Fleabag is Embracing Imperfect Feminism and the Female Gaze
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag showcases nihilistic feminism, giving a fresh take on the female experience.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s critically acclaimed television series, Fleabag, provides insight into the inner-workings of a flawed and self-destructive nihilistic feminist character, who the show is named after. The character Fleabag, and writer-director Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s outright refusal to appeal to the standard male-gaze, explores a narrative of imperfect, self-destructive feminism, that so many women resonate with.
The series provides a fresh take on imperfect feminism, one that critics and theorists have labelled dissociative or nihilistic feminism. This fresh take on the feminine experience is one that seems to be mirrored by the show’s roaring cult following, and introduces a performance centered around the female gaze. The show has had a large impact on modern depictions of feminine imperfection and the wider reframing of modern media to be consumable for female audiences.
The male-gaze, a term first coined by Laura Mulvey in her paramount essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, refers to the power struggle present on screen between the dominant viewer, being male audiences, and visual consumption of media. Mulvey thought that the spectral pleasure and over-sexualization of women in media was rooted in the inherent power that male audiences held, and still hold, over visual media.
In recent years, there has been a boom in popularity in online discourses calling out the toxic masculinity associated with the male-gaze, and a subsequent introduction of the female-gaze.
Although, as Sarah Banet-Weiser argues, feminism has grown in popularity, its future certainly remains insecure and has not rapidly become hegemonic, with these themes remaining present in film and television.
While the male-gaze is focused more clearly on depictions and sexualizations of the opposite sex, the female-gaze does not. Rather than existing as a concept with clear borders defined by a singular scholar or theorist, the female-gaze exists as a rejection of the male-gaze, and is made up of identifiers directly from the female experience.
Some scholars claim that the female-gaze, due to its inability to be clearly defined, lacks merit or simply does not truly exist. Alicia Malone writes, in her book The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made by Women
“The term [female-gaze] is not intended to imply a narrow view of gender or an ignorance of the structure of our world. It is used to open up a conversation about the experience of seeing film and being seen in film.”
The female-gaze, rather than existing as a mechanism for sexualizing the opposite gender, as the male-gaze does, exists as a vessel for showcasing untraditional visual and personal characteristics of both female and male characters, and holds cultural relevance in discourses surrounding anti-hero feminist depictions. The female-gaze holds space for women to exist as whole, multifaceted beings.
Historically, male-gaze centric media has only held space for imperfect women to exist in very few archetypes, one of notability being as ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girls’. This archetype is one where women are allowed to exist as imperfect beings, so long as according to Nathan Rabin, inventor of the phrase,
“Manic Pixie Dream girls live solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach brooding soulful young men to embrace life in its infinite mysteries and adventures.”
This female archetype is inherently flawed in that it does not allow for women to exist as their own beings, but rather as concepts through the lens of a male protagonist or audience member, her imperfection does not add to her characterization as a whole, but as a trait she has to seem more appealing to men.
These two-dimensional beings are often women written by men. Contrastingly, Waller-Bridge writes three dimensional female characters who exist for more reasons than to simply teach a boy a lesson. While historically men have been given the opportunity to exist as flawed protagonists, or anti-heroes, women have not. Waller-Bridge creates Fleabag not through the lens of a woman who holds space to be appealing to men, or to teach them a lesson, but as a human being who exists outside the eyeline of a man.
Not only does Fleabag reject the male-gaze, she exists as a woman whose flaws can partly be attributed to society’s definitions of what is desirable. Fleabag’s ability to embody the female gaze and outright reject male standards for feminine behavior and beauty appeals to the larger female audience who find beauty and femininity standards to be oppressive and harsh.
In fact, there are a number of direct connections between Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag and Roxanne Gay’s Bad Feminist, which is directly referenced in the series. Fleabag both satires feminism and sorrows over it, as a metaphor for a general sense of failure, both in her familial relationships, and her sexual ones.
Through characters like Fleabag, women are able to look at characters who embody the recklessness of being a woman and can engage in feminist discourse beyond academia. While fragments of women like Fleabag have traditionally been the villains of stories, allowing audiences to consume the entirety of these characters allows them into spaces where women were previously barred from entering, thus expanding feminist discourse into everyday media.
Fleabag’s own performed feminism is rooted in dissociative or nihilistic feminism. This stems from existential nihilism, suggesting that the human species is insignificant, removing meaning from all actions, and providing insufficient need to live a morally ‘correct’ life.
Nihilism is the rejection of meaning, like Fleabag’s feminism, which is rooted in her rejection of the pain of feminine struggles. Fleabag, throughout the series, remains distinctly self-aware, and yet continues to revel in self destruction. Recognized by scholars of television and feminism, Fleabag’s abjection of feminine struggle is signaled through her detachment from the emotions involved in her embrace of reckless sexuality.
Throughout the series, Fleabag attempts to disconnect sex from emotion. Initially, she strives to persuade the audience that this approach aligns with her embrace of sexual liberation. However, we subsequently learn that this separation of sex from emotional connection is not an empowering decision. Instead, it emerges as a self-destructive behavior deeply rooted in her profound insecurities.
Dissociating from reality and escaping into her fourth-wall monologues, she manages to exert control by feigning indifference towards anything that holds real significance to her, and she conveys this perspective explicitly to her audience. Fleabag’s direct address to the audience is employed as a method of enacting femininity and as a means of internally managing social situations.
Momentary glimpses into her emotion escape this facade, signaling that underneath this display she feels intensely and chaotically. Perhaps this performance of distinctly imperfect femininity with a clear audience responds to the inherent nature of being a woman, rooted in the ability to perform femininity to an audience.
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