From a young age, girls are socialized to have crushes on boys. We are constantly interrogated with questions asking, “Who do you like?” “Who do you think is cute?” and “Who do you want to marry?” 

As we grow up, having a crush becomes a general rule in our life, an expectation that we must meet. A little girl who does not have a boy’s name to answer with is therefore different, strange, and unfeminine. She is no longer perceived as a normal girl with normal feminine instincts. She is labeled as gay, which is somehow wrong. This pressure also creates a stigma around asexuality, which can be extremely harmful for young women as they begin to explore their identities.

This phenomenon contributes to the idea of compulsory heterosexuality, which Adrienne Rich defines in her essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” as the assumption that “most women are innately heterosexual” due to heterosexuality being “imposed, managed, organized, propagandized, and maintained by force” through the patriarchal society we live in. Compulsory heterosexuality has caused me to fear not having a crush.

If I don’t have a crush, I am unfeminine, I am different from other girls. It means that I am not constantly concerned about being good enough for men and boys and therefore automatically not good enough. I am not attempting to attract men, so I will never be accepted by men. 

As a young girl, I became prepared for love in a way most girls were–through Disney princess movies. These forced the backwards expectation on me that I would one day have to embody these animated princesses. As a three year old, I went through a phase in which I refused to wear anything other than my Snow White dress for weeks. At the time, adults around me commented on it being “cute” and “endearing,” but, looking back, I don’t think it was. At a surface level, I liked Snow White, and I thought her dress was pretty. But in reality, my wearing the dress mirrored my longing to be Snow White. Even though I didn’t understand it at the time, I too wanted to be beautiful, charming, desirable, and innocent, and I believed wearing her dress would help me achieve those things. At such a young, impressionable age, I already aspired to be a perfect princess who would attract men and one day find a Prince Charming to save me. 

As I continued to grow up, this stereotype was increasingly forced on me through my consumption of popular media. When I was nine years old, I began watching the show Gilmore Girls. Despite there being no specific Princess and Prince Charming-esque relationship, the show still focuses heavily around stereotypical, fairytale relationships. It glorifies these relationships, ignoring the toxicity they are often rooted in. Because of this, I began to believe that every romantic situation I encountered would mirror the relationship of one of the main characters–Rory–and her first high school boyfriend, Dean.

Rory and Dean from Gilmore Girls. 

 In the beginning of the show, their relationship was the typical high-school romance. It was sweet, passionate, intense, and full of grand gestures. This caused me to take no notice of the unhealthy aspects of their relationship. Dean was possessive of Rory, constantly jealous of other boys Rory spent time with, and expected her to behave like the perfect 1950s house-wife. Nevertheless, I disregarded these details and still longed for all of the relationships I had to mirror it. However, the few times the romantic situations I’ve been in have been comparable to Rory and Dean’s relationship are in those negative ways I’ve listed above. 

More often than not, I have chosen to ignore this, instead feeling proud that my relationship is some version of “good enough,” and excited that it is similar to this fabricated relationship. This is because I have been socialized to see a lack of semblance between my relationships and those on Gilmore Girls as a failure on my part. If there is no correlation, I have blamed it on myself that I will never be enough for boys. 

As a young woman, I have grown up being made to feel less than or not good enough for the boys around me. My close friend attends an all-girls school. She once told me “it must be hard going to a co-ed school because you have to actually look nice.” When I asked her what she meant, she told me I “have to try because there are guys” at my school. Instead of finding this rightfully ridiculous, I was concerned–did I not put enough effort into my appearance every day? Was I not doing a good enough job attracting boys? Not only does this statement carry the assumption of heterosexuality amongst every person at both my school and my friend’s school, but why is it that the presence of boys requires me to meet a certain standard? Because of this, every day of school brings more pressure to attract boys. Every day becomes another chance to contort ourselves even further to fit an unrealistic mold of what a woman “should” be. 

This is perpetuated by popular movies like Clueless, Miss Congeniality, and Princess Diaries. These movies all involve traditionally “ugly” women changing their appearances to look more “acceptable.” During these transformations, their curly hair is straightened, their faces are caked in makeup to erase any blemishes, and they receive new wardrobes that accentuate their bodies in all the right places. This reinforces the idea that women need to look a specific way to be good enough and to attract men. This deflates women’s purpose in life to molding themselves to be appealing to men. It also creates the standard that girls are automatically not good enough for boys, normalizing the all-too-familiar pattern of agonizing over our own ability or inability to be the picture perfect version of what a man is looking for.

