Fifteen years ago, we were introduced to a new kind of woman. She listened to The Smiths on her big over-ear headphones. She wore vintage clothes exclusively. She was always having fun, even when it wasn’t really appropriate. She was so quirky. She had a fringe. And perhaps most crucially of all, she just wasn’t like the other girls.

I am talking, of course, about Zooey Deschanel’s titular character in (500) Days of Summer. Summer arguably marked the pinnacle of the manic pixie dream girl era. With her cutesy style, her eccentric tastes and her rejection of the established feminine norms (or at least some of them), she was, at first glance, someone we all wanted either to be or date – a dream girl.

The manic pixie dream girl was a seismic era of pop culture, but it died out in just a few short years – only 15 years have passed since the world fell in love with Summer, but it feels like a lifetime. So much has changed about how women see themselves and want to see their romances portrayed on screen. Let’s journey back to July 2009 to remind ourselves how and why it all happened.

(500) Days of Summer, directed by Marc Webb and written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, traces the relationship of Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Deschanel). After Summer starts working at Tom’s office, the pair begin a relationship. Even though Summer warns Tom she isn’t after a serious relationship, he quickly falls head over heels (she listens to The Smiths – what a cool girl!). Their relationship inevitably falls apart and Tom eventually learns that Summer is engaged to another man. Tom feels that his entire world is spiralling out of control. Summer and Tom later cross paths in a park, where she reveals that she is married. In the final scene, Tom meets a new woman, Autumn, and the next relationship season begins.

Summer wasn’t the first manic pixie archetype to pop up on screen. Her predecessors included Clementine (Kate Winslet) in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004), Sam (Natalie Portman) in Garden State (2004) and Claire (Kirsten Dunst) in Elizabethtown (2005). These women came after a slew of young female characters that fit into a more obvious misogynist type: characters who were overtly silly and obsessed with boys, clothes and popularity. For young millennials who grew up watching films like Mean Girls, Bring It On and Legally Blonde, this new type of heroine, with her eclectic tastes and quirky demeanour, felt like a breath of fresh air.

Naturally, we all wanted to be her. “(500) Days Of Summer was what I wanted my life to be,” tweeted one woman in 2014. “I tweet for girls who watched (500) Days Of Summer when they were too young to understand it and then spent their teenage years trying to be the manic pixie dream girl to an artsy depressed white guy,” wrote another in 2019. In 2014, Hello Giggles, the website co-founded by Deschanel herself, published an article celebrating the character titled Why I Aspire To Be Summer.

The problem with all of this love for Summer was that Summer being cool wasn’t the point of the film. Unlike many of the romantic films that came immediately before it, (500) Days Of Summer has a little more awareness about the trope it employs. In fact, it even tries to deconstruct it before our very eyes, hinting that this woman isn’t real but a figment of Tom’s fantasies.

“He develops a mildly delusional obsession over a girl onto whom he projects all these fantasies,” said Gordon-Levitt to Playboy in 2012 of his character. “He thinks she’ll give his life meaning because he doesn’t care about much else going on in his life… That’s not healthy. That’s falling in love with the idea of a person, not the actual person.”

At the time of release, viewers of the film – both male and female – fell into the same trap. But for women, the idea of being a cool, loveable manic pixie dream girl soon lost its sparkle. It actually takes a lot of energy to run around Ikea. And we don’t always want to listen to a playlist of indie cult classics that might just attract the attention of a moody artsy boy.

After trying to enact this type (or being expected to) we quickly tired of it. Cue Rosamund Pike’s famous cool girl speech from Gone Girl five years later. As cliché and obvious as the speech may now feel, it tapped into a simmering frustration that came in the wake of the manic pixie dream girl. “Men actually think this girl exists,” says Pike in the film. “Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl.”

Deschanel herself became the embodiment of the manic pixie dream girl trope after the film. “It doesn’t hurt my feelings, but it’s a way of making a woman one-dimensional and I’m not one-dimensional,” said the actor to The Guardian in 2022 of the persistent label. “I think the tendency is still to make women one-dimensional, so you have to add dimension, if you can. The more screen time a female character gets, the more space there is to show complexities, but there has been a shift, so I’m optimistic.”

Following the rise and fall of the manic pixie dream girl, we’ve entered a new era of romantic films. As more and more women screenwriters and filmmakers have fought their way behind the camera, we are beginning to see love stories from a female perspective. 

Last year’s Rye Lane, directed by Raine Allen-Miller, brought us a vibrant female lead in Vivian Oparah – her effervescent, fun-loving character might easily be seen romping around Ikea, but we also get to see her being truly vulnerable and open. And most importantly, we get to know her. Then there was last year’s Past Lives, Celine Song’s debut feature, which followed the complex emotional journey of Nora as she reconnected with her childhood sweetheart. In 2021’s The Worst Person In The World (which was written and directed by Joachim Trier in collaboration with star Renate Reinsve), we get to see the world through the eyes of Julie, a lost millennial who seemingly slips into the trap of morphing into dream girls for each of her new lovers. When she finally finds a way to build a life that is entirely her own, it is a quietly thrilling triumph.

(500) Days Of Summer may only be 15 years old, but it already feels hopelessly dated – and looking back on Tom and Summer’s romance, it’s impossible not to acknowledge how far we’ve come.

Images: Rex Features; Searchlight Pictures