No Simple Explanations: Examining Toxic Femininity in Media Culture And Beyond
The British actress Millie Bobby Brown has created MASSIVE waves in the media recently by sharing her video on Instagram where she turns the tables on the media that’s been “bullying” her during her latest press tour.
Millie Bobby Brown’s recent Instagram post highlighted a disturbing trend: the ruthless criticism of young women by media outlets, often at the hands of female writers. Brown called out several articles with headlines like “Why are Gen-Zers like Millie Bobby Brown aging so badly?” (written by MailOnline journalist Lydia Hawken who has since resigned due to the resulting backlash) and “Millie Bobby Brown mistaken for someone’s mom as she guides younger sister Ava through LA,” written by Cassie Carpenter.
Her words were a powerful reminder that the harshest critics of women are often other women, raising important questions about the dynamics at play. This has long been observed in the media world – the examples are so many that one would have to spend days just listing them all.
The standard explanation for this phenomenon points to internalised misogyny (see for example Sandra Lee Bartky – In “Femininity and Domination”, 1990) – the idea that women have absorbed patriarchal values and perpetuate them against each other. While this framework offers some insights, I believe it provides an incomplete picture of a more complex social dynamic. By examining this issue more thoroughly, we might better understand why women can be so cruel to one another, particularly in media contexts.
Beyond the Patriarchy Explanation
The default response to female-on-female criticism often invokes patriarchy as the root cause. This perspective suggests that women have internalised male-dominated social values that reduce women to their appearance and youth, leading them to enforce these standards on other women. Feminist philosopher Sandra Lee Bartky explored this concept in her influential work “Femininity and Domination” (1990), noting how women often become “panoptical males” surveilling both themselves and other women.
While there’s merit to this analysis, it doesn’t fully explain the intensity and persistence of these behaviours, nor does it account for their manifestation in female-dominated spaces. As philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers argues in “Who Stole Feminism?” (1994), reducing complex female social behaviours entirely to patriarchal conditioning risks oversimplification and obscures women’s authentic agency in these dynamics.
The patriarchy explanation also inadvertently diminishes women’s agency, suggesting that women who criticise other women are merely puppets of larger social forces rather than individuals making conscious choices. This framing, ironically, can itself be seen as somewhat paternalistic. Feminist theorist Camille Paglia has consistently challenged this view, arguing that women’s competitive and critical behaviours have roots that predate modern patriarchal structures.
The Complex Reality of Toxic Femininity
“Toxic femininity” describes harmful behaviours perpetuated by women that damage other women and themselves. These patterns exist across cultures and historical periods, suggesting deeper psychological and social mechanisms:
Status competition and social hierarchies: Women, like all humans, engage in status competitions. Criticising a successful woman like Brown can be a strategy for elevating one’s relative status or garnering attention. Evolutionary psychologist Joyce F. Benenson, in her research published in “Warriors and Worriers” (2014), demonstrates that female competition often takes indirect forms including social exclusion and reputation damage rather than physical confrontation. Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s groundbreaking work “The Woman That Never Evolved” (1999) similarly documents how competition among females is an evolved strategy present across primate societies.
Scarcity mindset in professional spaces: In environments where recognition feels limited (like media), tearing others down can become a strategy for reducing competition. Sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s classic study “Men and Women of the Corporation” (1977) identified how perceived scarcity of positions for women creates “tokenism” that heightens competition. Female journalists may unconsciously view other women, especially successful ones, as threats in a zero-sum game for visibility and respect, a phenomenon psychologist Madeline Heilman has termed “zero-sum thinking” in gender contexts.
The economics of online media: The attention economy rewards negativity with clicks and engagement. Media theorist Tim Wu explores this in “The Attention Merchants” (2016), demonstrating how digital economics incentivise provocative content. Female writers who critique other women aren’t just expressing internalised misogyny – they’re responding to economic incentives that reward harsh criticism over nuanced analysis, as communication researcher Alice Marwick has documented in her studies of online attention economies.
Celebrity dehumanisation: Psychologists Cynthia Hoffner and Martha Buchanan have documented what we might call the “celebrity effect” – the tendency to view public figures as less than fully human and therefore fair game for ruthless criticism. Media scholar Joshua Gamson’s work “Claims to Fame” (1994) examines how celebrities become commodified, transforming from people into products in the public imagination. This dehumanisation allows critics, including female journalists, to dissect someone like Brown with a clinical detachment they would never apply to people in their personal lives. As media ethicist Susan Brison notes, this psychological distance facilitates ethical disengagement, making it easier to write cruel commentary without experiencing empathy for the target.
