weird girl supremacy

bc weird girls will rule the world

Cool Girl, Mean Girl, Smart Girl, Chill Girl. Off and on throughout the course of my life I may have been able to identify with one or another from time to time. When I was acing AP English—Smart Girl. When I drank beer in my friend’s basement and immediately could feel that the guys found me more attractive—Cool Girl. I’m sure my family can attest to times I’ve been Mean Girl, though I don’t know if I’ve ever been Chill Girl. It was never in the cards for me.

What I have always been, no matter how hard I tried to shun her or shame her or suppress her, is Weird Girl. Let me clarify—this is not the manic pixie dream girl—the weird girl is not so charming and cute.

She is me and I am her and perhaps it was always meant to be: a theater kid turned writer, a mentally ill teen turned far too self-aware adult. And therefore I (case in point) am rather taken by the uptick in weird girl representation.

While the weird girl has always been there, ex. every character Winona Ryder has ever played, I truly believe she hadn’t gotten her flowers until recent years. “I myself, am strange and unusual” (Winona says this in Beetlejuice) has been trending on TikTok and nearly every Ottessa Moshfegh novel that comes out is a New York Time Bestseller. The Weird Girl Aesthetic is being written about in publications such as WhoWhatWear and The Cut. The more strange, unsettled, abstract, or sometimes downright insane the girl is, the better.

The Weird Girl Trope, Explained describes the weird girl in film as, contrarian to her sister tropes the Cool Girl, the Mean Girl, or the Smart Girl, not aspirational or desirable. In their words, “People value individuality, but they feel [the Weird Girl] doesn’t have the right type of individuality.” Perhaps she’s been labeled a slut or a lesbian; her sexuality is often targeted. Maybe she wears all black or the opposite, existing purely in bright colors. She might be the smartest person in the room, your stereotypical airhead, or an absolute basket case. There are many variations of the Weird Girl in media, and yet they all share one thing: their distinct lack of “belonging”.

In fact, more often than not, they downright detest what it would mean to belong in our society. They symbolize the very opposite—perhaps this is why we’re so drawn to them. They supply us with a kind of scapegoat for which we can explore odd personas and subversive characteristics without taking them on for ourselves.

According to Why Weird Girl Fiction Speaks to Something in All of us, this is one of the many reasons we enjoy this niche, this sub-genre, while in fact, the interest is nothing new. The writer of this piece stated, “Female readers have a long history of using strange and supernatural fiction to express themselves. ‘Gothic literature often foregrounded female experience in a patriarchal society. It’s a mode which is known for addressing taboos and what is repressed in culture’.”

And who doesn’t want to explore taboos from the safety of their own couch?

Nowadays, whether we’re reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), and relating to a woman who consistently drugged herself in an attempt to sleep for a whole year, or A Certain Hunger (2020), the story of serial killer Dorothy Daniels, a successful food writer who also eats men, there tend to be pieces of these weird and wonderful women that are downright relatable. These stories, these characters, merely are caricatures of very real aspects of girlhood and womanhood we know all too well.

I too have felt a grief disproportionate to my other emotions, enough to make me wish I could sleep through a year and wake rested and recharged. I too have experienced true terror whilst in the everchanging ecosystem of a female body, having it sexualised and controlled before I even knew I could sexualize or control it myself. I too have felt desire akin to hunger, a hunger so deep you feel it in the very red bone marrow of your ribs.

Let’s be honest. No matter where you identify on the gender binary, can you truly tell me you haven’t?

No? Well, perhaps that’s just my Scorpio moon and my penchant for romanticizing everything, whether it’s the mundane or the grotesque.

Back to the topic of weird girls in film and media—our younger counterparts often found comfort in these characters. Think Luna Lovegood, Wednesday Addams, Janice (Mean Girls), Phoebe Buffay, Nancy Downs (The Craft). The odder they were, the more comfortable we were made to feel about the jagged, misshapen pieces of ourselves. They’re persecuted for their quirks by their classmates and family members alike, leaving us safe on the other side of the screen, untouched and unabused. Like I said: a scapegoat.

To put it quite plainly, art imitates life. When we’re young (think back to your middle/high school self) our fascination is not the same. Our confusion with these beings that don’t conform, don’t assimilate, tends to mutilate, rot, and warp, hence why more often than not these girls are the targets of bullying and harassment. They are scapegoats for the pain that come with insecurity and uncertainty. The same went for queer teens, those who had different ethnic or religious backgrounds, and so on and so on. Wednesday Addams was one of the rare weird girls that understood why people mistreated her and her family—they simply didn’t understand them.

And what’s more human reaction than fear, when it comes to what we don’t understand?

Now that I’m twenty-five, have moved from my hometown, and tend to be disturbingly reflective, I can look at the people who treated me poorly and understand these things. I was too weird for them. My body was too big for them. I was too loud for them. All because they had a preconceived notion of what normal, likeable, good teenage girls behaved and were shaped like. No matter how hard I tried to mold myself, starve myself, bend myself, my clay would not fit to their desires. And when it did, for a short-lived time, I would choke.

For a long time I had wished I’d been like Wednesday, confident in my strangeness to the point of wearing it unflinchingly. Now I look back with empathy, knowing that I’m living in New York City and I have a wonderful, artistic, full of love and light and adventure life whilst the people that mistreated or neglected me… well, let’s just say that Scorpio piece of me that can be rather vindictive, is smiling.

Anywho, these stories, these weird girls, are all incredibly relatable—if you just look past their distinct lack of “belonging”. Or, if you’re like me, this might be what draws you to them. It’s in our human nature to be fascinated by the bizarre and different, hence the obsession with true crime, cults, people in the Guinness Book of World Records with abnormally long tongues and fully-tattooed bodies.

But women—these Weird Girls—I can’t help but root for them everytime.

Book Recs for the Weird Girls:

• Nightbitch - Rachel Yoder

• Organ Meats - K-Ming Chang

• Natural Beauty - Ling Ling Huang

• Animal - Lisa Taddeo

• Juniper & Thorn - Ava Reid

• Let’s be honest, anything written by Ottessa Moshfegh

• Want to pay homage to the queen? Anything by Gillian Flynn

Film/TV Recs for the Weird Girls:

• Twin Peaks (1990-1991)

• Fleabag (2016-2019)

• Pearl (2022)

• Ginger Snaps (2000)

• The Love Witch (2016)

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Disclaimers/Notes/Somethings I Wanted to Include??

1. During my research I found a decent amount of conversation surrounding the weird girl and how many of the defining characteristic are representative of those in the neurodivergent community—I am not well versed enough to speak further on the intersection of those topics, but food for thought.

2. At no point is this piece meant to discount or neglect anyone elsewhere on the gender binary other than female-identifying. I merely used the term “girl” as Weird Girl is a media-coined trope. No matter how you identify—if you relate, you relate—and I give you a big hug and kiss.