Confessions of a Former Manic Pixie Pick-Me

I was never a ‘cool girl’ among other girls. Having grown up moving a lot, I didn’t fit in with the lifelong friend groups I encountered in each new school.

To complicate matters, I remained undiagnosed with ADHD, autism, or any other neurodivergence, and I lacked ‘pretty privilege.’

It wasn’t just that it was difficult for me to understand social cues or rules around play or gossip or activities. I was perennially weird and awkward.

By the time I reached high school, guys my age picked up on my weirdness and didn’t gravitate to me, either. Assured this would happen in its own time, I focused on preparing for my future career. I masked my weirdness through good grades and military-style discipline.

Deep down, what I was really doing, in my own weird way, was trying to attract a mate.

I believed I was better off seeking a ‘real man,’ not a boy, who would take care of me.I wanted maturity and wisdom and most of all, someone who would understand ‘the real’ me. (Yeah. Massive daddy issues, for sure.)

The problem was,I didn’t grok that from a developmental standpoint, I was supposed to date — to practice, make mistakes, break up, come back together, start over.All that felt like it would be a colossal waste of my time.

I know now that this was social conditioning. Still, it’s hard to avoid that while I was steeped in it, I engaged in some very anti-feminist behavior.

I let a trope define my sense of worth.

Back then, I didn’t know there was such a thing as a ‘manic pixie dream girl’ — “an apparition written into a story to breathe life into the empty lungs of men who don’t know how to love” — and I’m not sure I would’ve identified with it if I had.

Unlike cinematic MPDGs Ramona or Clementine, I didn’t dye my hair or wear funky clothes. I didn’t listen to the music no one else had heard yet, or read the books most other girls wouldn’t discover until college literature classes. I didn’t engage in punk or hacker counterculture, not least because my parents would never have allowed it.

I was ‘quirky,’ but in my own way. I wore a lot of skirts and dresses, pieces that flowed and made me feel pretty, even if they weren’t especially ‘in.’ I listened to jazz. I wrote poetry my teachers told me to keep.

I fulfilled the ‘manic pixie dream girl’ trope in terms of the kind of ‘refreshing’ perspective men appreciated, but always with the awareness that my ‘quirkiness’ could cross a line and become unappealing.

For a time, it even worked: when I did encounter older men, they seemed to appreciate that I wasn’t like other girls.

They also took pains to make sure I stayed that way.

I’ve seen it said a number of times that older men prefer younger women because younger women have less experience and are more malleable. It’s easier, in other words, for a man to mold a woman to what he wants.

That was certainly the case for me. A sampling of some of the criticism I heard over the years about other girls and women:

• Use of the word ‘spiritual’ to self-identify signaled the presence of issues.
• Women who expressed needs, even as simple as a backrub, were somehow less than or, alternatively, ‘pushy.’
• I was ‘hovering’ when I asked where he was going and when he thought he’d be home, or anything about what he was doing when I wasn’t with him, because he needed his space.
• Men who played and sang sensitive acoustic guitar music were emasculated, and women who enjoyed that music were emasculating them.

Left unsaid: the expectation that in order to remain dateable — acceptable — I would need to fit into these guidelines.

Controlling myself meant judging other women.

If abusers control through isolation, then their greatest trick is to teach you how to do their dirty work for them — less effort for them. More than setting myself on fire to keep others warm, I began to carve away pieces of myself to fit others’ shapes.

I’d grown up bearing witness to my mother’s not-so-inner conflict over whether to join the second-wave feminist movement that defined her generation, or stick with traditional gender roles.

This conflict confused me. I couldn’t work out whether she wanted me to achieve what she hadn’t felt able to or to validate her life choices.

Either way, I continued to walk that tightrope between “too much” and “not enough.”

In the military and law enforcement environments I’d aligned myself with, the focus was ostensibly on getting a job done, no matter who was doing it.

Yet the social rules I’d struggled to follow in school were in play here, too.

The women I surrounded myself with joked with the guys (sometimes at their own expense, and mine).

Some pushed themselves to meet the men’s physical fitness standards (while I struggled to meet the women’s minimums).

Sometimes, they distracted themselves with petty dramas (that rivaled the ones I shied from in high school).

Few seemed to have any more patience for my ADHD traits than men did.

It remained hard to feel like I fit in, thus feminism didn’t seem, well, ‘all that.’ So, when I had the opportunity to speak up for others — to push back on those beliefs about how women should or shouldn’t behave — I put up and shut up, instead.

Pick me, I was telling the guys who said these things. I’m not like those other girls.

I believed my self-control wouldn’t come back to bite me.

I really wanted to think that being a good girl and playing by all the rules would be rewarded. It was, but only for a little while, and often came with a heaping side of still more judgment and condemnation — often from other women.

Far more telling is the shame I feel. My struggle to forgive myself — my own internalized misogyny — is as anti-feminist as the criticism and judgment I allowed men to get away with in my presence.

Along with learning to rise to my own power, take up space, and grow a strong backbone, I’m working on forgiving both myself and other women for compromising ourselves — for going along to get along in ways that ultimately divided us all.

If the manic pixie only exists as a dream girl, then the space at the table I’m making room for — for both myself, and other women — is that of a centered, robust, fully present crone.

I still may not be inclined to dye my (now silvering) hair, wear funky clothes, or any other outward form of standing out. My goal is to just be, and warmly welcome other beings to join me.