It’s a trope that women love bad boys. In third grade, my friends and I were obsessed with the movie Grease where good girl Sandy falls in love with bad boy Danny Zuko. We watched the film again and again, memorizing the songs. I learned something else too, that even good girls desired men who were bad.
In high school, I longed for a Danny Zuko of my own and was disappointed by the nice dorks I was surrounded by. In lieu of a bad boy fix, I lusted after fictional monsters like Edward Cullen in Twilight. Edward is straightforward with Bella that he’s a killer, which only makes her want him more. This made sense to me. No one wanted the simpleton at the high school or even the well-meaning werewolf when they could have someone dangerous.
As an adult, I started reading true crime and was fascinated by the women that devoted themselves to men accused of serial murder, like Carol Ann Boone, who was impregnated by Ted Bundy during his trial, or the Manson girls who carved swastikas into their foreheads in support of their murderous leader. I judged these women and yet understood that the distance between us was uncomfortably close.
In my debut novel, Love Letters to a Serial Killer, the protagonist falls in love with an accused serial killer. I’m different from her in the way in that I have never fallen in love with a killer myself, but I understand how it could happen because I have repeatedly found myself attracted to men, both fictional and real, that have an aura of badness to them. With such men, the badness is the appeal. I’m not alone in this. Recently, I was watching an episode of the Bravo reality series Southern Charm and one of the cast members repeatedly says “I like bad boys” as an explanation for why she continues to love her terrible ex-boyfriend.
It’s easy to talk about this trope on individual terms, to say “she has terrible taste in men” or “she runs towards red flags.” I think there’s more to it than that. While I don’t want to suggest that women who fall in love with men that they know are bad for them aren’t in charge of their own decisions, I think that this type of desire is incentivized from a young age because it allows men who misbehave to not only get away with such behavior, but be considered “sexy” for it.
There’s a term, “Overton Window,” that describes the spectrum of acceptable behavior that’s usually applied to the government. A shift in the window either to the right or left means a change in what is acceptable. Unintentionally or not, when we idolize killers, even fictional ones, like Joe Goldberg from You or the protagonist of Dexter, we move the window of acceptability a little wider.
As far as I’m aware, no one I know has ever fallen in love with a serial killer. I have, however, had close friends date men that demeaned them, flirted with other women, and repeatedly ghosted them. Rather than this behavior being a turnoff, it only increased their desperation for returned affection. Before I met my husband, I was the same way. In retrospect, it feels so illogical. Why did I want men that I knew had the power to hurt me? What was so unattractive about people that were good? Even within my marriage, I’ve continued to lust after fictional bad boys including the entire cast of Succession and the male love interest of several romantasy series. I watched Barry Keoghan in Saltburn and thought “Ah, yes, this is the type of weird little freak that I want.”
It’s easy to judge women who go after men that are bad for them, but I don’t think that is should be argued that this trait is a rarity. Whether they are watching Grease, Twilight, You, or any number of media that idolize badness, women are taught from a young age that monstrous men are sexy. In my novel, the protagonist takes this attraction to the extreme by actually attending the trial of an accused killer. While the majority of us haven’t done this, how many hours of our lives have we dedicated to watching documentaries, listening to podcasts, or reading books about men who have done evil things? If the choice was presented before you between a date with a bland nice man or someone mean and hot, who would you pick? Be honest. There’s something appealing in the badness.
None of this is a coincidence. As much as we might claim otherwise, we live in a culture where bad boys are idolized. Instead of solely critiquing the women that become trapped in their web, maybe we should think more about the things that push them there to begin with and who benefits from it. Why should men be good when they can be bad and women will love them for it?
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