“Girls, watch out
for those weirdos.” “We are the weirdos,
mister.” Meet the weird girl, the black sheep of
female character tropes, and not just
because she often dresses in black. Her sibling tropes,
like the cool girl, the tough girl,
the smart girl, and the mean girl,
all embody some level of aspiration
or desirability. But the weird girl? She’s a cautionary tale. “Scary bitch alert!” That’s because
the weird girl confuses people
around her. The easiest way
to dismiss something you don’t understand
is to call it weird, and people do not
understand the weird girl. “Dawn, let me put it
to you straight: We’re not here
to get you.” The weird girl
in TV and film is defined by some
recurring characteristics. She has an
unusual appearance. Black offers the easiest
visual shorthand for a weird girl, but whatever the specifics,
it’s a style that says, “I don’t care
what you think.” Matching her
fashion choices, the weird girl has
a contrarian attitude. “Well, I’m majoring
in business administration & thinking of minoring in
communications, so…” “See, that’s exactly the type
of thing we’re trying to avoid." She goes her own way. “Daria, you're never going
to make friends if you keep your nose
buried in a book.” “Let's hope.” Sometimes she does it judgmentally, because she has contempt for
normal people. “Don’t worry, I don’t have
low self-esteem. I have low esteem
for everyone else." Meanwhile, the weird girl
has unusual interests or affectations
that perplex the normals. “Light as a feather,
stiff as a board. Light as a feather,
stiff as a board.” Considering her alternative
attitude and interests, the weird girl
has few or no friends. That fuels people’s
disdain for her, because nobody
really knows her. "Are you having
social problems?” “No.” “Yes, she’s got
no friends.” She also rarely
has a romantic partner. And the weird girl’s
sexuality is often perceived with hostility. Her peers might
label her as a slut “She’s a major slut." or a lesbian. “I was like Janis,
I can’t invite you because I think
you’re a lesbian.” Without this necessarily
being based on any of the girl’s actual
preferences or behaviors. “Hi Dawn, sorry
to bother you, but we were just
wondering: Are you a lesbian?” People may celebrate
individuality in theory, but when it comes to
a weird girl, they feel she doesn’t exhibit
the right type of individuality. Here’s our Take
on the hidden powers of the Weird Girl,
why she scares some people, and how
attitudes about her have evolved
over the years. "You wanna know
what I did to get in here?" “Nothing....I didn't
have anything better to do." You’re watching
The Take. Thanks for watching
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film festival, streaming anytime, anywhere. “Weird” is
a reductive label. And the characters
who get pegged this way actually
have a lot of variation in their
personalities. Broadly speaking,
in TV and film, we can see
at least five different subtypes of weird girls: goths, smartasses,
basket cases, space cadets
and awkward misfits - although some examples
may fit multiple categories and be,
for instance, a smartass goth. “Someone will die-” “Of fun!” “And of murder.” “Theres gonna be
beer, pumpkins-” “bloody goblins.” Let’s start with the most
quintessential weird girl: the goth. “Why are you dressed like
somebody died?” “Wait.” Perhaps the most classic
Goth Weird Girl is Lydia Deetz of Beetlejuice. “My whole life
is a darkroom. One big, dark room.” This loner draped
in black has a flair for melodrama, “I am utterly alone.” and a gothic
fascination with death, making her the perfect friend
for the ghosts who live in her new home. She’s also the only one
who can see the ghosts -underlining that the weird girl’s
superpower is perceiving and opening up
to what most people completely overlook, “Live people ignore
the strange and unusual. I myself am strange
and unusual." Whereas Lydia feels
misunderstood by her family, “We were trying
to scare your mother.” “- Stepmother.” “Anyway, You can't
scare her. She's sleeping with
Prince Valium tonight.” Morbid Wednesday Addams
of The Addams Family has a mother who not
only understands her daughter’s dark
temperament, but also shares and
