Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate by Anna Bogutskaya (Sourcebooks, $16.99, 9781728274744), published in 2023, explores how trainwrecks, shrews and crazy women have taken over pop culture and liberated women from having to be nice.
Female characters throughout history have been burdened by the moral trap that is likeability. Any woman who dares to reveal her messy side has been treated as a cautionary tale. Today, unlikeable female characters are everywhere in film, TV and wider pop culture. For the first time ever, they are being accepted by audiences and even showered with industry awards. We are finally accepting that women are--gasp--fully fledged human beings. How did we get to this point?
Unlikeable Female Characters traces the evolution of highly memorable female characters, examining what exactly makes them popular, how audiences have reacted to them and the ways in which pop culture is finally allowing us to celebrate the complexities of being a woman. Anna Bogutskaya, film programmer, broadcaster, and co-founder of the horror film collective and podcast The Final Girls, takes us on a journey through popular film, TV, and music, looking at the nuances of womanhood on and off-screen to reveal whether pop culture--and society--is finally ready to embrace complicated women.
If you loved Unlikeable Female Characters, you'll love A Tale of Two Titties: A Writer's Guide to Conquering the Most Sexist Tropes in Literary History by Meg Vondriska (Sourcebooks, $32.99, 9781464224393). Set to be published July 23, 2024, this brilliantly funny (and rightfully furious) book is written by the creator of the viral Men Write Women Twitter account.
Let's face it, women's representation in literature really sucks. And that's mostly because of the male authors who write female characters like they're nothing more than playthings in their stories. Whether they have breasts like ripe peaches or curves like a racetrack, the literary ladies gracing the pages of bestselling books rarely serve a purpose beyond supporting a male character (or giving him something to fantasize about).
But what are you supposed to do about it if you can't even get a foot (or, I guess, a boob) in the door?
You beat them at their own game.
In this hilarious yet incisive guide, you'll learn how to write women just like a bestselling male author--stereotypes, tropes, objectification and all--so you can start dismantling the system from the inside. With thoughtful literary analysis, interactive exercises, and commentary that perfectly straddles the line between satirical hilarity and righteous indignation, A Tale of Two Titties is both an illuminating study of women's representation in literature and an absurd (yet accurate) guide to writing through the male gaze.