The word "girl" is described as "a female child," or "a young or relatively young woman." A sort of recurring irony has existed as of late of characters that are anything but "girls" being described as girls in the title of their own films. They often go through deep trauma or painful moments in life and come out with a disconnected sense of self, contented for a time to push back that trauma or process it quietly. While watching, the audience, especially women, can feel the weight of pressure on the shoulders of these characters. They can empathize with that familiar moment of suppression as each character chooses not to communicate this trauma for fear of being too vulnerable and appearing to be "problematic" because their support system isn't really supportive at all.

Lucky Girl

Mila Kunis in Luckiest Girl Alive
Image Via Netflix

In Netflix's Luckiest Girl Alive, we are introduced to TifAni "Ani" Fanelli (Mila Kunis). Ani is a successful journalist in New York City with a wealthy fiancé, Luke (American Horror Story's Finn Wittrock), who has endowed her with his grandmother's emerald ring to mark their engagement and the promise of a life of affluence. She appears to have everything and at scattered moments in the film, seems almost happy. Her future is set, and she has planned carefully to make it so. But, in many ways, she understands that she is not living up to her full potential. She wants more out of her career than the raunchy beat she's assigned and frequently seems at odds with Luke, who doesn't seem to see her for who she really is.

The film shifts back and forth in flashbacks between adult Ani and teenage Ani (Chiara Aurelia), who was not raised with money but attended a prestigious private school on a scholarship. While attending the private school, she is raped by three other students at a party. Shortly after that, a mass shooting occurs at the school, leaving one of her rapists paralyzed and the others dead. The attacker that lived made up a cruel rumor that Ani conspired with the shooters to attack the school because she was angry that he didn't want to be her boyfriend after they "had sex," implying that the rape was consensual. This rumor leaves her an outcast to her fellow students and mother, Dina (Connie Britton), who blames the incident on Ani's drunkenness at the party.

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In Ani's story, the stigma of the events that occurred in her childhood follows her. Worst yet, so did the rumor, even though she's worked hard to move past it. At nearly every turn, she is bombarded by those that know her attackers' made-up version of events but not hers. Ani is a talented writer long before these traumatic events, yet she is remembered for the most horrifying moments of her childhood. From her girlhood. In her attempt to depart from her past trauma, she recreates herself into a powerful editor. Ani is sure that once she achieves the status of wealthy and powerful, the world will stop seeing her as the girl who may have been raped and may have contributed to the shooting at her school.

Ani calls herself "the luckiest girl alive" in reference to surviving the shooting while being filmed for a documentary about it. She knows that the world still sees her as the girl that survived the incident and may have colluded with the assailants. The world sees her only in the false narrative created by her attacker. So really, she says this with scorn, not because she survived but because the story that has defined her existence is a lie. Ani has grown past the young girl who survived these earth-shattering events, and she's thrived. Yet, she still sarcastically refers to herself as "a girl," indicating that she understands how the world sees her and resents who she pretends to be; the "cool girl" with the edgy beat and wealthy, handsome fiancé. Not only that, but she resents the sequence of events created by the "promising young man" that attacked her to protect himself and the fallout that resulted from it.

Cool Girl

Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl
Image via 20th Century Studios

A similar tone is taken in another brilliant woman, Amy Elliot-Dunne (Rosamund Pike) in Gone Girl. It may be an unpopular opinion, but Amy Dunne was not entirely insane. She is the gross exaggeration of what happens when a "cool girl" finally snaps from righteous anger into a villainous rage. She left us with a memorable monologue in an attempt to justify her actions; one that is eerily relatable. Pike's iconic Cool Girl monologue resonated with women everywhere because it embodied the feelings many women have felt in a series of moments throughout life. Moments like when you see a text on your boyfriend's phone sent by a woman from his past and wonder, "Should I ask him about this? No. I don't want to be 'that girl (whoever that girl is).'" Or when you don't want to mention that he follows countless attractive, half-naked models on Instagram, and maybe you feel a little insecure, but you won't ask about it because a Cool Girl wouldn't care. She is the girl his friends want their girlfriends to be like because she's uncomplicated, sexually adventurous, and even-tempered. Most importantly, Cool Girl is not real.

Amy chooses to drop the Cool Girl persona when she discovers that her "salt-of-the-earth Missouri guy" husband (Ben Affleck) has been cheating on her with a younger woman. She is now penniless and in an unfamiliar place after they moved away from her hometown in New York City back to his hometown in St. Louis. What Ani and Amy have in common (besides similar letter patterns) is that they both set themselves aside in their quests to appear to be the Cool Girl because they believe that's the most beneficial way to be. Amy leaves New York with her husband without batting an eyelid, even though he never asked what she thinks about it. Ani nearly passes up her dream of writing for The New York Times to move to England with Luke. In the process, each character realizes that the only person they should be is themselves, concluding that they don't like who they were pretending to be because being a Cool Girl all the time means ultimately never honoring your true feelings.

Promising Girl

Promising Young Woman_Cassie reads a book while sipping on a drink
Image via Focus Features

In Promising Young Woman, we meet Cassie Thomas, who is portrayed by Carey Mulligan in one of her best performances yet. Like Ani and Amy, Cassie is a 30-something woman. In contrast, she has paused her chosen career, having dropped out of medical school after the school ignored the sexual assault of her best friend, Nina, by several of her male classmates, resulting in Nina's suicide. Those that Cassie confronts regarding the situation all have similar excuses; that they were "just kids" (although they all must have been at least 22 years old), that Nina was always getting "blackout drunk" so it was bound to happen, or denying the incident was assault at all.

In this instance, the title may reference two things: First, Cassie and Nina once being seen as "promising" in medical school. Second, and more profoundly, in a way that is opposite to that of Ani and Amy's stories because it may not be a representation of the protagonist at all. The phrase "promising young woman" could be seen as a reflection of the way Stanford rapist Brock Turner was repeatedly referred to as a "promising young man" in the media. In Chanel Miller's powerful statement, where she addressed her attacker, Turner, in court, she noted that the first article she read about her sexual assault included his swimming times. Miller, by contrast, was often described as an "unconscious intoxicated woman."

Cassie's mission is to destroy the "promising young men" that wronged her best friend and the institutions that protect them. The same institutions that allowed Turner to serve a mere six months in county jail, although his conviction held a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison because the judge did not want the ruling to impact Turner too harshly. After all, Turner was once a promising young man who aspired to be an Olympian who just got too drunk and made a mistake one night. The same institutions used the word "woman" against Miller while referring to Turner as a "young man." Women get to be referred to as a "woman" only when they are at odds with men, who get to be called "young men" when trying to rid themselves of blame or responsibility.

Cassie is formidable. Ani and Amy are as well. Each of these characters undergoes significant growth in their respective films. Perhaps each title is so inaccurate of their protagonist because it represents the powerful, overarching double standard that exists between men and women and the complicated tightrope women must often walk even to be believed or desired. The word "girl" represents the fact that the same conduct that has easily redeemed men in the past has rendered women as unbelievable or undesirable; conduct like getting drunk or expressing discontent in their relationships because the perfect woman does not get too drunk and does not complain. Almost as if they're asking the impossible task of being a purely innocent girl while at the same time being a grown woman.