actively encourages it. “May I have the salt?” “What do we say?” “Now.” In the outside world, Wednesday faces
the kind of social discrimination experienced
by other weird girls, “Is that your bathing suit?” “Is that your overbite?” but her weird family
gives her confidence in who she really is. “Wednesday’s at that
very special age when a girl has only
one thing on her mind.” “Boys?” “Homicide.” Just as diabolical
but less successful is fellow goth Nancy Downs
from The Craft. “You’re a witch!” Nancy represents
the weird girl unhinged. As she and her friends
harness witchcraft for their own ends,
she craves total power. Many of our culture’s
favorite goth weird girls also arguably fit into
our type 2: The Smartass. “Nice wig, Janis. What’s it made of?” “Your mom’s chest hair!" There’s no more
potent weapon in a weird girl’s
arsenal than a cutting remark deployed
for maximum devastation. “You use sarcasm
to distance people. And yet you're still here.” It’s a defensive
skill built up over the years
from dealing with negative comments
toward her and fueled by her disdain for
the people around her. “Hey you, Laura Engalls Wilder,
we're escaping America before the apocalypse,
wanna come?” No weird girl has
a more vicious wit than Daria Morgendorffer, “Sometimes your
shallowness is so thorough, it’s almost like depth.” who’s been shaped
by the less smart and perceptive peers
all around her. "Daria, you can’t have a child
with your kind of intelligence and expect her to fit in easily
with other kids." But Daria’s razor-sharp tongue ends up
connecting with people in ways she doesn’t intend. In the Daria season one episode
“The Misery Chick,” the death of a former
student sends shockwaves through Daria’s high school. Unable to process their grief, students turn
to the one person who seems to understand
pain the best. “The popular guy died, and now I’m popular
because I’m the misery chick. But I’m not miserable. I’m just not like them.” I’m just not like them may as well be the motto of
the smartass weird girl, who defines herself more
by what she isn’t than what she is. “You gloss over everything with
a cynical joke and no one finds out what you
really believe in.” “A-ha, so my
evil plan is working.” Enid, protagonist of
2001’s Ghost World, has a similar M.O., dispatching withering
judgments of the people she sees around her. “I just hate all
these extroverted, obnoxious, pseudo-bohemian losers." It’s telling that she says
“extroverted” first. The weird girl has learned not
to put herself out there, lest she face more rejection. “And I’m so defended that I actively work to
make people dislike me so I won’t feel
bad when they do." Deep hurt drives Mean Girl’s Janis,
the acid-tongued weird girl who cajoles her pal Cady into a scheme
to dethrone queen bee, Regina. “When we were 13,
she made people sign this petition saying
that Janis was…” “Damian! Please!” Regardless of the number or
potency of her quips “Would you put day drinking
under Experience or Special Skills.” the smartass weird girl
remains a fundamentally sensitive person. “I kind of like him. He’s the exact opposite of everything I really hate.” There’s truth in the old quote: “they say if you scratch a cynic
there’s a disappointed idealist." These weird girls
hoped for the best but found the rest. “I can't afford to have any more
hate in my head. My hate is at capacity.” The third type of weird girl is:
The Basket Case. Characterized by chaos and disorder, she tends to be more dramatic
and attention-seeking. “This is probably one of those
cry-for-help things.” Take, for example,
Fight Club’s Marla Singer. Dressed in black, she goes to support
groups for diseases she couldn’t possibly have. “Marla Singerdid not have
testicular cancer." She lives recklessly
and has a positively gothic credo. “Marla’s philosophy of life was that she
might die at any moment. The tragedy, she said, was
that she didn’t.” One of the most iconic
weird girls of the past 40 years is The Breakfast Club’s
Allison Reynolds -a self-described basket case. “and a basket case…” The film goes nearly
25 minutes before she speaks, while she
announces her weirdness by noisily chomping her fingernails,
tying up her finger, and using her dandruff as
an artistic tool. Allison exemplifies
