Picking at digital daisies: Wattpad, teenage girls and stories

The root of the problem

Look, I could come here and tell you everything is okay. That those stories don't matter, that no girl was ever affected by them, and that entertainment exists in a bubble but that is not true.

Everything is political. Everything that we do or say carries a political ideology, whether we are conscious or not. One could read pages upon pages on the matter, not only pertaining to literature but theatre and activism. But, today, we will just talk about Elizabeth A. Ward's "The tragedy of heterosexuality".

This book tackles many, many problems in heterosexual culture, as she calls it. I will try and focus on only two: the misogyny paradox and the heterosexual-repair industry (Ward, 2020).

So, what is the misogyny paradox? Simply put it's the fact that men are conditioned to both be heterosexual and misogynistic.

This concept can be exemplified in any story that has the typical Bad boy or Player. Men that, while they are sexually attracted to women, don't engage with them emotionally. In these sorts of romantic stories, especially in Wattpad, two things can happen: either the main character is appalled by them but grows strongly more and more interested or she calls him out for his rude ways but falls for him regardless. This happens because these stories usually go hand in hand with the Secret heart of gold trope, when we and the main character learn that he has a secret heart of gold (be it that it's still beating underneath the façade or was torn apart by a traumatic event) all of his actions are mostly forgiven.

Wattpad is filled with these tropes. If we refer back to my lovely survey, we can see that out of a list of characteristics main characters tended to be smart, clumsy, insecure and friendly; while out of the same list romantic male leads tended to be proud, reserved, smart and cold.

To show how this concept is very much present in pop culture, as an example, I present to you all "After" by Anna Todd.

The other concept is the heterosexual-repair industry. This is way more vast, so let's give you a big run-down. Since men and women did NOT like each other, some old men thought: how about we make them like each other anyway? Through the years, since the beginning of the last century, the methods have changed. Around mid-century, the focus and responsibility to bridge the love-gap between them fell on women. To show you that though I am paraphrasing I am not lying: 'To resolve heterosexual conflicts, women were counselled to be submissive and lovely, to put their husbands' concerns first,' (Ward, 2020, p. 48).

Since then, that responsibility was never fully taken off our shoulders. A lot of things changed, including the way we ought to carry that burden, but it has stayed a constant in our patriarchal society.

To exemplify this concept, I offer you "True colors" by endlesscurl.