Let me introduce you to my favorite kind of woman. She’s the one who says the wrong thing at a dinner party. Who holds a grudge like it’s a beloved pet. Who wants things and doesn’t perform enough remorse about it. She’s complicated in a culture that keeps begging women to be simple.
They call her unlikable.
The cage called “likeability”
From the moment girls learn to string sentences together, we’re handed a manual. “Chapter One: Be Pleasant.” “Chapter Two: Don’t Make People Uncomfortable.” “Chapter Three: Your Worth is Directly Proportional to How Easy You Are to Be Around.“
And we’ve baked this into our stories. For decades, heroines were measured against a gentle, warm, fundamentally accommodating standard. Even when they rebelled, they did it prettily. Even when they struggled, they remained fundamentally sympathetic. Easy to root for. Easy to digest. Easy to love.
We’ve weaponized “unlikable” to keep women contained. To remind them that their job, even in fiction, is to be palatable. And every time a heroine shrugs off that expectation, she’s not just being “difficult.” She’s being free.
Why I write her
I write unlikable heroines because they’re the only ones who feel real. Because the women I love most in this world aren’t always easy. They’re prickly and protective, and they’ve learned, through years of being told to shrink, that taking up space is a radical act.
She gives permission. To the reader who’s been told she’s “too much.” To the woman exhausted by performing softness. To the girl who needs to see that complicated people still deserve love, still get stories, still matter.
She’s unpredictable. A heroine trying to be liked is a heroine I can map. But one who doesn’t care? She could do anything. She could walk away. She could stay and make everyone uncomfortable. That’s tension.
She’s the truth. We are not always kind. We are not always generous. We are not always the warm, wise, effortlessly good women we’re supposed to be. Sometimes we’re petty. Sometimes we’re selfish. Sometimes we’re cold for no good reason. And pretending otherwise is the real fiction.
The revolutionary act
To write an unlikable heroine — to center her, to love her, to refuse to apologize for her — is a small act of rebellion. It’s saying that women don’t exist to be consumed comfortably. That our stories don’t need to be palatable to be valid. That a woman’s complexity is not a flaw in the narrative; it is the entire point of it.
So here’s to the heroines who won’t behave. Who make bad choices. Who remind us that the opposite of “likable” isn’t “unworthy.” It’s real.
— Montse
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