how the basket case is the most performative
variety of weird girl. “Ha!” She tells sensational lies
about herself. “The only person
I told was my shrink…" “What did he do
when you told him?” “He nailed me.” betraying the basket case’s
need for attention. “If you’re carrying
all that crap around in your purse… either you really want to run away,
or you want people to think you want to run away.” “Eat shit.” Director John Hughes offers the key
to Allison’s character just minutes
into The Breakfast Club. All of the other parents
dropping kids off at Saturday detention
talk to them a bit, but not Allison’s. “What do they do to you?” “They ignore me.” Allison eventually lets her guard down
enough to reveal the sensitive heart beating beneath the artifice
and hair in her face. “When you grow up,
your heart dies.” “Who cares?” “I care.” With that, she opens
herself to her peers, who promptly try to change her. Fellow detention student Claire
gives Allison a makeover, bringing her
face out of hiding but also polishing
away the edge she had. Allison even
ends up with the jock. And this resolution
underlines one of the worst narrative clichés
about the weird girl -that her “happy ending”
is to be normalized, even saved. Next, we have type 4:
the space cadet. The space cadet weird girl lacks
artifice and simply exists in her own world. “She really suits being dead,
doesn’t she.” “What?” She’s content to pursue her
own path with little regard for what others think. In Frankenweenie, this character
is known only as Weird Girl, who sees omens
in her cat’s poop. “If Mr. Whiskers
dreams about you, it means something
big is gonna happen.” It takes more than cat poop
to stand out in the Harry Potter universe, where magic
and strange phenomena are parts of everyday life. But even here,
Luna Lovegood is weird. "Unfortunately all my shoes have
mysteriously disappeared... I suspect gnargles
are behind it." She believes in things
other kids consider ridiculous. “What’s a
wrackspurt?” “They’re invisible creatures,
they float in your ears and make your brain go fuzzy.” earning the nickname
“Loony Lovegood.” Not that she cares. As Harry Potter creator
J.K. Rowling said, “The key to Luna is that she
has that unbelievably rare quality of actually not giving
a damn what anyone else thinks of her.” "You’re not going mad. You’re just as sane as I am." The space cadet weird
girl is often underestimated as a sweet-natured goofball. "Meet Princess
Consuela Banana Hammock!" But she’s often much smarter
than people realize, and her outside-the-box
thinking is a special strength. "So how are we
going to get to London?" "We fly, of course." While the Goths
have the style, the smartasses the wit, the basket cases the mayhem, and the space cadets the freedom, the last type of Weird Girl isn’t empowered by or enjoying
her weirdness. Type 5 is The Awkward Misfit. The saddest take on the weird girl, the awkward misfit
is most poignantly embodied by the protagonist of
Todd Solondz’s dark comedy Welcome to the Dollhouse:
seventh grader Dawn Wiener. This weird-girl-as-victim
gives human form to adolescent awkwardness
and the searing pain of early rejection. Her name, unflattering clothing,
goofy glasses, and mere existence seem only to invite torment. “Why do you hate me?” “Because you’re ugly.” Even when she rescues
a fellow geek from getting beat up, he wants nothing
to do with her. “Leave me alone,
wienerdog!" Sometimes, life for the weird girl
especially one as profoundly geeky as Dawn takes a long time to improve. “All of junior
high school sucks, high school’s better,
its closer to college. They call you names,
but not as much to your face.” All this abuse also doesn’t
automatically turn the weird girl into
a great person, as some of our glib
popular narratives suggest; instead it messes her up. Dawn turns the cruelty she receives
at school… “Lesbo! Lesbo!” on her younger sister, Missy, whom she loathes
for being the adorable, beloved counterpart
to Dawn’s wounded ugly duckling. You know you’re not supposed to drink
in the TV room. "Drop dead, lesbo!" The weird girl reflects
the anxieties of her era, which so often center around female
autonomy and sexuality. This character is viewed
