the appeal of the GirlFailure character

an unserious love letter to my favourite terrible women, my top 10 girlfailures!

this phrase is one of my favorite terms coined from internet culture and while i absolutely love this definition i also want to say that this top 10 list will probably highlight my favourite morally complex female characters as well, where their haplessness and failures derive from serious nuanced character traits and traumatic environments and not just them being socially awkward and messy. with that being said, this list is a mix of both, endearingly pathetic (funny, silly) and understandably incompetent (troubled, victimized) women. the theme is let women suck! like regardless of the context. anyway if extremely flawed, imperfect and purely chaotic well-written female characters have no fans i am DEAD. (read with caution i love most of these women if it sounds harsh just know i’m speaking from a place of love <3)

• also this started as a throwaway draft in my notes app like a year ago please don’t take me too seriously because i clearly don’t myself. wrote this purely for my own enjoyment!

my honorable mentions; Brooke Dubek (The Other Two), Tracey (Chewing Gum), Danielle (Shiva Baby), Alicent Hightower (House of the Dragon), Britta Perry (Community) and Dory Sief (Search Party).

---

The entire Girls cast, Hannah & Marnie specifically (Girls, 2012-2017)

you watch SATC and think wow as a group they’re a little dysfunctional but they’re all fairly successful and charismatic! just a set of good white women. Girls is the outright opposite of that, awful women come get your representation!

these girls are terrible people and they suck point blank (you could argue for shoshanna but i found her annoying so she can get whacked too irdgaf). the friendships they have are rocky as fuck, jealousy and envy whether subconsciously or not seep into most of their interactions and they’re all so deeply insecure and flawed it’s both interesting and exhausting to watch. every episode the question “why did hannah do that?” should be at the forefront of your mind. to reiterate, they get nothing right, like nothing. it’s poor decision after poor decision, their respective personal and love lives as well as careers are spent in shambles and they’re all very much exasperating and irritating. very much girl and failure! in this same breath they’re incredibly authentic and almost TOO real, and i wish i could say i wasn’t fond of them, especially marnie who seems to be the most annoying and insufferable one out of the bunch to the general public? (UNDERSTOOD) but how do you watch her deliver the worst, most inappropriate acoustic live performance of Stronger by Kanye and hate her. like just vibe. just laugh. they might not get you the 1st time, but the 100th or 101st.. they grow on you i swear…

Fleabag (Fleabag, 2016-2019)

who else’s selfishness and stupidity indirectly killed their best friend and now they’re undeniably haunted by those same unintended but unjustifiable actions????? yesss see gif.

not gonna spend too much time on this queen because i feel like she’s become the poster child for girl fuck ups and navigating those fuck ups in modern mainstream media (it’s well deserved). you watch her grapple with grief, shame, the most dysfunctional familial relationships and a love life soooo all encompassing (it’ll pass??????) and go honestly maybe yeah i would suck too. she’s undeniably selfish, self-centered, honest to a fault and ignorant but she’s also incredibly quick-witted, charming and emotionally complex and both sets of these traits overlap and work simultaneously to properly endear you to her. the writing is sharp, her character work is superb, the storytelling is a 10/10 and fleabag feels deeply human, real and lived in. you receive every bit of the multidimensionality she chooses to either tell us as the audience, or simply by watching it unravel by itself onscreen. she’s compelling and tragic and so well-written it would genuinely be a disservice to not have her here, like everyone knows that and so do i, a real girlfailure!

Shauna Shipman & Taissa Turner (Yellowjackets, 2021-)

my favourite cannibalistic duo and estranged besties!

let me start by saying these two fall definitively into the “extreme circumstances and nuanced character traits” category of girlfailures, and taissa plays both sides girlfailure and girlboss to ME! won’t sit up here and downplay her successes like she had/has a blossoming career, a loving wife and cute kid before shit hit the fan! get you a girl that can do both idk but seriously my sisters were doomed from the start. shauna (as well as taissa) spends her adult life haunted by the past and the guilt and shame that comes with it. in turn, she is fundamentally reckless, self-destructive and utterly deluded. taissa, on the other hand, more specifically appears to have a perfect life in the present but it’s quite the opposite, she’s unraveling, unstable and to be frank somewhat of a disaster. this is all produced by their impromptu summer vacation in the Canadian wilderness for 9 months as young girls (not a vacation in the slightest) where they were forced to become the worst possible versions of themselves and both despite and due to this, you’re able to still root for them because you’re aware of the monstrosities they’ve once been forced upon as kids. they’re vulnerable, captivating and unguarded in every sense of the word. shauna pleads more of a case for being the standard girlfailure simply because she actively participates in messy and dangerous activities whereas taissa’s worst crimes occur when she’s unconscious, she’s impulsive and infidelity prone yes but she’s not as dysfunctional as shauna. duality?

