Where's the Rom-Com Renaissance? The Girls are Getting Delusional.
Can POV TikToks Satisfy Our Rom-Com Cravings?
June 13, 2024 | Written by Emi Grant
I am 27 TikToks deep in the “Chill Girl” POV playlist on kelseyjunejensen’s page. If it wasn’t clear, this “chill girl” is not so chill after all. The character, who has sustained Jensen’s content creator career since 2021, is based on the archetypal pick-me girl— somebody we all know and love to hate. She’s constantly scheming, after the viewers’ powerless boyfriend “Jason,” beer in hand, ready to throw us collectively to the wolves. This time, we’re at a wedding.
“Between you and me, I’ve never wanted a wedding. Just take me to a courthouse,” Chill Girl sneers, “we’ll get a beer after.”
Many moons ago, these TikToks were relatable. A girl makes one too many jokes at your expense in a bar much to the delight of a male audience. It’s a gesture at the internalized misogyny that plagues female relationships in male-dominated spaces. Now, it’s cascaded into full-blown fantasy: after 20 parts, we’re running out of ways to call this fictional girl desperate.
“I feel like a video of chill girl finding out he gets engaged would be top tier,” comments a user named Jessica. These comment sections are filled with suggestions. Jason should tell the Chill Girl off, Jason should ask Chill Girl if she wants a drink, Jason should declare his love for “us” right there in the middle of somebody else’s wedding. I imagine part 156 of this series would go something like this:
“I’m so sorry,” begins Chill Girl, “I didn’t realize this was a karaoke bar! Jason, two words for you: margarita, vespa. Remember that beautiful night in Florence? Anyway, I’ve heard you’re a great singer. You should totally sing. Shouldn’t she sing in front of all these people, Jason?” Oh wait, that’s from the 1997 Julia Roberts Pick-Me classic My Best Friend’s Wedding.
“Perhaps we’re less interested in these POVs for their relatability and more interested in the fantasy. Isn’t it great to position ourselves as the righteous, slighted girlfriend who will ultimately reign victorious? ”
It’s remarkable how unrelatable these POVs have become. While many women have dealt with a snarky rival or two, how often do we find ourselves in a pick-me situation so dire that we must consume hours of content that essentially boils down to the same basic marks? The girl looks desperate, we, just off camera, are pretty, poised, and victimized by Pick-Me envy. At what point do we need to say, “Jason, enough, tell this girl to back off or we’re over!”?
Perhaps we’re less interested in these POVs for their relatability and more interested in the fantasy. Isn’t it great to position ourselves as the righteous, slighted girlfriend who will ultimately reign victorious? Though our POV isn’t shown it’s implied that we are the rational, charismatic girl who is so threatening to other women that a slew of challengers are determined to take what should be rightful ours. It’s the basic concept of a rom-com.
Comedian Stef Dag went ultra viral with her portrait of a "Candid Girlfriend"––a woman whose most defining attribute is that she “loves pomegranate.” The comedian begins, “My take is that all guys think they want to date the cool, hot, artsy, baddie girlfriend with baby bangs and a bad father, but that’s actually not the case at all.” Instead, she explains, they want the Candid Girlfriend, a white woman with short hair and an art history degree. “The Candid Girl is patient zero of the Pick Me Girl,” Dag continues, “she’s not even trying to be Pick Me, she just authentically has nothing going on.”
Of course, this girl isn’t real, but something about this video resonated with its 17.2 million viewers nonetheless. Dag describes a girl with no interiority whatsoever but Candid Girlfriend manages to be the villain of our story despite her lack of depth. There’s something therapeutic about outsourcing our insecurities to a sketch of a woman we can point at and laugh. The larger conversation has more to do with men transforming fully dimensional women into blank canvases for their projections, but that narrative’s a little more complicated than a three-minute TikTok.
What Dag has done instead is create the perfect rom-com villain. The Candid Girlfriend is everything we (the complex and problematic audience) are not. She’s perfect in superficial ways but vapid where it really matters. Our male love interest will soon discover that he prefers messy realness to her rigid vapidity by the end of the 90-minute runtime.
“There’s something therapeutic about outsourcing our insecurities to a sketch of a woman we can point at and laugh. The larger conversation has more to do with men transforming fully dimensional women into blank canvases for their projections, but that narrative’s a little more complicated than a three-minute TikTok. ”
The video and its virality prove one thing: we are in desperate need of more rom-coms.
Every time something remotely funny and offhandedly romantic graces our screens, the ether screams: the rom-com renaissance is upon us! It seems like we’re ready. For years the whisperings about Jennifer Lawrence’s return in ”No Hard Feelings” delighted and scandalized the internet. We dialogued about age gap relationships and sang Lawrence’s praises without so much as a second trailer. “Anyone But You” grossed $126.5 million as of the end of January, surpassing expectations with a mid-sized budget of $25 million.
But we’ve yet to see the return of the rom-com domination of the 90s and early 00s. And in that absence comes TikTok POVs. While it’s great that the people have taken producing rom-coms into their own hands (the democratization of film, or what have you) we’re seeing a severe lack of narrative vision. In the Chill Girl example, we’ve got dozens of setups. There’s an enemy, there’s an off-screen boyfriend who doesn’t quite meet our expectations, the tension’s all there and then…nothing.
Rather than feed us that chemistry-filled goodness earned by some necessary trials and tribulations, we’re left stewing. We are more focused on our hatred for this woman we’ve created in our heads than the end goal of ditching Jason and finding that oh-so-elusive perfect match waiting on the other side. Our appetite for rom-coms leaves us starved, desperate, and vengeful of other women.
Here’s where the actual writers come in: we need guidance. In a world that is so increasingly dark, the genre seeks to take our cynicism and flip it on its head. Yeah, there might be a girl who’s after your man, but there’s also the quirky best friend who lets you borrow her car on a high-stakes mission. People are obnoxious, boyfriend-stealing thieves, but they’re also kind strangers who turn a restaurant into your stage. Rom-coms are not meant to feed our base instincts, they help us believe in our own humanity.
Call up Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Lopez for a story about working in a pizza shop and finding love after divorce. Tap into the league of frizzy-haired actresses and lie about how easy it is to get a job in journalism these days. Dial up the hijinks to eleven––I’m talking women falling head first in garbage cans and men having seafood allergies in restaurants. Our lives might depend on it.