Mia, the main character in Princess Diaries, after her makeover. 

Recently I experienced this pattern for what felt like the millionth time. I developed a crush on a boy and agonized over him for months. Every time I was around him, I wondered if I looked good enough, if he noticed me and if I was acting the right way. I critiqued every inch of my body and every facet of my personality in an attempt to be as close to “perfect” as possible. However, I eventually grew sick of this. It was unfair that I had to carry this burden, so I confessed my feelings to him. For the first time, I realized that I didn’t really care what his response was. I realized that the main reason I liked him was because of this pressure to like somebody, and he was there. He was somebody, even if I didn’t actually really like him as a person. 

When he did not reciprocate my feelings, I was completely fine with it. I felt a little embarrassed, but in all honesty, I was immensely relieved. This changed when I realized he’d told his friends. While it didn’t matter to me that he told people (I had told quite a few people), it did matter that the friends he chose to tell were the embodiment of toxic masculinity. Naturally, these two boys responded in an incredibly immature and ridiculous way. 

It seemed to be their goal to humiliate me. As I mentioned, I was already embarrassed by the situation. Despite my relief, the rejection still stung, and their behavior was incredibly belittling. All I wanted was to forget about it and move on, but–despite having no involvement in the situation–this seemed to be impossible for them to do. In classes I shared with his friends, they discussed it loudly and pointedly relayed the story to other students. They made faces at me and commented on my appearance and personality. This made me completely and utterly ashamed of myself. I questioned my intelligence and wondered what was wrong with me for thinking I had a chance with the boy. I could not stop obsessing over my flaws and picking apart every criticism I had about myself. I considered every possible reason I had for his rejection and decided they were all true, completely ignoring my initial mindset and neutral reaction. I forgot that I hadn’t actually cared that much about what came of my confession, and that my main goal had been to get it off my chest. 

However, I had no reason to be embarrassed. It was not my fault that I had feelings for the boy, and that was completely natural. More than natural, it was expected. It was a rule that I was expected to follow obediently in order to fit into patriarchal norms. And I had followed it, I had done everything “right.” I had found a crush and I had obsessed over him, yet I still found myself in the wrong. I was still not enough. But in what world were the boy’s friends’ actions acceptable? If the situation were reversed, I would never treat the person who confessed their feelings to me that way. I don’t think any female-identifying person would. This is a perfect example of men and boys embracing toxic masculinity and using it to belittle women and girls.

When I stepped back from the situation, I realized that the patriarchal society we live in is applicable here. When I finally met the expectation of the patriarchy to have a crush, I was driven crazy by it, and then I was demeaned, all due to standard sexist expectations. This is reflected in Audre Lorde’s description of the “Master’s Tools” and the ways systems of oppression act as tools of the patriarchy. I see these tools at play in this expectation for little girls to have crushes as preparation for attracting men and boys and further, the expectation of women to cultivate perfect relationships, a pressure I have experienced since I was a toddler. As Lorde writes in her essay “Uses of the Erotic,” this pressure “keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, and leads us to settle for or accept many facets of our oppression as women.” For as long as I can remember, this pressure has caused me to obsess over myself, and I have molded myself to fit what I think men will be attracted to. This has stripped me of my own individuality and anything other than a shell of a person in hopes of appealing to men.

It’s upsetting to me that I will feel stuck in this expectation, this rule, for the rest of my life. I will always feel the need to attract men in hopes of one day finding a Prince Charming. It saddens me that I will agonize over more boys in the future, and even if I am one day “accepted,” I will never truly be enough. Moreover, I will always judge my own relationships based on whether or not they perfectly exemplify fairy tale relationships. If they do not, I will blame myself for not being enough and for not being perfect. 

Most women and girls share these pressures, and we have from a young age. We can’t change this for ourselves, but we can change it for generations to come. We can stop asking young girls about their crushes and their love lives. We can instead ask them the same questions we ask little boys. Questions that do not force them to feel trapped in the false idea of male approval. We can also remove the focal point from pop-culture that perpetuates narratives of fairytale relationships and women successfully changing themselves for men. Instead, we can recenter ourselves around TV shows and movies that turn the focus to real relationships, normalizing messiness, misunderstanding, imperfection, and self-love.