Unlikeable Female Characters: Flawed Female Characters and the Power They Hold

by Anna Bogutskaya

It’s not about relatability; it’s about permission to fail and be flawed. The thing is, though, it’s not about me at all. I’m just tired of trying so hard to pretend to be superhuman, of bending in incongruous ways to try to fit into a box that was not designed for me, or any woman, to begin with—but who isn’t? Like the complicated, often contradictory demands of being a woman, being unlikeable implies being both too much of something and not enough of something else. What the “something” is will always vary, mutate, and slip away before being understood, with some other unlikeable quality taking the place of the first one. The silent implication of being unlikeable is that it’s a free pass to be dismissed, disrespected, and disempowered. If you are deemed unlikeable, you have refused to be a part of the machine of femininity, so you are fair game. You can, and perhaps should, be punished, taught a lesson, put in your place. Unlikeable women—we are told by decades of pop culture—need a valid excuse to be so unlikeable, or else they need to be punished for going against the rules. Only a woman’s intense suffering can justify her unlikeability.