‘Boys don’t like girls for funniness’: The Everlasting Effect of the Rom-Com
Image Source, Credit: Paramount Pictures, Collage: @laurenelburns
Pre-teen and teen girls, though fiercely independent and sweet with sisterhood, are as impressionable as a lump of clay. Hard to see at the time, the things you’re exposed to at that age are hugely responsible for how you arrive at adulthood. These days, we worry about TikTok trends, Instagram filter-face and the ‘Love Island Effect’; the pressures of beauty standards that shape the minds and behaviours of our younger sisters, nieces and cousins. Back in my adolescence, it was romantic comedies.
I still remember the first time I watched The Notebook. I was at a sleepover, surrounded by around ten of my closest friends and frenemies, and felt I had never seen anything more devastatingly romantic in my entire short life. The love story, the memory loss, Ryan Gosling and that kiss in the rain all combined to create a level of mass hysteria in the room more suited to a tragic war-zone than a 13-year old’s birthday party. The sobbing and the snotty tissues lasted several hours; all of us were lost in the narrative and drawing parallels between Noah and Allie’s relationship and the one we had with that boy we sat next to in Maths every Tuesday, imagining the number of pens we would have to lend for him to produce a statement like: ‘If you’re a bird, I’m a bird’.
It’s fair to say that The Notebook gave us some pretty unrealistic expectations of first-love, romance, and how easy it is to renovate a house on a budget. But it was Jane Eyre compared to some of the other sugary fanciful trash we subjected our prepubescent selves to. What about Wild Child, a film that glamourised boarding school and suggested it was highly likely that if you dyed your hair a sensible brown you would become both a better person and have the hot headmistresses’ son want to snog you? Even How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days, a firm favourite for Hudson and McConaughey’s chemistry, is toxic in its portrayal of gender stereotypes, and ends with Hudson’s character giving up a job opportunity in D.C to stay with McConaughey in New York. Of course, these stories are fictional and designed for entertaining, but it’s worth contemplating what sort of message it sends to young women pathing their way to continually see female characters change like chameleons for average-acting men.
Of all the iconic pre-teen rom-coms, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging has to be the most reliably and deliciously British. Based on the book of the same name, it follows Georgia, a 14-year-old, large-nosed (by her own admission) girl living in the thumpingly vibrant seaside town of Eastbourne. Replacing Hollywood glitz for Brollywood (it’s Britain) sandy grit, on paper Angus Thongs is a positive representation of what it’s like to be a teenage girl with a crush. Surely a film where the phrase ‘Quality Lushness’ is used non-ironically couldn’t be that damaging to a young girl’s psyche? For anyone doubting the power of the cult-classic, in Year 8, two of my friends made a pact to go to Eastbourne university based solely on that film. Yet, despite the fairytale ending – fit, older boy falls for younger, cat-owning girl – even Angus Thongs isn’t exempt from the shady rom-com hall of fame.
In the opening scene, we meet Georgia, dressed as an olive. She’s headed on foot to a party, and on arrival she’s horrified to discover her friends have ditched their previous plans to come dressed as hors d’oeuvres, instead caving to the social norm and donning some angel wings.
‘It was supposed to be a laugh.’ Fumes Georgia, humiliated and indignant.
‘But…boys don’t like girls for funniness.’ Replies Jaz meekly.
Though the rest of the film’s arc follows how some boys do indeed like girls for funniness, at 13, this is my takeaway. It’s the sentence that popped into my head anytime a boy told me I was funny, and it’s a belief that took time to unsubscribe to. When I tried to work out why this myth in particular stuck with me, I realised it’s because all clichés stem from some truth, and the ‘funny woman sidekick in eternal spinsterhood’ is an idea perpetuated at every turn.
Like everything, an indoctrination into love through rom-com has its faults, but I wouldn’t change my teenage years given the chance. There was no lasting damage done, and most of the stereotypes have unravelled over time though real-life experience and changes in society. And, as for boys not liking girls for funniness…well. I think I do alright.
by Lizzie Perman (Staff Love & Relationships Writer)
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