Manic Pixie Dream Girl-ed

We’re all familiar with the Manic Pixie Dream Girl character, but have you ever been Manic Pixie Dream Girl-ed? As in someone makes you into a MPDG in their mind and you can tell they’re doing it and you feel like a cartoon character of yourself and you hate it and it is lame.

I want it to be clear that anything I write about is not me just talking shit. Everyone does stuff wrong in the dating game, even me…EVEN YOU. We all have lost the game, no one survives unscathed or without blood on their hands. I’m just telling a story. For all you know I could have just made this whole thing up. That’s for you to decide.

There are too many guys that are like, “oh I’m so nice, I’m a GOOD GUY, I’m going to DO NICE THINGS FOR THIS WOMAN.” And the woman is like, “oh okay cool great, I like new friends and people doing nice stuff and these activities seem fun so I’ll hang with this guy.”

And then at some point she might decide she just wants to be friends because like, SOMETIMES PEOPLE JUST WANT TO BE FRIENDS and then all of a sudden the “nice guy” like LOSES HIS MIND because he got “friend zoned” and is all “this girl is just chasing after mean dudes and I’m the best guy for her” and it’s like NO. SHE JUST WANTS TO BE FRIENDS. THE FRIEND ZONE DOES NOT EXIST. SUCK IT.

Either he loses his mind or he mopes around. Either way after a bit of time after being told “no thanks” he will TRY AGAIN and honestly the AUDACITY OF THIS SECOND OR EVEN THIRD TRY SICKENS ME.

Obviously I have very strong opinions about this.

Because one of the times this happened to me (it has happened more than once yes, it happens to everyone, it is a MENACE), in addition to the guy kind of being a mopey jerk when I said “no thanks,” because he felt ENTITLED to my affection because he was “NICE,” he also put me on a pedestal in a very odd and unnerving way that had never happened before and I chose to analyze it and Google it and decided I was “Manic Pixie Dream Girl-ed.”

Disclaimer time: I’m not a scientist or a psychologist or an anthropologist and beyond that I don’t live inside this dude’s mind, nor did I have insightful conversations with him asking him what he was doing, so these thoughts are just from my perspective of how he made me feel and that’s that.

But he DID make me feel weird. And perception is reality.

I felt like I was being analyzed under a microscope but ALSO at the same time being ADMIRED DESPERATELY. As some kind of muse. As some kind of INSPIRATION. At first it was like, okay cool I have a new friend to watch the Shannon Show and listen to me when I talk and let me control the radio. Because I really like to control the radio and hate when others control the radio.

But then I started to realize that everything I said and everything I did and everything I chose or showed that I was interested in became something that he was weirdly staring at me and admiring. I would catch this stare of weird admiration and be like wtf.

What’s wrong with admiration? I mean nothing but I’m telling you I felt weird about this one. He was admiring me in an unhealthy way. And I am convinced this is so. And I’m still mad about it. Because I feel like other men are doing this and other women are victims of it and it needs to be stopped.

The thing that’s WRONG and SEXIST about Manic Pixie Dream Girls as characters, according to their actual definition, is that they “have no discernible inner life, and usually only exist to provide the protagonist some important life lessons.”

And this is what I felt like! I felt like he was completely ignoring who I actually am, my actual story, my actual wants and hopes and fears and ideas, and just looking at me as a fun little character lady he could project his yearning onto. And I hated it. And I felt it was unfair and uncool. And I felt like I was reduced to some kind of object that just existed for him to be inspired by. A bright shiny glittery fabulous object, but an object nonetheless.

He cast me as a character in his life and his story where he was the hero protagonist and he did not even care to write me a good backstory. I was a prop. To him I had no discernible inner life and existed solely to provide him with some important life lessons. And maybe he learned some, because he unfollowed me on Instagram.

I guess I’m most mad that once he accepted that I didn’t want to date him he wrote me off as like “a bitch who took advantage of him” and I submit that I DID NOT.

Perhaps this is just another he said/she said case we’ll have to submit to the Court of Dating and it will never go to trial. Because no one cares.