as deviant, going against culturally prescribed
norms -depending on the era, that could mean being a tomboy,
lacking interest in marriage, having a desire for
education or travel. From the beginning of the
weird girl’s portrayals, witches have been
her natural parallel, because they easily
reflect the fear of what isn’t understood,
as well as its potential power. After all, one definition of weird is relating to the supernatural
or uncanny. Shakespeare’s Macbeth
opens with three witches called the “Weird sisters” “Saw you the weird sisters?” —and the title character’s
ruin comes in part because he fails to fully understand
their prophecy. The first modern depiction of the
weird-girl-as-witch came in 1939 with The Wizard of Oz. "I'll get you my pretty
and your little dog too!" Twenty years later,
Sleeping Beauty gave us Maleficent,
another power-hungry witch preying
upon an innocent girl. “Before the sun
sets on her sixteenth birthday,
she shall prick her finger.” More than 50 years would pass
before these characters came to be seen
as more nuanced. Gregory Maguire’s book,
Wicked, which inspired the hit musical
created a backstory for the Wicked Witch
of the West that treats her as
a misunderstood weird girl. Lest we forget,
in the events of Oz, she’s also in great
emotional pain after Dorothy kills her sister. Who killed my sister? Who killed the Witch of the East? Likewise,
the 2014 film Maleficent gave Sleeping Beauty’s
villain a sympathetic backstory... “He did this to me so he
would be king." This version of Maleficent acts
out of hurt, and she’s deeply feeling. Maleficent lives in forced isolation,
rejected by her community. “I really felt quite distressed
at not receiving an invitation.” “You weren't wanted.” “Not wa…" but she also doesn’t need help
from outsiders. Independence has long been
a hallmark of the weird girl. “I suppose you think you're too
superior for marriage and love and children -
things that women were born for. Say, who do you think you are? Are you so drunk
with your own importance, you think you can
make your own rules?” Weird girls are also often
associated with deviant sexuality, even though they seldom are what
the rumors suggest. “I’m not a nymphomaniac. I’m a compulsive liar.” Fast forward to today. What would middle school
be like for Dawn Wiener now? The awkwardness
and cruelty of adolescence remain, but overall our cultural environment
has grown more accepting, even admiring, of weird girls. Long-running TV shows
have given us weird girls who are well-adjusted
and popular with their peers. From 2003 to 2018,
one of CBS procedural NCIS’s most beloved
characters was goth forensic scientist
Abby Sciuto. “You are not to touch my computer, my lab equipment, my MP3 player,
my CafPow, my desk, or Bert my farting hippo, without my express
written consent.” According to actress
Pauley Perrette, NCIS creator Don Bellisario’s
intent with Abby was “to take an alternative-style
person with tattoos and make her someone
who is happy, totally put together
and successful.” Parks and Recreation’s
April Ludgate also became a favorite for her frosty demeanor,
relentless sarcasm, and affinity for all things
kitschy and strange. “This is a human-sized
hamster wheel that will be next to the mural,
if we get one, and it will be spinning,
and there’ll be, like, a fat guy in it, all the time, like screaming.” A persona that might have made
her an outcast in an another era, is appreciated. "I found a dead rabbit
on the side of the road and I cut its feet off
to make a lucky charm." "Baby, you are so creepy! Thank you, I love it." In a sense, the weird girl has benefited from
the rise of nerd culture, which has pushed
what was formerly niche into the mainstream. When the biggest movies
and most popular TV shows come from areas
once considered esoteric, the foreignness of the weird girl
stops seeming threatening and starts gaining cachet. “That’s gross,I love it.” Dressing differently or liking something
few people know about doesn’t necessarily make
someone weird anymore. It just makes them
ahead of the curve. “You’re the best. They know it. They just reject
the unfamiliar.” If you’re new here,
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