In the cult-classic Bollywood romcom “Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani,” the hero, Bunny, is chastised by the heroine, Naina, for flirting with Lara, a female character portrayed as superficial, vapid and sexual. In response, Bunny tells Naina that he flirts with Lara because he can’t flirt with girls like Naina, who are made for deeper love. In my countless watches and rewatches of the movie, this part always stuck out to me. Do some men really look at women in two categories — one for fun, and one for serious love? What distinguishes them from each other? Through various influencers, movies and TV shows, the media has portrayed two types of women: the “wife” and the “side-chick.” Or, as Freud categorized them, Madonna and the Whore.
The Madonna-Whore dichotomy manifests in that women are either ‘pure,’ virginal and, therefore, respectable, or they are sexually forthcoming, “easy” and not worthy of respect. The two categories are mutually exclusive; a woman can never be both.
Freud argued that some men’s desires are split between the affectionate and the sexual. Men with this behavioral complex desire a sexual partner who has been degraded (the whore), while they cannot desire the respected partner (the Madonna). To quote Freud himself, “Where such men love they have no desire and where they desire they cannot love.” This phenomenon is still highly prevalent today. Whether it be through Instagram or TikTok, this harmful ideology is still being pushed on us, and, in our own way, many of us are guilty of perpetuating it.
Reels with women dancing, being in the presence of multiple men, or wearing revealing clothing will inevitably have the comments, “she’s for the streets” or something along the lines of how this generation doesn’t have any values or understand true love. More often than not, these comments are made by men who, when I checked their following list, followed a vast array of Instagram models, fitness influencers and OnlyFans creators. So what is it, then, that makes them abhor these women while still enjoying the content they produce? There is a clear distinction between the women these men desire and the ones that they respect.
Browsing online forums and subreddits, namely those populated by incels, revealed an extremely disturbing and outdated mindset. While they lust over pretty and “unattainable” girls (who they call “Stacys“) and feel entitled to having sexual relations with them, the same men also express their desires for eventually settling down with an extremely young, virginal and submissive woman, not one who is already “used up.” This hyperfixation on virginity and purity is not only extremely harmful, but laughably hypocritical, as there is no mention of a man being less pure if he loses his virginity. On the dating app OkCupid, there was a question “Could you respect someone you slept with on the first date?” There are men who answer no, and yet would never apply the same standard to themselves.
It’s not only men who have upheld this archaic outlook — us women unknowingly contribute as well. By giving each other advice like “don’t text first!” “don’t sleep with someone on the first date” or even lying or feeling guilty about the number of sexual partners we’ve had and slut shaming other girls, we are trying to distinguish ourselves from more “promiscuous” girls to portray ourselves as the Madonnas, not the Whores. All of this is a response to the norms already set — women don’t want to lie, feel guilty about their decisions or suppress their emotions. Being docile, repressed and not sexually empowered is shown as the only way to earn the respect of a man. To quote Beyoncé’s “***Flawless,” and Nigerian feminist, activist and author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.” Stereotypically feminine traits are seen to be directly opposing sexual traits. A woman cannot be kind, compassionate, feminine, composed and sexually forward.
With the rise of influencers like Andrew Tate, the Madonna-Whore Complex is still highly prevalent today. Andrew Tate, a self-claimed misogynist, shot to fame on TikTok. Before his account was deleted for violating community guidelines, his videos had more than 11.6 billion views and he has recently been charged with rape, human trafficking and creating an organized crime group to sexually exploit women. Tate has widely expressed that he expects his women to be virgins, prefers them to be 18 or 19 years old so he can “impact” them and considers women who are non-virgins to be “used-up” and “second hand.” However, Tate himself brags about his sexual prowess and his large number of sexual partners. Him lusting after women and sleeping with them while simultaneously degrading them and wanting a young, submissive and virginal woman reveals the crux of the issue. Does he mean to say that every woman he has been with sexually is now used-up, while only he is as good as new? His popularity on social media is worrying as Tate has the potential to have a massive negative impact on impressionable children and teenagers.
Soon after learning of this theory, I began seeing it everywhere. Even in romance novels or movies, an infamous trope is that the popular, womanizing hero is interested in the quieter heroine as she is “not like other girls” — the other girls being the popular girls who are sexually forward or confident, the Whores. She is Madonna to him: intelligent, pure, kind, different. I’ve recently started loathing these books and movies. The hero is portrayed as a conventionally attractive man with sexual urges (and of course, the heroine discovers his secret hidden depths and heart of gold). The attractive women around him with sexual urges are painted as one-dimensional, self-absorbed beings with no character depth. It’s interesting to take a step back and see just how ingrained this theory is with our culture and society today — perhaps just as or even more prevalent than it was in Freud’s time.
An article by Bare Therapy reveals that there are two modern situations in which the Madonna-Whore Complex comes into play: marriage and motherhood. In marriage, it is hard for men with this complex to see their girlfriend transition from an untouched, young girl to a woman with sexual desires. “People with this psychological complex see a change in personality in their female partner and don’t wish to — and sometimes can’t — ‘degrade’ her by having sex,” wrote the Bare Therapy authors. In motherhood, the situation is reversed. The sensual woman the man was enjoying is now a devoted mother, reversing back into Madonna status. Some men are put off by sex after childbirth. A man notably quotes, after watching his wife breastfeed, “I felt my wife’s body was no longer mine.” It was never yours in the first place. The body parts considered to be for sexual pleasure were used for their purest form, introducing new life into the world, and as the wife reverts back to Madonna, the marriage can now grow unsatisfying for the husband.
Sexuality is a spectrum. None of us can fully be the saintly virginal Madonna or the completely easy Whore. Just as sexual traits are not mutually exclusive to the traits of kindness or understanding in men, they aren’t in women either. All of us have some Madonna and some Whore in us. By so heavily promoting the chaste Madonna as the ideal, women repress their sexuality and urges for the sake of being what men desire. But men also sexually desire the Whores, leading me to question why we women bother to change ourselves in the first place. Sensuality is fluid, and women cannot be boxed into one category or the other.
“Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani” is a guilty pleasure — I still relive Naina and Bunny’s love story while mouthing the dialogues. But I am growing more mindful about the media I consume, as well as my own behavior and advice I give my friends. I am actively trying to de-internalize my perception of the Madonna-Whore Complex. More than 100 years after Freud put a name to it, it’s disheartening to see it still so prevalent in today’s society. The first and most important step is recognition of it in society and media, and from there, a shift in mindset. Although it seems like a long way to go, I’m glad that I’ve made the first step.
Statement Columnist Myrra Arya can be reached at myrra@umich.edu