The Enduring Appeal of the Weird Female Character

On shows like Hey Arnold, Lady Dynamite, and Chewing Gum, Lady Weirdos Entertain and Electrify

Discussed: Barbie, Weird Female Characters, Strong Female Characters, Unlikeable Female Characters, Female Creeps, Hey Arnold, Big Mouth, Mrs. Fletcher, Chewing Gum, Lady Dynamite, PEN15, Nathan Fielder, Yorgos Lanthimos, Leslie Jamison

“What’s cookin’ good lookin’?” Weird Barbie says when Stereotypical Barbie first arrives at her warped version of a Dreamhouse. Her legs are splayed wide, toes pointing in opposite directions. Her face is covered with random colorful doodles. Her blonde hair has been cut off haphazardly and is also streaked with various colors. The other Barbies whisper that she’s different than them because she has been “played with too much.”

Played brilliantly by Kate McKinnon, Weird Barbie exists as a distorted version of Barbie’s stilted perfection, not just in terms of her appearance, but also her affect and attitude, which has been shaped by exposure to the unruly whims of actual real-life children. If Margot Robbie’s performance of Stereotypical Barbie, leans into Barbie’s “dollness,” (in an interview with Vogue, Robbie even goes so far to explain that Stereotypical Barbie simply lacks the ability to feel sexual desire) McKinnon’s Weird Barbie comes across far more human. She displays curiosity towards her visitor, embarrassment at her toy dog and its fake plastic poop, and even conveys desire, as she makes a brazen sexual reference to Stereotypical Ken, “I’d like to see what kind of nude blob he’s packing under those jeans,” she says to her confused and creeped out companion.

Though only a sidekick to Stereotypical Barbie, Weird Barbie is a beloved character. Many women have the shared experience of playing too rough with their dolls and there is a certain fascination with the symbolism that comes from little girls “destroying” Barbie, just as the little girls in the opening montage of Gerwig’s “Barbie” smash their baby dolls to make way for Barbie herself. In her essay, “Why Barbie Must Be Punished,” Leslie Jamison reflects on how she herself remembers putting Barbie through the wringer:

I treated Barbie the way a mother with Munchausen syndrome by proxy might treat her child: I wanted to heal her, but I also needed her sick. I wanted to become Barbie, and I wanted to destroy her. I wanted her perfection, but I also wanted to punish her for being more perfect than I’d ever be.

For Jamison, Weird Barbie is a kind of “dark guide, serving up unwanted truths,” but I view Weird Barbie a little differently, not as a “broken” Barbie, but the version of Barbie that is most ripe with possibility. I love a good weird female character not because she “solves” a feminist issue, but because her existence simply allows me to see a more varied expression of female personhood. Unlike the “strong female character” the lady weirdo, as I’ll call her, isn’t created to be a good role model. And distinct from the “unlikeable female character” she isn’t necessarily cruel or mean. Rather, the “lady weirdo” is generally set apart by her unruly desires, many of which revolt against social expectations.

I should pause here and say that my love for weirdo characters is certainly not limited to female ones. I’m captivated by funny, offbeat shows and love watching socially awkward characters attempt to forge connections with other people. I’m not put off by the strange, surreal, or uncomfortable. I’ll watch anything Nathan Fielder or Yorgos Lanthimos writes or directs. I sometimes surprise myself with my own fascination with characters who ignore social conventions. In my real-world interactions, I care deeply about saying the right thing. Maybe that’s why I’m consistently charmed by oddballs who care deeply about connection but often get it wrong.  

The lady weirdo is not generally portrayed as malicious. Instead, her antics are often positioned as endearing, especially when her character is a child or young adult. Take Hey Arnold’s Helga G. Pataki, who bullies Arnold, but who has such an ardent crush that she literally keeps a shrine to him in her closet, the “football headed” monument forged from Arnold’s already chewed gum. Helga’s overwhelming desire for the object of her affection is both a gag, as well as an essential aspect of her character: she is presented as a bully as well as slightly deranged poet.

If Helga is the bard of pre-adolescent longing, PEN15’s Maya is her teenage counterpart, who yearns for social acceptance but has no idea how to go about achieving it. Maya endears precisely because she is neither a popular kid nor an outright mean girl. Her oddness is the heartbeat of the show, reminding viewers of their own painfully awkward adolescence. Likewise, Big Mouth’s universe is filled with Lady Weirdos who embrace teenage girlhood at its most feral: from Missy and Jessie’s adolescent antics to the show’s many grotesque and hilarious hormone monstresses, whose wanton desires are just as ribald and bizarre as their male counterparts.

There are also many examples of fully grown lady weirdos, who are still struggling to fit in well into adulthood. In Lady Dynamite, Maria Bamford plays a version of herself who struggles with mental health, but whose quirky and unique sense of humor provide her with avenues for making the world a kinder place. In Mrs. Fletcher, we meet a middle-aged housewife (played expertly by Kathryn Hahn) who experiences a weirdly moving sexual awakening after her son goes away to college and she begins to embrace long-buried desires.  Michaela Coel’s brilliant series Chewing Gum features a lady weirdo in Tracey Gordon’s character (also played by Coel) whose awkward sexual yearnings are both humorous and heartfelt.

In her essay, “The Year of the Female Creep” Katy Waldman argues that “vaguely menacing wallflowers” have been having a moment, especially in literature.  According to Waldman, these female “creeps” are defined not just by their appetites but also by their relationship to the object of their affection. Certainly, it’s not uncommon for a female protagonist to yearn; what distinguishes the creep is her position as voyeur. “She looks and hungers, but the object of her gaze does not look or hunger back.” (Here, I’m thinking Mel from Flight of the Conchords, a non-literary heroine, but perfect example of the kind of female obsessive that Waldman refers to, a self-described “super fan” who spends the entirety of the series making the band she follows uncomfortable).

Waldman argues that the power of the female creep comes from the recognition “that each individual is a combination of watcher and watched—a revelation that still passes for a feminist statement.” I appreciate this reading, but find myself increasingly resistant to the idea that there is a universal female experience that every female character in a story must somehow work to untangle. I love Lady Weirdo characters, female creeps included, not because they teach me something about what it means to be a woman, but because their varied desires are so wanton, strange, and specific that they simply can’t be replicated in another character. It doesn’t surprise me that Stereotypical Barbie’s lessons on how to be human begin with Weird Barbie’s call to adventure. The Lady Weirdo entertains and electrifies not because grants us unique feminist insights, but simply because she feels real.