RECORD 15

June 2023

JENNIFER COOLIDGE’S CHARACTERS AS A LIFESTYLE 

Just around the time of the release of The White Lotus’s (2021–now) second season, I came across this image in one of the posts on my instagram feed and instantly felt the need to screenshot it and put on a cover of a chatroom with my longterm girlfriends. «I’m sorry I can’t. I just got a $250 manicure». A very familiar scene that I had seen many times before from A Cinderella Story (2004) all of a sudden was a salvation rather than a villain’s statement. «I’m sorry, I can’t» felt just the right thing to say to yourself after the whole pandemic while being in your 20s and stressed out about the future and the world every other second of your day. An ultimate motto for a healthy living P.C. (post-covid). And that’s what Jennifer Coolidge’s public image transformed into over 2 seasons of Mike White’s phenomenally popular show. As a reminder to pay attention to not just the image others make of you but also what your inner world is about for you. I’m more or less late to this appreciation party of Jennifer Coolidge but reading Ana Bogutskaya’s Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate, I realised that I want to expand her approach and study the trope that Coolidge built over the years being in Hollywood films.









Generally, Bogutskaya’s Unlikeable Female Characters looks into familiar tropes based off Hollywood characters across its whole history and observe how it bleeds in our social structure. How females making their self-images online all around the globe and laws about female bodies globally have been affected by the dream factory that Hollywood cinema is known for. Over and over again, female filmmakers and female characters equally are faced with a choice that is as old as the world: to join the smart or the pretty. But since we are in the Aquarian age, it all appears to work differently now, with putting a thick period there as I’m quoting Beyonce’s Pure (came out in 2022):

Now, you can be both, in your tomato girl summer era and have mob wife aesthetics (if you follow TikTok). So you also can like Joaqim Trier’s films and Jennifer Coolidge’s characters at the same time.

Her characters are rarely just too much or just a villain, despite her looks that might place her instantly in a particular box most blonde and curvy actresses have existed for decades in. With a few exceptions, including Fiona (from A Cinderella Story (2004)), Coolidge’s women are quite genuine and sharing some sombre notes to their personality, yet quintessentially American (or at least, how everyone expects Americans to be). Whether it’s Paulette, Elizabeth Charming or Sherri Ann, or even Jodi in Seinfeld (1989 – 1998), as Jerry’s girlfriend.











Perhaps, having some glimpses of Hollywood’s most famous blond, Marilyn Monroe, as in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Some Like It Hot (1959) or How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), will help out to find the predecessors and pin it. Even though Monroe’s characters would be different to femme fatals, she wasn’t able to go beyond in pre-Holly Golighty classification, and being pinned as either a nun or a whore (spoiler: the second one). (Against a popular opinion of her complexity transitioning into Holly Golighty, and then its 90s version, which is Carrie Bradshow). Perhaps, some sadness from Brigitte Bardot’s Camille in Contempt (1963), directed by Jean Luc Godard. But in a way: always a TV actress, never a movie star. Well, until recently with Jennifer getting the Golden Globe and Emmy at last.








With a self-awareness and quite punchy sense of humour, blondes that Coolidge has built into her own trope expand on a complexity that goes beyond her glamour and dares to tackle deeper issues, like with Mrs. Dalloway’s narration. You can’t necessarily assume what worries this woman, and quite often she reminds us of some healthy choices. But for the top-layer reasons of this trope, we are forced to follow a formula of ‘manicure – bad, books – good’. Perhaps, if not the revelations that Paris Hilton shared with her audience post pandemic, I’d dare to say, we probably would never revise what these characters have underneath their SPF foundation layer. A Trophy Heiress in Therapy, that’s how I’d name this trope. Perhaps, we all could try sometimes, if we want to.