This year's mantra is all about being unapologetic, at least according to TikTok
Ask any actor and they’ll likely tell you villains are way more fun to play. They’re more layered and therefore more interesting than their one dimensional "good for the sake of good" counterparts, they deliver some killer monologues, and ultimately, they allow us to vicariously experience otherwise socially unacceptable behaviour — from robbing a bank to plunging a law-abiding city into anarchy — with zero consequences.
Being an inconsiderate or manipulative asshole tends to get them what they want, even if only temporarily. How delightfully devilish.
It's little surprise that, after the couple of years we’ve had, some of us are redefining our approach to life and that the villain is suddenly an attractive role model. We’ve got a lot of time to make up for after all, and hanging back to be the "nice guy" while others forge ahead doesn’t seem to cut the mustard.
It’s why some TikTok users are proclaiming 2022 their 'villain era' — a time to put themselves first for once, to take what they want, when they want, and make no apologies for it. It’s also about being able to say "no" without hesitation.
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“Last year, I put everyone before me,” TikToker @jessie_loft explained to her 10+ million followers recently. “Even if someone did me wrong, I was always trying to be the bigger person, just keep my mouth shut and always do the right thing.” She continues: “So I’m going to still maintain that energy, but I’m also going to be a villain. That means I’m going to start being selfish, that means I’m going to start matching people’s pettiness if they want to get petty with me. And I’m going to stop letting people walk all over me.”
A show of hands who read along, nodded firmly, and declared, “YES, QUEEN” at the top of your lungs? All the women in the room? Thought so.
The chief authority on evolutionary biology Charles Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man: “Woman seems to differ from man in mental disposition, chiefly in her greater tenderness and less selfishness.”
Studies have shown that women have been biologically programmed to put others ahead of ourselves — the reward centre in our brain is geared towards ‘prosocial’ behaviour as University of Zurich researchers discovered in 2017.
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“It is known that girls receive different kinds of feedback than boys for being prosocial,” the study’s author, Philippe Tobler, associate professor of neuroeconomics and social neuroscience, told The Guardian. “It is perfectly conceivable that [the root of the differences here are] only cultural – we simply don’t know.”
Well, um, with all due respect to Professor Tobler, it doesn’t take a PhD in neuroscience to know that women and girls are expected to behave differently to boys and men.
Kindness, selflessness, and a gentle disposition are 'feminine virtues', while assertiveness, dominance, and self-prioritisation have been considered more masculine, basically since the dawn of time. There’s nothing like a global pandemic to flip traditional gender roles on their head however.
And being ‘bad’ never felt so good.