The best part of the Barbie movie

I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about the Barbie movie. As a young girl, I didn’t see myself reflected in the Barbie world and my family couldn’t afford the Dream Houses and Cars and Campers I circled in the JCPenney catalogue.

Still, I loved Barbie. I had two Barbies, a Ken, and a bed made out of a showbox and a tissue paper, and that was all I really needed for the first romance stories I made up, where a naked, amnesiac Ken showed up in a middle of a storm, “good” Barbie placed him in her bed to recover, and her bad evil twin Barbie (you could tell she was evil because of her cut hair and marker makeup) seduced him. I didn’t know what seduction involved. I just knew it was the basis of many of the TV shows we watched.

Seeing the spirit of how young girls interacted with Barbie on the big screen was a delight. But even more thrilling, from a personal standpoint, was watching Latina move star America Ferrera talk about the impossible standards set for today’s women.

America Ferrera is the physical model for Gillian Armstead-Bancroft, my once-perfect but now struggling wife, mom, financial planner, and bruja from Full Moon Over Freedom, and that she was the one outlining how woman are made to feel that they are never enough was an absolute triumph.

You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood. But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged….I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. (You can read the full monologue here.)

My entire writing career has been about creating heroines who show up on the page not caring about being “liked,” who worry more about achieving something meaningful to themselves than appeasing the whims of others. They have a journey, they have things they need to figure out, but fundamentally believing in their worthiness is not one of them.

These heroines have repeatedly been called “unlikeable.” Predominantly by women.

So while I enjoyed the movie and leaned into the fantasy of Barbie defeating the patriarchy, more enjoyable for me was watching a Latina heroine outlining the way it is and calling it bullshit.

Why I write "unlikeable" heroines

Why do I write “unlikeable” heroines?

When women are still denied autonomy and equality in 2022, the last thing I want to do is write women who prioritize being liked.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

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It seems like such an easy explanation, doesn't it?

The real world America we're currently living in elected a president who said he grabbed women “by the pussy” and it was excused as locker-room talk. Our right to determine whether we grow a person in our bodies is about to be taken away. And there continues to be a massive pay gap between women and men.

So we all agree, with the continued uphill struggle for women, that likeability is really low on the priority list, don’t we?

No.

The romance genre is stretching beyond the binary, with all genders of people writing and reading romance about all genders of people. But our heroines are still trapped in "likeable" vs. "unlikeable."

Early reviews are already coming in for After Hours in Milagro Street, my high heat, Latinx, small-town romance about a bad ass Latina bartender who comes home to claim the family bar and finds a head-in-the-clouds-but-hot East Coast professor standing in her way. It’s not uncommon for me to get a review like this:

It took me a while to like Alex, she was just so abrasive.

And this was a review that ended with: I love it when I think a book is just a simple romance and it turns out to be more! ... It was a good read!

They liked the book. They didn't like Alex.

Understanding the cold hard facts of the world we face doesn't free real-world women, or their romance counterparts, of the straightjacket of likability and the limited possibilities that straightjacket brings.

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“Straightjacket” seems a little harsh, you might say.

Let me give you an example of how this emphasis on women being likeable plays out in the real world: There was a fascinating Twitter thread awhile ago about a woman who got a job offer, tried to negotiate compensation, and had the offer rescinded. Many women on the thread complained about having job offers evaporate if they tried to ask for more money; men on the thread said they'd never heard of that happening to men.

Data backs up this concern that women can appear "less likable" if they're assertive this way -- a Harvard Business School survey found that "women who felt empowered at the negotiation table were more likely to reach worse deals or no deal at all."

There are real world consequences for society’s preference that a woman prioritize being liked over looking out for her own best interests.

When I wrote my first “unlikeable” heroine, self-made Mexican-American billionaire Roxanne Medina from Lush Money, I didn’t set out to make her hard to like. I – like Roxanne – didn’t think about her likeability at all. Instead, I focused on how a woman who had the brains, will, and resources to build a successful company that supported 40,000 people would move in the world.

She went for what she wanted and didn’t apologize for it.

I was shocked how many reviewers said this made her unlikeable. I thought it made her admirable.

My heroines have been called:

ice-cold queen
heartless female
nasty bulldog
emotionally stunted
high-handed

And my particular favorite: “What type of mother is she going to be?”

Do you think this question has once ever been asked about a powerful male hero?

I’ve come to understand that the double standard that exists in the real world also exists in the books we write. Men are bestowed with the right to demand and take and have. Women are not. The myth of the ideal woman is that she's accommodating. She constantly considers others and makes way for them. We've all absorbed this myth, it's been the rhythm and beat of almost every story we've heard. If we see a different step, hear a new note, it feels jarring.

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Alex “Alejandra” Torres, my bad ass bartender in After Hours on Milagro Street, comes home angry.

She’s had a quit-or-be-fired moment at a Chicago speakeasy that she helped put on the map, and now the only way she can salvage her reputation is to claim and restore the family bar, even if coming back to her hometown of Freedom, Kansas is something she never wanted to do. When she discovers that an East Coast professor also has plans for her grandmother's bar, she's immediately suspicious of his intentions and protective of the family she loves, even if her loves comes off a bit...prickly. The instant physical attraction she has with the professor just makes a hard situation harder.

Heh.

I digress.

If you read through the reviews, no one says they don't understand why Alex is angry and single-minded. They never say it doesn’t make sense.

They just say they don’t like it.

This blog is not to decry my negative reviews. I am grateful, whether I agree with them or not, for each and every person who’s taken the time to write a review of one of my books.

What I want to underline is that I've never set out to write an "unlikeable" heroine. What I've focused on is writing heroines that are ambitious, powerful, proud of their minds and bodies, self assured, confident in their abilities, single-minded, and goal focused.

We've been drinking the tea that those attributes, in a woman, are unlikeable.

Don't believe me?

Read this sentence: I write heroes that are ambitious, powerful, proud of their minds and bodies, self assured, confident in their abilities, single-minded, and goal focused.

Does your spine itch then? Does that make him unlikeable?

In romance, we are writing fantasies.

But we're also showing a way that women can carry themselves in the real world. Our heroines can portray how a woman can center her own needs, preferences, and desires; fearlessly behave as her true self (even if she's a little grumpy), and go after what she wants. Our heroine's love interests can admire and desire her ferocity, pride, and drive. And the world we create can respect her, can be a better place than one that seeks to grab her and control her.

The simple answer to why I write "unlikeable" heroines?

I don't.

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