I was in a club recently when we began discussing the Jane Austen classic “Pride and Prejudice” and its various adaptations. Instead of engaging with the plot — which is littered with social commentary on Regency-era etiquette and textured female characters — the conversation immediately jumped to which actor portrayal of Fitzwilliam Darcy was our favorite: Matthew Macfadyen or Colin Firth. 

Not to discredit either actor or the people engaging in this discussion — choosing a favorite Darcy is a valid conversation — but it brought up an interesting point: Why do we prioritize and focus on characters who are men in stories written and driven by women?

“Men written by women” are multifaceted male characters who appeal to the female gaze and typically display traits like sensitivity and attentiveness, subverting traditional masculinity. Morgan Sung of Mashable described it as an inverse to “women written by men,” who were overly sexualized and one dimensional. 

There is nothing wrong with being attracted to “men written by women;” they appeal to the female gaze by design and performing valuations on what people want out of romantic relationships is a net positive. However, discourse surrounding positive representation for women tends to come secondary to discourse around sensitive male characters. 

This prioritization is best depicted in the contrast between the virality of two different monologues from Greta Gerwig’s 2019 adaptation of “Little Women”: Theodore “Laurie” Laurence’s proposal to protagonist Jo March and Jo’s sister Amy March’s about marriage as an economic proposition. 

Although not a perfect metric, the Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) scene has nearly twice the number of views on YouTube as the Amy (Florence Pugh) scene. It shows how this declaration of heterosexual love was more popular with audiences than a woman’s examination of her own place in society. 

What is even more damning about the “Little Women” example is what these two scenes represent in context. Jo March (Saoirse Ronan), the protagonist who is the initial target of Laurie’s affection, is creative and independent, and marriage is not at the forefront of her consideration. In Gerwig’s film, Amy, despite having talent as an artist, views her social status as a woman as subjugating and forcing her into an arrangement that guarantees stability (i.e marriage.) 

Crucially, “Little Women” is about coming into womanhood and the societal pressures thereof. Author Louisa May Alcott never intended Jo to get married, but forced her with a partner because publishers wouldn’t allow a single woman protagonist. 

“Little Women” subverts the romantic story by design. Centering Laurie’s declaration of romantic love not only refocuses this story of sisterhood to one of vulnerable masculinity but also fundamentally misunderstands what the story was trying to convey by existing. 

Not only does privileging the male romantic figure discount the point of the novel, it also discounts the role models that already exist within the text in favor of romantic attachments. Instead of latching onto the creativity and independence of Jo and the character development of Amy, audiences pay attention to the masculine desires of Laurie. 

None of this is to say that it is the fault of women as individuals or even collectively for recentering men. From a young age, women are socialized to be deferential. In “Socialization and Women At Work,” Fairleigh Dickinson University professor of sociology Teresa Donati Marciano asserted that “the ‘center of gravity’ in the socialization of boys is the desire for self-gratification, while that of girl[s] is the desire to gratify others.” 

Even though this study applies specifically to the workplace, the same phenomenon extends to how women consume media. Anticipatory and compliant socialization means that the needs of men will always be prioritized over the needs of women. 

Popular attention is a zero sum game; paying attention to one character intrinsically means that another will be devalued. Where heteronormativity comes into this equation is that this focus on platforming these male characters as figures of attractiveness means that already empowered women characters don’t receive as much attention. 

In the case of “Little Women,” Google searches for Chalamet following the release of the movie were consistently higher than searches for Ronan, who played the protagonist of the film. Due to a confluence of heteronormativity and patriarchy, male prioritization is the standard. Crucially, this is why the inverse of “women written by men” would never devalue male representation. 

The alternative to this is not to remove these sensitive men from film entirely. Media discourse, especially by women, needs to be intentionally shifted towards critical thought about women characters and nuanced representation of women.