WHO GETS TO BE A WEIRD GIRL?

on ‘weird girl’ fiction, microgenre, and the unbearable whiteness of weirdness + a rec list

In the beginning, there was genre. Simple thing, genre—it categorizes, it sorts, it gathers film, music, books and more into groups based on distinctive style, form and content. Horror hosted the monsters, werewolves and creepers, ghosts and things that went bump. Fantasy stewarded the elves, the dragons, King Arthur and his chainmailed ilk. The reanimated dead, androids, journeys to Earth’s core and to the farthest reaches of space we entrusted to science fiction, their mother, the inimitable Mrs. Shelley, a more-than-worthy guardian of the scientifically impossible. Romance, contemporary fiction, thrillers and crime novels, mysteries—these were the pillars of literary genre, trustworthy, reliable, easy to define and even easier to expand on.

Enter the microgenre. We are, as a collective human race, very much in love with classification. Where there is mankind, there is taxonomy, each grand domain broken down into kingdom, phylum and sub-phylum, class and subclass, order, family, genus, and species. Constantly and consistently, we ask ourselves what sort of people we are—are we summers, autumns? Are we doe girls or rabbit girls, goth, punk, Harajuku, normiecore, hopecore, cottagecore, etc? What’s our enneagram type? Are we sanguine or choleric, and on and on, down to the smallest of sections and subsections, until even the way smile is deconstructed, defined and filed into a neat, little category.

Now, I don’t hate microgenres and I don’t hate the concept of ‘weird girl’ fiction. I think microgenres have a benefit, allowing readers and publishers to better define what they’re looking for. Myself, I cannot pretend like I haven’t typed the words ‘weird girl book recs’ into TikTok’s search bar. I like that a space has been carved for women authors to be vulnerable and strange, to reveal ourselves to be off-putting, upsetting human animals capable of off-putting and upsetting things. What’s also true and what I also think is: microgenres are a little sloppy and lazy, no one can accurately define or stick to a definition, (white) people will name anything anything for the sake of convenience, and that in that sloppy sorting much of a book’s intention, purpose and weight is lost.

So, here are some intentions I have for this piece and some questions I’d like to try to answer:

(1) define microgenre. define weird girl genre.

(2) what defines weird behavior? who defines weird behavior?

(3) why is weird girl fiction focused on white narratives?

(4) suggest some weird girl fiction.

Solange in the “Don’t Touch My Hair” music video

DEFINE MICROGENRE. DEFINE THE ‘WEIRD GIRL’ GENRE.

A microgenre is, simply, that. A very small, very niche genre within a genre. I used an article by Susan Darnes, which defined it for me as, “a category to help the reader not only get the type of story they want in general, but get specific components that they may love within that type of book”. Tropes, basically, but more specific. In my mind, I see these as the niche tags on a A03 fanfic —you pick your fandom, you pick your ship, and from there, you decide whether you want a slow burn or a modern alternate universe, coffee shop universe, down to the minutest of details.

Is there any harm in this? On a small, person to person level, I don’t think so, but I think on a grander level, especially when it comes to recommending books, these microgenres tend to stand in the way of the overall plot. I could say to a stranger that “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn is a book about feminine rage and unhinged women, but I would lose in that description the elements of white women weaponizing their whiteness, the complexity and toxicity inherent to cisheterosexual marriage, themes of control and of autonomy, choice.

Now —what the fuck is ‘weird girl’ fiction? According to an article by Hailie Gold for Trill Mag, weird girl fiction can be defined “as an offshoot of weird fiction…usually centered upon a woman in internal distress”. To expand on that, I would say these distressed damsels make decisions at odd with society and with reality. Unhinged, dare I say, hysterical behavior is common. The genre is rife with metaphor and experimental prose, language, color. It is feminist in the sense that a woman is behaving in ways antithetical to “proper” white, cishetero feminity. Not every odd woman is a weird girl, but every weird girl is odd, and her weirdness is elevated by dangerous, experimental, and fantastical action.

WHAT IS ‘WEIRD’ BEHAVIOR? WHO DEFINES WHAT IS ‘WEIRD’?

Gosh, what a question! The easiest answer, the fastest answer would be —anything and anyone who is not white, Christian, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied and neurotypical. Society states that anyone outside of these bounds is, by nature, weird. But within this, there are nuances and levels. Is a schizophrenic Chinese woman in a heterosexual, but interracial marriage weirder than a white trans man dating another white man? Is an amputee with a stable, well-earning job more normal than an unhoused, impoverished person with all their limbs? Is it weirder to be Black and heterosexual in American than it is to be white and queer in Europe? Who decides that? Who defines weird?

