Trick Mirror

by Jia Tolentino

In 1997, the psychologist and theorist Mary Gergen wrote about the contrast between the two gendered narrative lines. On the one hand, there’s the “autonomous ego-enhancing hero single-handedly and single-heartedly progressing toward a goal,” and on the other, the “long-suffering, selfless, socially embedded heroine, being moved in many directions, lacking the tenacious loyalty demanded of a quest.” De Beauvoir glossed this as transcendence versus immanence: men were expected to reach beyond their circumstances, while women were expected to be defined and bounded by theirs. Kate Zambreno, in Heroines (2012), nods to de Beauvoir while writing about the existential horror of traditional gender roles—“the man allowed to go out into the world and transcend himself, the woman reduced to the kind of work that will be erased and forgotten at day’s end, living invisible among the vestigial people of the afternoon.”