I decided to coin the term ‘Girlfriend Face’ after a night clubbing with two male friends. At some point in the night, I had a conversation with a girl in a beer garden that went a lot like this.
Random Girl: Oh, you must be (Friend #1)’s girlfriend!
Me: Oh, no – I’m not.
Random Girl: Shit, sorry! Are you (Friend #2)’s girlfriend?
Me: No.
Random Girl: Oh… Whose girlfriend are you?
Me: Uh… No one’s.
(Long pause)
Random Girl: Oh, right… Sorry!
I could not tell you why this conversation unfurled, but as it did, a complex was born within my brain. Regardless of my relationship status, my association with the nearest man (whether platonic, or romantic) consistently appears to be my most notable characteristic. Whether this is because I’m quiet or merely due to others’ laziness (or both), I cannot be completely sure. Nevertheless, I concluded that I am a victim of ‘Girlfriend Face’.
Girlfriend Face (noun): A condition in which a woman is only identifiable by a male companion, disappearing into his shadow, and presumed to be his partner regardless of her relationship status.
Obviously, there are infinite reasons why having Girlfriend Face is disappointing – the most obvious one being a loss of identity. When I was dating someone sporty, people asked me to remind them which sport I played (the answer being none – I am dyspraxic and find competitive sport quite traumatic). When someone was angry at the man I was dating, they projected this onto me, even if I didn’t know the backstory and had no idea what was going on. If I fell out with a male friend, it was perceived as a lovers’ tiff rather than a regular rift in the friendship – without my permission, it was unanimously decided that we were basically married. As soon as it comes to the potential involvement of any man, I lose all ownership over my image.
To be quite cynical, it is enough to make a woman never date a man again, simply to prevent this loss of identity. From the moment you meet someone, there is no telling how it will go.
The best-case scenario: You end up with the nicest man in the entire world, and people inherently believe you to be the nicest woman in the world (but you will never just be you).
The worst-case scenario: In a panic, you rely so much on others’ perception of the man that you run around like his PR rep, putting out his fires and whilst ensuring that you don’t catch light in the meantime.
Nevertheless, running from romance does not guarantee an escape from the diagnosis. The issue is that I just have a Girlfriend Face, and don’t need to date anyone for it to impact my life. Not only am I quiet, but appallingly twee. Depending on the day, I might dress like an ’80s popstar or a 1950’s housewife. At my twee-est, I am Jess Day and Taylor Swift and cottage-core rolled into one. I still buy Sylvanian Families. I look like one week of a situationship would kill me.
(All of this is one-hundred-percent true, and completely vile.)
It is the vibe that someone would call ‘cute’, rather than ‘hot’ – more ‘Madonna’ than ‘whore’. *
While I am quite comfortable with my sickening amount of whimsy, the appearance of exacerbated, ‘traditional’ femininity may confuse people into thinking that you lack agency. It turns out, if you look too much like a 1950’s housewife, some people will adopt a 1950’s attitude. With an overwhelming sense of dread, you realise that – to some men – you are merely another man’s property.
This information became startlingly apparent the first time I got into a serious relationship, and many of my preexisting male friendships faded into my periphery, while several of those remaining began to feel more like professional relationships. All of a sudden, male friends are not so interested in meeting up for drinks or engaging in meaningful conversation. Interactions become brief, consisting of small talk (which I hate) and a polite amount of questions about your boyfriend, and then they’re on their way again. If you become single, men you were never involved with in the first place may suddenly believe it is their time to shine (a man’s claim over you was more important than your feelings anyway).
Madonna-whore complex
I really believe that the Madonna-whore complex* comes into play here. I have spoken to many women who feel trapped by men’s sexual objectification, doomed never to be taken seriously within male friendships and relationships, and valued only for their perceived sexuality. I have experienced the opposite, and would label this as romantic objectification – I’m not the girl you want in your twenties, but one to keep around (and hopefully end up with). Women on both sides of this spectrum of objectification – either sexual or romantic – are caged within archetypes that, once cemented, wipe their personalities from public consciousness, reducing them to all-or-nothing concepts that are far easier for men with ingrained misogyny to understand.
