I'm oldfashioned I like two Sexes and another thing all of a sudden I don't like being married to what is known as a new woman I want a wife not a competitor while Amanda is a complicated character she's back in her box as Adam's wife by the end of the movie as incarnations of the difficult woman continued to evolve through the mid 20th century she became far more objectionable and much more of a villain often going too far into hurting other women in the process of going after her own desires in the 1980s we see portrayals of women like Catherine the high-powered businesswoman and villain of working girl Tess you know you don't get anywhere in this world by waiting for what you want to come to you while Katherine gets away with her bad behavior at work as the audience we're repeatedly shown that she's difficult that she'll do anything in her power to achieve success whether that's professionally or personally she's given male characteristics and is just opposed against the cattish Tess the hero who manages to retain her femininity while coming up with great business ideas you're the first woman I've seen in one of these damn things that dresses like a woman not like a woman thinks a man would dress if he was a woman as a result Catherine's jarring male characteristics are meant to repulse us particularly when contrasted with Tessa's sweetness and honesty the ending where the evil dragon Catherine is slayed by Soft Tess is supposed to be a happy one but the reality is that Catherine and Tess both exist in a deeply sexist environment where successful women are perpetually pitted against one another the movie Never Fully explores why it is that Catherine has had to behave this way to rise to the top the 1980s were a decade in which women entering the corporate world in a big way LED to fear that they would be leaving behind their femininity and their feminine duties like motherhood and so on screen we saw a number of cautionary tales about what befalls women who are too direct too confident or too successful but over the decades writers also began questioning and challenging this notion that the difficult woman is a problem that needs to be solved or a nuisance that needs to be gotten rid of as author Lucy Foley writes the pressure for women to be seen as nice biddable good has seeped into our understanding of what we should be looking for in a fictional protagonist as a writer I want to write the stories of difficult women from a pure entertainment value point of view they are the narratives with Intrigue conflict drama crisis all of the interesting parts of being alive and as we neared the turn of the morning millenum the difficult woman started to find new footing there's a modern substrand of the difficult woman who seems to grow out of the80s business the girl boss I'm the one who created this company from nothing I'm the vision I'm nasty gal spawning from the 2010's # girlboss era she appears on screen and in real life willing to do anything in the name of personal success however people started questioning just how empowering this idea of being ruthless and throwing everyone else under the bus to get head in business really was and more nuanced explorations of the type began digging into what really made these women feel the need to behave this way instead of just framing it as an inherent Evil Within all women who desire any kind of success these modern examples started to take more in-depth looks at the societal pressures that led to these women becoming difficult in a bit to get ahead we also began to see more send-ups of the type which didn't knock the girl boss for being a woman succeeding in the corporate world but for the way her hypocrisies made her just as bad as the guys she was purporting to be replacing I know that part of wm's mission statement is lifting up every woman but can you really do that if the price point is so inacessible though even during this era media wasn't always so willing to fully unpack the difficult woman we can see an example of how competent and not willing to get pushed around could still get reframed as difficult on screen with a character like Jan from the a office she starts out as the genuinely serious foil to Michael's buffoonery she's constantly trying to fight Michael's many fires and keep the Scranton Branch out of a lawsuit and in the early Seasons she seems rational and pretty good at her job okay Michael are you aware that you outed Oscar today what what does that even coming out is a significant moment for a gay person and they should be allowed to select the timing and manner of announcing it this often makes Michael act as though is difficult whereas the audience and most of his colleagues can see that she simply has the tough job of managing someone who seems ungovernable they did this up in Al not allowed and they ended up turning the break room into a lactation room which is disgusting now you're really not allowed in this session I'm their boss so your but as the series progresses and Michael becomes more likable Jan is forced into an absurd caricature of the difficult woman she becomes power hungry cruel even predatory and we're encouraged to hate her what a cute bench thanks that's my bed Chan has uh some space issues so I curl up on that puppy it's a joke but also a little frustrating to see one of the show's most competent women reduced to a punchline but the '90s and 2000s also began to see the difficult woman becoming embraced on screen in 2013 critic Emily nusom called the women of Sex in the City difficult women in an article responding to Brett Martin's book on TV anti-heroes difficult men behind the scenes of a creative re ution from The Sopranos and the wire to Mad Men and breaking