Quit Trippin’, You Never Knew a Manic Pixie Dream Girl

A friend once told me about this phenomenon
Called the manic pixie dream girl effect.
Since I had no idea what it meant,
I detangled this phenomenon to gather knowledge on
Someone who is made perfect

In your mind. Cause you see, when I googled this term,
I found a disturbing load of articles about a romanticised archetype.
And when I asked ChatGPT, my suspicions were confirmed,
As it described to me, a young woman who is not allowed
to have an identity.

It is the young woman to whom you create an unrealistic hype.
It is the young woman who brights up your darkness with perpetual light.
It is the young woman who is vibrant and eccentric,
It is the young woman who is whimsical and free,
And quirky, and impossibly optimistic.

But let’s be realistic,
She is and always will be a mere male fantasy.
Like all manic pixie dream girls, every thing she does
Aims at aiding the male character to deal with his flaws.
She has admirable ideas and adorable worldviews,
An adorkable personality cause she only exists
To feed the protagonist with good news.

But let me prove you wrong:
I know a couple of women who are mistaken as manic pixie dream girls,
And when I say I know them, I mean
I’ve talked to them for more than half an hour.
I know about their talents, and their willpower,
I also know about their imperfections as wells as their problems.
We’ve had deep conversations about society and its harmful expectations,
There is no need for you to fuel unrequested limitations.

Your mother and your sister can’t be manic pixie dream girls,
Only a stranger would live up to that image.
Don’t you see how all your projecting is causing irreversible damage?
I love to break to you, but all the manic pixie dream girls
you thought you knew,
Are actually individual women.

© Elena Natroshvili

IG: 16minutepoetry