Harper Stern (Industry, 2020-)

the new supreme. kendall roy’s daughter. saving HBO one Sunday at a time!

one of my new absolute favorite messy and complex female characters. she’s a young prodigy really, you see her adjust swiftly to the PierPoint environment and you can clearly tell she’s incredibly quick, sharper than her peers and more than willing to take risks to succeed. this however becomes both her strong suit and problem point. she bites off more than she can chew and she’s chaotic in doing so, chaotic being an understatement. she lies about having a degree to get the job, morally compromises herself and others to secure wins in the workplace that mind you she can barely execute (she literally runs my blood pressure up, the whole show does) and takes on clients and situations that are out of her depth as a junior banker. harper’s unrestrained, morally ambiguous and simply confusing with the decisions she makes in both and out of the workplace (her intimate relationships with the rest of the core 4 in the show are not any less chaotic let that be known) but as she’s actually smart and determined, desperate to make this work for herself and be successful against all odds, these aspects work towards efficiently conveying her vulnerability, relatability and compelling nature as a one of my favorite girl-failures. she’s doing her best you guys..

Queen Maeve (The Boys, 2019-)

London i know how y’all feel i lost my queen too. y’all i do not play bout her.

you start the show and you naturally fall into her given narrative, she’s hardened, mean, lazy, unmotivated and a passive participant in all of the corruption happening at Vought and on top of it, she manages to treat Annie terribly for a good chunk of the first season (and lightly continues to do so further on). it’s so easy to write her off as bitter and indifferent until they start peeling back her layers and you see first hand that my sister is a VICTIM and her genuine good intentions have been muddied by the experiences she’s been put through. homelander you will die in 7 days. like she’s trying you guys!! she’s doing her best!! her girl-failure tendencies don’t fall into the socially awkward and chaotic section but her deeply flawed character traits do, as she spends most of the show grappling with severe self hatred, alcoholism, and moral compromises she makes in order to be left alone and make it by. she struggles to be her authentic self, pursue her close relationships correctly and enables the misfortune around her when she knows she can and should intervene. however, in spite of all of these ongoing struggles, she still manages to eventually show up and show out every single time the right people need help and prove again and again that she has a good heart. a severely underrated character and i just love how she’s written. she might be a guilt-ridden, mean and jaded mess but she’s MY guilt-ridden, mean and jaded mess sorry!

Josie & PJ (Bottoms, 2023)

high-school lying loser lesbians.. you know they had to be here.

pj and josie my favorite actual girl failures!!! like by definition, these two are in fact endearingly pathetic. they’re insecure, poor decision makers and just ridiculously charming (josie). you get the best of both worlds with them like i don’t know pj is actually not well, she’s reckless, rash, chaotic and heavily misguided. (let it be known though that the wrist talk would’ve worked on me but hey!) with josie, she’s a little bit of a pathological liar, a nervous wreck and impressively shy and reserved like what a great match? they spend the entire film scheming and scrambling to get their crushes to like them and they do it in maybe the most unserious ways known to man. pj’s desperate and overly assertive ways and josie’s anxious and socially inept tendencies work together to provide some of the worst (best) decisions you’ve ever seen in film. pure proof you can be insane and weird still get the girl in the end so honestly can i even say they’re failures??? (yes) there’s hope everyone!

Robyn “Rob” Brooks (High Fidelity, 2020)

without a doubt, the coolest, most stylish girl-failure to hit tv it’s really not up for debate. my second coming of Carrie Bradshaw if she ran a record store instead of a news column!

the first introduction we get to one of my favorite 4th wall breakers is her detailing the top 5 heartbreaks she’s had over the course of her life and sorta immediately you understand her essence, very much a young and messy 20 something navigating the relationships and dynamics of her day-to-day. me personally i think it’s fair to say that rob’s a little bit of an asshole and pretentious but i when i say that i mean it well like sincerely that’s her charm. her demeanor and personality work in her favor, and the sarcasm, cynicism and obsessive passion for music she has makes her not only identifiable but also hilarious. music, specifically, and how she views it, (as a coping mechanism, as part of her identity, as a love language, as a way of life) and her actual ability to articulate emotions and experiences through music resonates with me and makes her compelling and relatable regardless of her flaws. rob also comes off very self aware, introspective, calm, cool, collected, all the works and she is! with all of those traits of course there’s a layer of self-centredness to her, she’s rightfully cool! she runs a record store like hello you wouldn’t be able to tell me anything about my attitude either. most of rob’s girlfailure style though springs from her impulsiveness, unsuccessful relationships and her self-doubt. she’s often a bad partner and friend, constantly getting caught in between her want for change and the inability to do so since she can’t let go of her past hang-ups and this is illustrated explicitly in how she makes her way through her new and old connections. but like i said, because she’s so self-aware it makes her appealing and endearing. that duality only highlights how complex and fun she is as a character. her swag too tough they had to cancel her show…

