Since the rise of modern feminism, female protagonists have been expected—almost required—to be aspirational in one way or another. They had to be strong but not too intimidating, flawed but still likable, funny but never crude. The “yes, you can be different and edgy and “not like other girls,” and “yes we’ll love you for it; but no, you can’t be too different otherwise you risk being unpalatable” sort of archetype.
Then came the messy women. The disasters, the weirdos, the women who have a penchant for the 2S: sabotage and self-destruction.
We’re not talking about girl bosses or manic pixie dream girls; no, we’re talking about the exact opposite. We’re talking about the antithesis of the “strong, independent woman”. The ones who say the wrong things in the wrong situations, make people uncomfortable just by existing, and have a general air of “do not perceive me” mixed with “I will make you perceive me in the worst way possible.”
The grotesque, the awkward, the morbid, and sometimes downright insufferable.
And no, it’s not charming. It’s not Kafkaesque. She carries the moral rot of Raskolnikov, but she is distinctly female in her suffering. She is not granted the same philosophical depth as the tortured men in tragedies and fiction. She is not a “misunderstood genius”; she’s literally just a girl making bad choices, and we love her for it.
The Fleabag Effect
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag (2016) wasn’t the first messy woman on screen, but it certainly has set the tone in the modern feminist consciousness. Fleabag—by her own admission—is a “greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, mannish-looking, morally bankrupt woman who can’t even call herself a feminist”.
She weaponizes humor as a defense mechanism, and hovers toward every bad decision like flies to a carcass. And yet, we can’t help but empathize.
Before her, there were already many women in media who embodied this archetype. Since then, we’ve seen progression from I Am Not Okay with This’ Sydney Novak and PEN15’s Maya and Anna to the more recent Beef’s Amy Lau and Bottoms’ PJ and Josie—each of which showcases a different flavor of dysfunction.
The Moshfeghian Aesthetic
Beyond television, literature has carved out space for the messy and more appropriately, unhinged women. Ottessa Moshfegh, the queen of the grotesque, pens protagonists as unsettling as they are fascinating.
In My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the narrator undergoes a year of deliberate hibernation, numbing herself into nothingness to flee her privileged but meaningless existence. In Eileen, the protagonist wallows in filth, dreaming of escape while indulging in a more outlandish behavior.
Long before Moshfegh though, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar introduced readers to Esther Greenwood, a woman unraveling under the weight of societal expectations and her own alienation. Her descent into madness, filled with a mix of biting cynicism and eerie detachment, sets the stage for the dysfunctional heroines that followed.
Now, new branches of characters from the same tree are growing. Ji-won from The Eyes Are the Best Part navigates life with an unsettling detachment, while Cassie from Ripe spirals through a hollow, corporate existence, haunted by existential dread.
Together, these characters prove that women don’t need to be likable to exist; they just need to be unapologetically raw and real.
Why Do We Love Them?
The rise of the messy woman is a reaction to the suffocating expectations placed on women. Perfection is exhausting. The girlboss era demanded relentless ambition, the “clean girl” aesthetic insists on effortless beauty, and social media curates idealized versions of reality. Messy women push back against all of it.
They are cathartic. They allow us to indulge in chaos without consequence. They mirror our intrusive thoughts, our existential dread, our moments of selfishness. They remind us that we can be “too different”, and still be worthy of whatever on earth we want.
In a grand scheme of things, the phrase “She’s just like me, fr” is more than an internet joke, and the messy woman goes beyond the character trope. The messy woman lives in me and you. She’s all of us, freed from the pressing pressure to be perfect.
Really, she’s just like us, fr.
