‘There is little more threatening to the social order than a woman who’s angry…’
It has long been an established trope in both cinema and television that female characters must be likeable to be the lead. While fan hatred isn’t limited to female characters, the loathing received by characters such as Skylar White, Cersei Lannister and Carmela Soprano does often feel unfair. In Unlikeable Female Characters, the first book from Anna Bogutskaya, the author attempts to define the different types of unlikeable female characters and why it is audiences dislike them so much…
Subtitled The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate, Bogutskaya’s book breaks down the unlikeable female character into nine distinct categories: the Bitch, the Mean Girl, the Angry Woman, the Slut, the Crazy Woman, the Psycho, the Trainwreck, the Shrew and the Weirdo. Drawing from decades of cinema and TV, Bogutskaya excels in providing examples as distinct as Amy Dunne from Gone Girl, Regina George from Mean Girls and Daria from… well… Daria. This broad and extensive categorisation ensures there is something for everyone here, and Bogutskaya’s knowledge and passion for her subject matter is both compelling and infectious. My minor gripe would be the inclusion of characters such as Harley Quinn, Fleabag and Samantha Jones who I would argue are all mostly beloved (although perhaps not within the respective universes from which they each originate).
Unlikeable Female Characters gives a voice and an academic underpinning to the general idea that women are not given the same rights, privileges and allowances as men when it comes to pop culture. The fact that it does so convincingly and in a way that is not at all academic or stuffy ensures that this is a book for anyone with an interest in representations of gender within popular culture.