Siobhan “Shiv” Roy (Succession, 2019-2023)

THEE girlboss-girlfailure. shivvy they could literally never make me hate you! (at least not for long anyway)

shiv roy is one of my favoriteee girls to ever fail. she’s so interesting specifically because while she is highly intelligent, wealthy, successful in her own respective career and incredibly capable, her downfall is a mix of a lot of different things. she’s prideful, hasty, self-destructive in her relationships, cold, deceitful and honestly a product of her own environment at the end of the day. shiv is nothing if not ambitious, it’s just how she executes that ambition is so bad its almost laughable. my sister does her best but it’s consistently inadequate like it’s nothing but poor judgement, overconfidence and a lack of experience fuelling her moves in the game and naturally that does not make for success BUT, while it is exhausting to watch, it makes for great tv AND she’s exceptionally compelling. all of these failures and flawed attributes only add to her appeal if i’m being honest. we see her want (need) for validation from her father, the warped and broken relationship she has with Tom, and the difficult position she’s been placed in as the only woman in a misogynistic, male-dominated field and family. to me these things soften her like yes she sucks but the whole premise of succession boils down to the influence of power and the cyclical and destructive path of familial dynamics and that’s exactly what you get with shiv. she’s powerful but a part of the damage and she can’t escape! quite literally everyone in this show is a bad person like please just vibe and let her charm you… and for me to say this as a kendall girl is high praise know this.

Fiona Gallagher (Shameless U.S, 2011-2021)

when the main character goes through so much you almost want to die < < < that one girl that STILL don’t play about Fiona Gallagher! (ME)

the history this fictional girl and i have. the trials and tribulations she put me through i could never really turn my back on her. fiona gallagher takes whatever the eldest daughter syndrome is, doubles it and never gets the chance to give it to the next person. she’s been a mother to those 5 kids since she was a baby naturally she was never going to turn out normally. and the crazy thing is she tries, she tries so hard and despite her best efforts, the circumstances surrounding her along with her own self-sabotaging tendencies and the wrestle between her familial responsibilities and her innate desire for a better life debilitate her every single time. she means well, she means so well so when these mishaps happen to and because of her it really does feel like a huge loss which is why she’s so compelling as a girl-failure, you not only naturally root for her as the main character but because you want to! because how great would it be for her to beat all of those odds? cheating on her boyfriend with his brother? check. accidentally leaving cocaine out on the table for her 4 year old brother to get into? check. going to jail for said accident? check. insane run like you just had to be there she’s too funny sorry. absurd drama aside, fiona is unwaveringly resilient in the face of so much adversity (SO MUCH), incredibly empathetic and compassionate, loyal to a fault, endearingly charismatic and her fluctuating character growth over the course of series is one of the best parts of the show, if not THE best.

1.

Issa Dee (Insecure, 2016-2021)

my favourite girl to ever hit tv. my quintessential girlfailure. my favourite girl to ever fail. MY poster child for girl fuck ups. the best girl failure like i could really just go on and on #mybad.

i’ve seen insecure 3 times in full over the course of my (very short) life and every single watch has made me appreciate and love issa in a different light than the previous one. she’s sooooo everything, career in shambles, love life in shambles, friendships in shambles, identity in shambles like she can do everything please stop playing with her. issa’s character and storylines are driven by the pursuit of getting her life together or at least in accordance with what she truly wants for herself and who she wants to become, whether socially, romantically, occupationally, financially or any of the above. we see her navigate these moments so chaotically like she’s also not well (common theme with these girls). from rapping in the mirror, creating full blown fantasies about her life and subjecting everyone around her to the worst and most awkward jokes ever, to things like cheating on her long-term boyfriend (who cares) (kidding) (not really) and mindlessly rapping about her best friend’s insecurities on stage like she’s not an upstanding citizen in the slightest and it makes her all the more earnest and irrefutable as a messy protagonist. her worst crimes are literally just being unintentionally careless and inconsiderate. she’s charmingly awkward, frustrating, relatable, messy and a work in progress literally what’s not to love?? she’s familiar and refreshing all in one go and in a world of relatable and offbeat characters issa will always be my number one. girl failure turned reformed girl-boss like that isn’t the dream come on now. i see myself in her and i see my friends in her. shout out to all the weird and eccentric charming black girls we kinda make the world go round i don’t know if you guys heard?

---

in closing, i love when women. if you made it this far thank you for reading that’s my list! :)