I don't want to be your dream girl

We often hear the term “manic pixie dream girl” and the romanticization of it. We are doing it again, letting men provoke a want in us in our behavior. A form to appear better or more interesting to them or for them. As someone who has constantly had a projected narrative onto them, I don’t want to be your dream girl. I am actually quite tired of feeding into your projection of my “mysterious aura”, there’s honestly nothing to figure out. I’m complex like most people are, I’m laid flat bare on the table for your attempt at consuming me.

The characteristics that MPDG carry are often associated with a palette for culture, as you may hear they have a love for The Smiths. Why? Is it the association with the artist, what has created this niche? Do The Smiths often carry a deeper language in their lyricism? What is the love for art when the artist cannot love without the genuineness behind it? Am I an impostor for feeling deeply? Is that part of my narrative?

Every so often someone will tell me, “you’re cool”… You know what? I hate hearing it, the imposter syndrome hits a nerve that cannot be unprovoked. I think about it for days, in ways I am flattered but more often than not I feel a rage deep inside me building up that catches a lump in my throat. As I’ve expressed many times before, I recently went through a breakup, I’m left to wonder, if things would be different if I wasn’t put up on a pedestal. If I was seen as an equal. Leave the dream girl for teenage hood. As an adult, I am to be loved for being an equal to you, not your prize. See me as someone you could never betray, only in the reason that we are the same. I am not always your loss, I am an experience in the same way your friendships are.

I think we often forget there’s nothing really to the manic pixie dream girl, she’s just a woman. Simply, that is all. With tastes and distates, mannerisms unique to them, often with love for culture. A woman who is simply attempting not to put herself in the box of the patriarchy that you are now attempting to throw her in.