"Black Swan" is NOT a "sweet girl"

This past Thursday, I watched Black Swan for the first time. I had always wanted to see it because I am a sucker for a psychological thriller/scary movie moment, and I finally got to watch it (shoutout Hulu). I was somehow blessed to not have a lot of movie spoilers and got to sit down and watch the movie for the first time knowing almost nothing about it (except the ending. I don’t live under a rock. OF COURSE I’ve seen that final scene without any context!) There are so many things this movie brings to the table to discuss. With that being said, this movie has been out since 2010… I’m a little late to the game for fresh commentary on Black Swan. However, I have not seen enough people talk about the major effects calling girls “sweet” can have on them! So I believe that this is the perfect opportunity for me to shine.

Throughout Black Swan, Natalie Portman's character, Nina, is portrayed as overall very timid and sheltered. Of course, because people view shy girls as “sweet,” that is her main personality trait throughout the movie. As the plot unravels, we see Nina feeling pressured and pushed to test her limits and is constantly haunted by the phrase “sweet girl.” This is because Nina views it as a bad thing, because it is getting in the way of her being able to portray the Black Swan. It is understandable that a girl who represses everything she ever feels and puts all her intensity into dance would inevitably crack. Yet, because Nina is a perfectionist and a hard worker, she is pegged as a “sweet girl” so she must work harder to be considered anything else.

For the entire movie, Nina is battling with herself and her “sweet girl” side with her idea of what someone who plays the Black Swan would be. She starts giving into her darker thoughts and actions and it slowly consumes her. When she goes too far or is about to make a rash decision, a chorus of “sweet girl” starts playing. This adjective is haunting her because she believes she can only be sweet. I hate to say it, but this is a perfect example of why we need to stop calling girls sweet.

I understand that sweet is considered a compliment, and I’m being judgmental over being called a good thing. I just feel as though, in today’s world, “sweet” is an adjective that goes hand and hand with “nice.” It just feels like a basic and complementary term that you don’t have to give more thought to. I feel as though a lot of people around my age call their friends “sweet girl” and it genuinely blows my mind. C’mon you guys know the Instagram posts I’m talking about! They’re always about a best friend's birthday or she just got into nursing school and she’s posting to say that she “loves you, sweet girl!!” and that she’s “so stinkin proud of you, sweet girl!!” (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ve just explained Southern college girl instagram culture for you. There is nothing else to learn). I feel as though the word sweet could be pushed and we could start to think of different descriptors. Surely we have more brain cells than that!

I can’t help but think if people gave Nina a different descriptor and allowed her to breathe and not have so much pressure on her, her story would’ve ended differently! Obviously the movie was great, and I know that her being called sweet was used to move the plot further so it must be done. However, this movie shows us the problem with just assigning women the description of sweet! Being called sweet usually goes hand in hand with being kind, nice, and soft. People are so much more than that! This is why the character of the Black Swan and seeing a woman’s darker side come out is so compelling to an audience. Forcing them to always fit this box of being “sweet” restricts you from seeing them as anything other than delicate. It takes away from a woman being able to express themselves and hurts their self esteem. By pinning certain women as “sweet girls” we are choosing a narrative for them and making them hide their darker and more layered sides. It’s restricting and ultimately hurtful that we are not allowing them to be more than sweet.

We need to realize that women are so much more than sweet and really just get better at less generalized descriptions. Nina was ambitious, talented, and a perfectionist. Yet, Nina was only called sweet. Actually getting to know people beyond just kind and sweet, we will actually see that there is more to a person. Forcing someone to just be sweet can be suffocating and cause them to push themselves so hard that they go insane and then die after their first performance as the Swan Queen! Maybe I’m being dramatic, but we must hold ourselves to using different words to describe women other than sweet. It will kill them. Nah, I’m just kidding! I’m just saying that only using the word “sweet” to describe people is really restricting. It can stop others from seeing women as complex people with more than one emotion and gives them more emotional space to take up without seeing that as out of character.