pad she propers that in the 9s women saw their first anti-hero on screen and that it was Carrie Bradshaw Carrie is difficult both in the show and to watch maybe because when she emerged we were so used to women being cast in an on-screen binary of bad and difficult or sweet and kind but Carrie can be all of those things anxious obsessive and despite her charm wildly self-centered and she makes human decisions the kind women do make in real life like cheating on the seemingly perfect Aiden with the infinitely harmful Mr Big so flaws can be good flaws are the best part she paved the way for a new kind of female character on screen one who could be unpleasant yet lovable this era saw the rise of modern difficult women who are like their pre-code counterparts fully realized and fascinating but also complex take home alance Carrie mat who is brilliant yet flawed and battling her own personal issues while dealing with and causing International conflicts or the Americans Elizabeth Jennings who is terrifyingly intelligent and immensely dedicated to her job she's willing to do whatever it takes to carry out her missions and follow the path she thinks is right this leads to her coming across as cold and well difficult but because she's written as a full complex human being this doesn't make us hate her but instead sympathize with her struggles you've always done exactly what they tell us to do I was trying to get you to think to ask yeah to ask questions to be a human being about you don't think I'm a human being like Carrie Bradshaw these characters show us a side of Womanhood that's been neglected by Hollywood in a way the same aspects of masculinity haven't been even young women are getting more space to be difficult like debie from never have I ever deie is smart and hardworking but also has a short fuse and is known to make some less than ideal decisions but instead of punishing her for not being the perfect girl and forcing her to change and become sweet like carry before her she's allowed to learn and grow while continuing to be imperfect importantly as well many recent versions of the difficult woman show that simply being complex a well-rounded character can lay the groundwork for accusations of being difficult scandals Olivia Pope and how to get away with murders on Alise keing are both Prime examples of this and it's no accident that these characters are black women because just like in life black female characters are more likely to be labeled as difficult for just speaking their mind or doing their job I am not the girl that I gets at the end of the movie I Am Not a fantasy if you want me earn me a recent portrayal comedy horror the other black girl shows us how this translates in the 2020s black editorial assistant Nella is singled out as being difficult because she speaks out about the racism in a white bestselling novelist book I just have to say that chartri is problematic she hits on a lot of harmful stereotypes for black people and it's dangerous She's Dangerous it's an incisive look at how the difficult label hasn't shifted for black women and shows us that the idea that the label may have given way to something more positive isn't necessarily intersectional so even with all of the strides the difficult woman has made over the years we still have a ways to go in her essay The Cult of the difficult woman Gia Tolentino writes that the reframing of female difficulty as an asset rather than a liability is the result of decades and Decades of feminist thought coming to Bear we can see this in the evolution of the difficult women were given on screen from the early incarnations of women who'd step out of line only to be put firmly back in their patriarchy sanctioned place to the point that now we see full cast of characters of women who are difficult in different ways banding together in shows of Sisterhood but Tolentino cautions against seeing difficult woman characters as inherently worthy of praise or idolization she says every woman faces backlash and criticism extraordinary women face a lot of it and that criticism always exists in the context of sexism just like everything else in a woman's life these three facts create the idea that harsh criticism of a woman is itself always sexist and says Tolentino that simply isn't true just as they're able to be compelling complex and yes difficult women have the capacity to be actually bad too and we shouldn't mistake that for being difficult the difficult woman Trope has evolved with culture's perceptions of the ideal woman and what it means to exist outside of that box women deserve to exist in full on screen with all of their many facets and complexities explored even the less than ideal ones and so the best way forward for the Trope is to let go of the label difficult altogether stepping outside of traditionally feminine Behavior questioning Authority and making mistakes don't make you difficult they make you human that's the take click here to watch the video we think you'll love or here to check out a whole playlist of awesome content don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications

Channel: The Take

Views: 95,723

Keywords: working girl, mad men, ugly betty, superstore, desperately seeking susan, the devil wears prada, miranda priestly, the office, jan, girlboss, sophia, parks & rec, ozark, wendy, homeland, the americans, how to get away with murder, scandal, olivia pope, olive kitteridge, the other black girl, adam's rib, katherine hepburn, sex and the city, girls, hannah, big little lies, difficult woman, difficult women, feminism, sexist tropes, sexist film tropes, women on tv, women in film

Id: UAJFHOXBxA0

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 17 2023