Wood nymph hippie goddess in human form Shailene Woodley is making the press rounds for the imminent release of her potential blockbuster, Divergent, and in an interview with Teen Vogue, the 22-year-old ripped into the blockbuster hit Twilight. “Twilight, I’m sorry, is about a very unhealthy, toxic relationship,” Woodley complains. “She falls in love with this guy and the second he leaves her, her life is over and she’s going to kill herself! What message are we sending to young people? That is not going to help this world evolve.”
That’s true, Woodley, but here’s the thing: unhealthy relationships are the lifeblood of YA books and teen dramas. There are whole shows dedicated to the forever-love between a teen girl and her English teacher. Feminist classics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars have strong female leads who turn to mush around the bad-boy vampires and rich kids. Attempted rape, stalking, and emotional abuse is painted as dreamy if it’s just coming from a dreamboat who needs redemption and rilly likes you, too. Even the original Mr. Romance himself, Pride and Prejudice‘s Mr. Darcy, has been described as “a character who is the epitome of the dominant patriarchal male” in The Guardian. To pay tribute, we’re counting down the unhealthiest romances in teen lit and TV.
10. The Spectacular Now: Aimee and Sutter
In James Ponsoldt’s excellent 2013 adaptation of Tim Tharp’s fantastic book, popular kid Sutter Keely is trouble. He’s the life of the party, always making a scene, and he is an alcoholic. When he strikes up a friendship with pretty and shy Aimee Finecky, Aimee goes along with the party, developing drinking problems of her own. It comes to a point with a car crash — in the book, it evolves the way life does, and the movie is vaguer, with a lady or the tiger potential happy ending implied. That said, this film doesn’t glorify the main character’s problems, painting them as romantic-with-flaws; those problems are problems, and they affect the relationship.
9. Dawson’s Creek: Dawson and Joey, Dawson and anyone, Dawson as a reflection of the show
On the classic early WB teen show, Dawson was a total creep. He had a best friend, the too-tall girl from the wrong side of the creek, Joey Potter, and he was creepily obsessed with her virginity and her love life, culminating in the Season 3 episode where Dawson fights over Joey with Pacey and “gives her up” to him and then makes that wonderful, wonderful, cry-face. The show was also quite invested in painting the other part of the quartet, Jen Lindley, as a damaged slut from New York, so damaged that she died young from vague sexually- active-young-woman disease. But Jen will have the last laugh, of course, as her portrayer, future Oscar winner Michelle Williams, is easily the most successful alumna of the creek.
8. Veronica Mars: Veronica and Logan
Hello marshmallows! While you wait to see your favorite blonde teenage detective appear in theaters tonight with the Kickstarted Veronica Mars: The Movie, let’s discuss the true love of Veronica Mars and rich-kid bad boy Logan Echolls. One of the classic cases of a show writing for the actor with charisma, Veronica Mars sent its lead character into the hands of tortured rich boy Logan, who called their love “epic.” Logan was abusive, mean, and cruel to Veronica, a popular-girl-turned-crime-fighting-outcast. Logan threw wild parties and took careless actions that led to Veronica’s rape. He was violent in general, willing to punch and fight people over Veronica’s love. It was the idea of a bad boy — whose badness can be explained, his father was abusive and a murderer — that turns good just for you; and Logan proved, again and again, that he didn’t have the character to live up to the show’s idealized portrait of him.
7. Pretty Little Liars, Paige and Emily
“[Paige] is dating Emily now and once tried to drown her.” — Marlene King, Pretty Little Liars showrunner
6. Gossip Girl: Dan and Serena
Like Pretty Little Liars, Gossip Girl was a show based on the idea that the leads are constantly being watched, stalked, and gossiped about, and in this show it was through the gossip blog Gossip Girl. The finale revealed that the Gossip Girl was “Lonely Boy” Dan Humphrey, the outsider from Brooklyn. The Upper East Siders take a moment to review this shocking news, as Gossip Girl had, at some points, ruined their lives in various ways — ever wise Blair Waldorf counsels hating Dan forever — and then Lonely Boy and untouchable Upper East Side goddess Serena van der Woodsen get married. Because all along, Gossip Girl “was a love letter to us.” Ew!