Friendships
While there is nothing inherently wrong with friendships that blossom into relationships (in fact, it is the only way my brain can comprehend falling in love at all), no friendship can be genuine if it is used as a means to a potential end. Both parties must believe the friendship holds inherent value.
Furthermore, presumed romantic association within any straight, male-female friendship may lead to it going awry for either of these two reasons:
- He incorrectly presumes that her interest in his life is a romantic one, and is unable to come to terms with the reality.
- Others’ perception of the friendship as inherently romantic (subsequently revoking her agency) becomes a slow-acting poison, leaving her no choice but to withdraw.
The film 500 Days of Summer (2009) delves into the dangers of romantic objectification when its two main characters – Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel) – agree to pursue a casual, no-strings-attached relationship that (*SPOILER*) ends in Tom insisting that Summer has wronged him, as he falls into deep denial of the terms of their arrangement. While the boundaries of a casual relationship may become foggy, it is clear that Tom’s romantic expectations of Summer do not match the boundaries she set from the very beginning (her character does not even believe in romantic love!).
As the cherry on top, 500 Days is made perfect by the fact that Summer is portrayed by the Queen of Twee (with her own Girlfriend Face); Deschanel herself, often pigeonholed as the Manic Pixie sweetheart. Without her permission, Tom presumes male ownership over Summer, subsequently blaming her for his own delusions.
While romantic objectification within friendships is often grounded in idealism and a desire for the friendship to evolve, it often leads to destruction and disappointment for all involved – whether the wrongful sense of ownership originates from a participant, or external influences.
Many of us must learn the hard way that, when we are a man’s female friend, we are too-often perceived as more female than friend. Rather than assuming these men posses the agency and self-respect to announce when their emotions have become entangled (or, alternatively, work through these emotions in their own time and make an informed decision regarding the friendship), we may be expected to tiptoe around male friends on the off chance that they fancy us, or that we have misled them merely by being in their lives without tucking them into bed at night. To highlight the insanity of this flawed logic: I have never felt it fitting to berate a man for being my friend without taking an interest in me, nor would I berate him for befriending another woman he did not find attractive. Rather than treating these men with the same warmth and kindness that we extend to our female friends, it appears many of them would rather we maintained a cold level of distance in order to avoid being labelled a ‘tease’. (This is likely because many of these men do not receive these levels of warmth and kindness from each other, and are therefore unfamiliar with it outside of romantic relationships.)
At a time when men’s mental health is famously struggling, it seems absurd to suggest that we would all be better off if we avoided each other unless we wanted a shag – after all, this is the reason many men struggle to communicate with women in the first place, priming them for the incel pipeline. These unnecessary boundaries only serve to divide us into neat, boring, ‘safe’ (but actually very concerning) categories. Any man who only values female friendship for its potential to evolve into a sexual/romantic relationship needs to reevaluate his perception of women as sexual and/or romantic objects. If he were to open his mind, he would realise he was restricting his potential friendships by roughly 50% of the population, which is a pretty lonely way to live (and pretty crap for any bewildered women on the receiving end of his behaviour). If you ever want girl advice one day, you’ll feel pretty sorry that you cast all your female friends aside for “leading you on”.
Conclusion
Obviously, Girlfriend Face is not an actual condition that a woman possesses, but an increased likelihood that men will neglect to view her as a person, instead warping her into a romantic object. If you have been affected by any of the issues I have discussed here today and believe that you too may be a sufferer, you will already be aware of the way in which your own opinions, needs, and identity may be squished to fit the mould that some dude prepared earlier (and you likely did not agree to). While we cannot always change the way in which people perceive us, I would advise that you remain as difficult and confusing to these men as possible. It is really their problem.
Lucy Marie 