{"id":33448,"date":"2015-11-04T05:00:46","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T10:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33448"},"modified":"2015-11-03T22:32:46","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T03:32:46","slug":"the-manic-pixie-dream-boyfriend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/11\/04\/the-manic-pixie-dream-boyfriend\/","title":{"rendered":"The Manic Pixie Dream Boyfriend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I guess I&#8217;ve been living in a cave for far too long, as I had never imagined the existence of the <a href=\"http:\/\/acculturated.com\/manic-pixie-dream-boy\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Manic Pixie Dream Boyfriend&#8221;<\/a> in anything other than a fictional setting:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Journalist Anne Breslaw has written a funny piece for <em>New York<\/em> magazine, <a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/thecut\/2015\/09\/beware-the-manic-pixie-dream-boyfriend.html\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cBeware the Manic Pixie Dream Boyfriend.\u201d<\/a> Briefly summarized, her thesis is that an artsy and eccentric guy might be charming but is ultimately a bad choice for a boyfriend. Breslaw describes this roaming, poetry-reading person as \u201cthe self-mythologizing \u2018free-spirited\u2019 dude who\u2019s determined to make your life magical, whether you want it or not.\u201d It\u2019s the guy who gets angry that you\u2019re working late because he wants to eat burritos on the roof in the moonlight.<\/p>\n<p>She goes on. The Manic Pixie Dream Boyfriend (MPDB):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>\u201crelishes breaking rules, and relishes even more his complete lack of concern that he\u2019ll get caught. He gushes about tripping on mushrooms at Burning Man and he\u2019s happy to supply you with some, as long as you promise to do them in nature. And he is determined to show women \u2014 no matter how much more successful, wealthy, beautiful, happy, and confident they are than him \u2014 that they aren\u2019t living life to the fullest.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>An interesting subtext emerges from Breslaw\u2019s piece, however: less pixie, more <em>rage<\/em>. Her barbs suggest a thinly veiled anger. Clearly contemptuous of the MPDB, Breslaw also comes across as a little jealous of him. The things that annoy her about this 21st-century beatnik \u2013 his enthusiasm for natural food, literature, great music, Burning Man, and sitting on a rooftop in New York \u2013 all sound like very cool activities. One senses that Breslaw envies the pixie\u2019s freedom. She wants to be a part of his dream.  And yet, she also clearly wants the MPDB to be more masculine; in defiance of feminist dogma, she yearns for a little less manic pixie dust and a lot more ambition (and testosterone).<\/p>\n<p>Manic Pixie Dream Boyfriends have always existed, but prior to feminism and the digital revolution they were known simply as bohemians. Pixies had nothing to do with it. A pixie is diminutive and unthreatening, a figure out of fairy tales. While there have always been fey and lightweight male artists, there was once also room for raw masculinity amongst writers, poets, musicians, and filmmakers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I guess I&#8217;ve been living in a cave for far too long, as I had never imagined the existence of the &#8220;The Manic Pixie Dream Boyfriend&#8221; in anything other than a fictional setting: Journalist Anne Breslaw has written a funny piece for New York magazine, \u201cBeware the Manic Pixie Dream Boyfriend.\u201d Briefly summarized, her thesis [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,13],"tags":[262],"class_list":["post-33448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-randomness","category-usa","tag-culture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8Hu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33449,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33448\/revisions\/33449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}