Throughout history and in our modern society, women are supposed to be: thin, silent, chipper, happy, pale, dressed modestly but not too modestly, sexy but not too sexy, young, reserved, sane, able-bodied, fertile, mothering, selfless, humble, restrained, and, above all, white. She has to be a She, she has to be cis, she has to wear makeup and dresses, skirts; she cannot under any circumstances be described as smelly, loud, brash, dark, or crude. She cannot wrinkle, she cannot stink, she cannot cause a scene. A woman is always religious, a woman is always married or seeking to be married, a mother or hoping to be a mother.

To stray from this path is to become weird. While I personally do not believe that any act that subverts the status quo makes one queer, I do think it makes you weird. There’s an honor to that, to stepping outside of the very thin, very pale line set by mainstream culture. To exist as one’s truest, boldest self, to exist as a human being with warts and farts and smells, to be unusual and to react with the madness, the anger that this world we live in inspires is brave. It is weird to be brave, and it is brave to be weird.

So, for the sake of this piece, a ‘weird girl’ for our purposes will be:

(1) A WOMAN LIVING OUTSIDE THE BOUNDS OF SOCIETY, BREAKING CONVENTIONS REGARDING SEXUALITY AND GENDER EXPRESSION

(2) A WOMAN WHO IS NOT ‘SANE’, A WOMAN IN THE THROES OF MENTAL DISTRESS

(3) A WOMAN WHO ACTS AND REACTS TO HER ENVIRONMENT WITH EXTREME AND UNUSUAL BEHAVIOR

(4) A WOMAN WHO DISGUSTS, DISTURBS; A WOMAN WHO UPSETS

(5) A WOMAN WHO PURPOSEFULLY UPSETS THE STATUS QUO

WHY IS ‘WEIRD GIRL’ FICTION FOCUSED ON WHITE WOMANHOOD?

Again, the obvious and easy answer is: white people believe they are the center of the universe, and that any minor deviation from that center is therefore radical and cause for a parade. White women dye their hair and put in a few piercings, get ‘locks’, get a few tattoos, and suddenly, we are supposed to believe they are at the forefront of empowerment and liberation. We see it in fandom spaces, alternative spaces. Kat Von D, I’m sure, thinks she is a weird girl, as I’m sure do the very cis, very white riot grrls of the 90s and 00s.

And sure! If we lived in a world where there were only white people (gag), and where we could distill girlhood — that flaccid, bubblegum pink word designed to sell boybands and Lip Smacker cherry cola flavored balm — into the dreamy, dreary Pinterest board, Coquette-core universe that every blond white girl is introduced to upon birth, they could be, I suppose, weird. Alas and fortunately, we live in a world of culture and of color. Women of color, specifically Black women, are weird on levels that cannot even be comprehended by your average suburbanite. Things that white women choose (to work, to be colored, to arrange their bodies and hair in “peculiar” ways) are things that came naturally to a woman of color. We do not have the luxury of choosing to Be Normal. We are born alternative, we are born odd, our voices, our bodies, the way we walk, the way we talk, our cultural references, our reactions to the world are at birth out of the ordinary.

So, are we weird? Do we, the women on the outskirts of society, denied and disinterested in whiteness, get to be weirdos? How far does one need to slip down even within their own insular societies to be erased as a ‘weird girl’? How does Black woman, already made deviant by whiteness, become unhinged? How does an Indigenous woman, a Latino woman, and on and on, become Weird?

Through choice, she does. Through bizarre and unthinkable action. Through violence, through transformation, physical and metaphysical, literal and metaphorical. Through meaningful and concerted effort, the woman of color, once relegated to unseen rooms and quiet corners, becomes untenable, untamable and ungovernable, and only then does she become weird.

LET’S READ SOME BOOKS ABOUT WEIRD GIRLS

I will put the numbers/reasons for each book beside the title. Let me know what you considered to be weird girl fiction!

• THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neale Hurston (1, 4, 5)

• BELOVED by Toni Morrison (2, 3, 4, 5)

• SHARP OBJECTS by Gillian Flynn (2, 3, 4)

• WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE by Shirley Jackson (2, 3, 5)

• HOUSEKEEPING by Marilyanne Robinson (1, 3, 5)

• CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN by Sayaka Murata (1, 3, 4, 5)

• SUCH SMALL HANDS by Andres Barba (1, 2, 4, 5)

• AUDITION by Ryū Murakami (2, 3, 4, 5)

• CONFESSIONS by Kanae Minato (2, 3, 4)

• SULA BY TONI MORRISON (1, 3, 4, 5)

• MOTHERTHING by Ainslie Hogarth (2, 3, 4)

• EARTHLINGS by Sayaka Murata (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

• JAWBONE by Mónica Ojeda (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

• O CALEDONIA by Elspeth Barker (2, 3, 4, 5)

• IDOL, BURNING by Rin Usami (2, 3)

• THE PIANO TEACHER by Elfriede Jelinek (1, 2, 3, 5)

• CHLORINE by Jade Song (1, 2, 3, 4)

• BUTTER by Asako Yuzuki (2, 3, 4)