5. Terrible Twilight knockoffs
They are too numerous to count, the many, many books that have taken Bella and Edward’s stalking disguised as destiny as the basis for true love forever plots. But let’s look at YA novel Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick, a book with problems too numerous to count, that inspired a sharp post on “Bad Romance (YA and Rape Culture)” from Livejournal user Bookshop, aka Aja Romano, a writer for The Daily Dot. The whole post is worth a read, but here’s a taste:
Hush, Hush is extremely self-aware; it knows that its hero is stalking and sexually harassing its heroine. Its heroine complains of harassment loudly and repeatedly, but the text expects us to assume that her repeated no means “yes” — the text wants us not to take no for an answer. The author, Becca Fitzpatrick, as well as the society that produced Becca Fitzpatrick, both want the heroine of this book to have her “no” rejected over and over, until her resistance is worn down and she gives up and gives in and starts to love the thing that’s attacking her and trying to kill her. The social arc of Nora’s womanhood demands that she shut up and submit to her sexual subjugation. For god’s sakes, the freaking title of the book is BE QUIET.
4. Twilight: Edward and Bella
What’s hotter than a guy coming into your bedroom at night and watching you sleep just so he can “watch over you”? Is it when the guy gets weird and possessive and tells you that you’re the one, “you’re like my heroin?” Edward, the vampire hero of this novel, is supposed to be the most romantic and swoony guy of all time, but really he’s possessive, creepy, and stalker-y. He dictates who she can and can’t be friends with. He has his family follow her. At times, Bella says that she’s scared of him. Romance!
3. Gossip Girl: Blair and Chuck
Chuck was introduced in the pilot as a character who attempts to rape not one, but two characters, and from there, he grew into a hero of sorts, at least regarding his romance with the show’s most likable character, Blair. Their relationship was described as volatile by the creators, but in truth it was emotionally abusive and abusive abusive, with Chuck hurting Blair after she says she’s marrying someone else. And let’s not forget, in the biggest ew, Chuck manipulates Blair into sleeping with his uncle so that he could get a hotel. But their first makeout was a hot assignation in the back of a limo, so it’s all good, right?
2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy and Spike
When Buffy fell in love with tortured vampire Angel, eventually losing her virginity to this romantic hero, it was fine. Angel turned super-evil and it was an awesome metaphor for the ways that some dudes really can love ’em and leave ’em. But Angel left for his own spin-off and Buffy was left boyfriendless (for those of us who want to pretend Riley never existed, anyway) until she fell into a tortured relationship with bad-boy vampire Spike, the big bad of Season 2 and a sneering Sid Vicious-like punk. Their relationship was problematic, to say the least. It started as meaningless sex when a depressed Buffy came back from the dead, and Spike was abusive and controlling, trying to rape Buffy in the episode “Seeing Red,” failing, calling her a bitch, and then leaving Sunnydale in order to “protect” her.
1. Pretty Little Liars: Ezra and Aria, or “Ezria”
When you are a 16-year-old girl who meets a guy at a bar, makes out with him in the bathroom, and then finds out that he’s your new high school English teacher… well, obviously, it’s true love. “Ezria,” the combination of high school teacher Ezra Fitz and pretty, short liar Aria Montgomery (“the artsy one”) has been called a true love story, “part of the DNA of the show” by creator Marlene King, even though it started out an illegal student/teacher thing, progressed into the idea that Ezra could be “A,” a possible murderer, on top of possibly being the mysterious character that’s been stalking and harassing the liars for years. Although just how evil Ezra will end up being isn’t clear yet, the show recently forced audiences to see this relationship for what it is: deeply unhealthy, and unquestionably harmful to Aria.