Go with me. Imagine you're an unkempt man-child without a discernible smidgen of direction in your morose life who suddenly, and without warning, crosses paths with a slight, whimsical, free spirit. She is a larger than life, unashamed outcast that is both deliciously mysterious and paralyzingly charming. She also harbors a slew of quirky characteristics that make her all the more effortlessly alluring. Congratulations, you have been manic pixie dream girled.

A popular Tumblr term, I had only heard it a handful of times, never knowing the details of what it meant until recently when an article from 2014 managed to make its way onto my Facebook feed. In said article, film critic Nathan Rabin described his regret at ever coining the term back in 2007.

Long story short, after viewing the 2005 film Elizabethtown starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst, Rabin noticed a recurrent theme, connecting women like Dunst's character Claire, to women in other films with similar attributes, dubbing these characters "manic pixie dream girls." Rabin described them as, "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach the broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures."

Jeeze.

There is no shortage of issues with this archetype. Beginning with the impossibly sexist inference that these women's only purpose is to bring clarity to floundering, soul searching, hipsters. Let's get one thing straight...watch any movie featuring an MPDG and make no mistake, these women are fully functioning, happy members of society who don't need no man. It's the sad sack protagonists who need THEM to rediscover life's purpose Okrrr? Okr.

Aside from that typically misogynistic annoyance is the real whopper. I present: The unintended consequence of giving young women yet another unattainable structure from which to mold themselves.

We've been bombarded by the idea of this trope long before Mr. Rabin ever gave it a name. These women can be found in both film, and literature. And lets be honest, fiction plays a large role in creating reality. Particularly for someone like myself who grew up in a pile of novels, plays, and unrealistic movies, they were the clay from which my world was molded, putting me on a search for real life friends and romantic partners that reminded me of the characters that I had fallen in love with. Harder still, was the quest to self discovery and the vetting process of characteristics that I so desperately wanted to have vs. those that seemed to be innately present. I always turned back to literature, clinging to the characters that I most identified with. I wasn't the leading lady, the popular girl, I was the other one. The moderately funny brunette friend. Luckily, there was a sub genre where the other girl gets her due attention *cue the manic pixie dream girl*. More than any other fanciful dream, I wanted to have what these women had. I wanted to be unique.

Fast forward to 2007, the MPDG is alive and well and ruining my life. I'm 14, uncomfortable with just about every inch of myself, and morphing into the ugly green headed monster of jealous on the daily toward every girl who possessed even a few of the characteristics I so longed for. I admired their entire being, starting with the tousled hair that always looked perfect and bright eyes set in a glowing face that didn't need a stitch of makeup. Don't even get me started on the clothes. Vintage t-shirts and boyfriend jeans with cute sweaters that hung artfully off their small frame. They listened to the good bands before anyone else knew them. They read Bukowski and Kerouac in their free time. You wanted to hate them, but then, you couldn't. Because they were also, of course, super sweet. They didn't care about the typical things that bogged down "normal" girls, their minds were too full of creative thoughts for that. They had a flighty and spontaneous view of the world that just in talking to them made you want to road trip across the country in a love bus. At least one girl came to mind right? Probably someone you haven't heard of since graduation because they're in the peace corps or are lost in nature like some fairy vagabond? Sigh.

It took a while, (i.e. as I currently write this article) to realize that the problem with this trope being the guiding force in my teens, is that these women do not exist, at least not in all of the transcendental glory that they have been presented to us by the media.

Lets asses the damages.

For the women who happen to have MPDG characteristics IRL: This concept puts a negative label on women who happen to have these characteristics intrinsically. I know plenty of people who are naturally alternative, and to be reduced to a cultural cliche is damaging to someone who was simply born that way. It's not their fault society has now taken their personality and turned it into a trope. Insinuating that the things they enjoy are dictated entirely by the desire to appeal to this stereotype is both untrue and unfair. Moreover, the fact that men are then attracted to the idea of them that was been perpetuated by the media rather than what they uniquely have to offer makes for a bunch of shit relationships.

For the women who have not a single MPDG characteristic: This garbage term makes everyone else feel as though this is the ideal, these are the things we should be striving toward in order for men to find us desirable. You want the quirky, awkward, unintentionally charming Joseph Gordon-Levitt of your dreams to fall at your dainty feet? You better invest in some oxford sneakers. My naive 14 year old half brain was convinced that if a man didn't find the sole purpose of his existence in the shape of my nose and the smell of my hair, I was somehow less than, and in turn would never find purpose. I mean what a steaming pile of crap.

Though I truly believe it was never intended by Rabin, his concept turned out to be yet another impossible standard for women to try and live up to, and an additional catalyst for comparison to steal our joy. Just as dangerous as societies pressures to be thin, or for women to cease to age, is the pressure to be distinctive and ethereal.

If you notice, these characters are created by men, for men, and are presented to the audience through the eyes of those men. They are never permitted a moment of internalization for us to see if they truly are aloof and otherworldly behind their chunky bangs and ukuleles. I am willing to bet that if we had been given that glimpse, we would quickly see their passions and fears. Then they wouldn't be as interesting though right? Because who is? Once you've scrubbed away the surface and find out that even the most interesting people are undeniably human, with less than charming characteristics, you're forced to either love them for who they are, or make a hard pass. That's the part the movies always conveniently leave out.

I finally decided to take an inventory.

I am not flighty, I'm grounded.

I'm not unattainable, I'm realizable.

I'm not disinterested, I'm passionate.

And that's okay. That's more than okay because that's what has gotten me here. And it's also okay to not be any of those things. It is so okay. Trying to be someone else never actually works, your true self will eventually be too amazingly strong to override.

Rabin has apologized for the unintended consequences that came along with his seemingly innocent observations a decade ago. So while we're on the subject I'd like to make a formal apology to every girl I've ever silently resented for being who I thought I wanted to be.

In fact, we should make a pact. Like the girls in The pregnancy Pact but way less insane. Let's just stop. Let's stop making people feel bad for being what they are or are not, and for the love of Guac, let's stop trying to live up to anyone's standards but our own.