In-group policing: Though perhaps less relevant to Millie Bobby Brown’s case, social groups often police their own members more harshly than outsiders. Social psychologist Marilynn Brewer’s “optimal distinctiveness theory” explains how groups maintain cohesion through internal regulation. Women may scrutinise other women intensely because they see them as representatives of their group whose behaviour reflects on all women. Philosopher Judith Butler’s work on “gender performativity” helps explain why deviations from gender norms often trigger harsh responses from within one’s own gender group.
Unfortunately, event the female-dominated workplaces are often plagued by gossip and toxicity as female-only spaces can sometimes foster intense competition and criticism rather than solidarity. This dynamic isn’t simply about women absorbing patriarchal values; it reflects complex social behaviours:
Indirect aggression: Research by psychologists Kaj Björkqvist, Kirsti Lagerspetz, and Ari Kaukiainen has consistently demonstrated that women often engage in indirect rather than direct forms of aggression. Their landmark 1994 study “Do Girls Manipulate and Boys Fight?” documented how females across cultures preferentially deploy strategies including reputation damage, exclusion, and criticism rather than direct confrontation, which can create toxic workplace dynamics when concentrated in female-dominated environments.
The representational burden: Female creators often face heightened scrutiny from other women when portraying flawed or morally ambiguous female characters. This “representational burden” demands that women’s creative work must serve political purposes rather than artistic ones. Recent films like “Love Lies Bleeding,” which portrays complex, abusive female characters, have been criticised by some female critics for “adding to unhelpful stereotypes” – a standard rarely applied to male creators depicting flawed men. Film theorist Laura Mulvey’s concept of the “male gaze” has inadvertently created a situation where female creators face extra scrutiny for not presenting “positive” female characters, limiting their artistic freedom and subjecting them to standards their male counterparts rarely face.
Projection of insecurities: Psychoanalytic theorist Melanie Klein’s work on “projective identification” offers insight into how women who have themselves been judged harshly for their appearance or aging may project these anxieties onto others, particularly public figures who serve as convenient screens for these projections. Contemporary psychologist Jean Twenge’s research on social media and self-image documents how this dynamic has intensified in digital culture.
The motherhood penalty and generational tensions: Sociologist Michelle Budig has extensively documented the “motherhood penalty” in workplace advancement. Her research shows how older women who navigated difficult professional landscapes with significant career sacrifices may resent younger women who appear to have an easier path, leading to harsh criticism disguised as “tough love” or “honesty.” Organisational psychologist Jennifer Berdahl’s work further illuminates how these generational tensions manifest in workplace dynamics.
Finding Balance: Toward a Nuanced Understanding
Recognising these complex dynamics doesn’t mean dismissing the role of patriarchal structures. Rather, it suggests that multiple forces operate simultaneously in shaping women’s behaviours toward one another. This means that “because patriarchy” is rather an extremely low-resolution summation.
As philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues in her work on objectification and human dignity, the harsh criticism that Brown faced reflects both societal messaging about women’s value and deeper social psychological patterns that transcend simplified gender politics.
Moving forward requires acknowledging this complexity. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s research on moral psychology demonstrates how simplistic explanations often fail to capture the nuanced reality of human social behaviour. We should question the lazy application of “internalised misogyny” as a catch-all explanation while also recognising the real effects of societal messaging on women’s self-perception and treatment of other women, as feminist scholar Naomi Wolf documented in “The Beauty Myth” (1990).
Most importantly, we need to create media environments that don’t incentivise cruelty. Media ethicist Danielle Citron’s work on digital harassment provides a framework for understanding how online environments can either mitigate or amplify toxic criticism. This means supporting publications that prioritise substantive reporting over appearance-based criticism, celebrating women’s achievements rather than scrutinising their faces, and holding all journalists – regardless of gender – to higher standards. Feminist communication scholar Rosalind Gill offers valuable insights on how media literacy can help audiences recognise and resist appearance-focused criticism.
Brown’s critique reminds us that the problem isn’t just what we say about women in media – it’s who says it, why they say it, and the complex web of motivations that drive these conversations. As sociologist Pierre Bourdieu might frame it, these are manifestations of “symbolic violence” operating through multiple social fields. Understanding this web, as psychologist Carol Gilligan’s work on ethics of care suggests, is the first step toward creating more compassionate discourse that recognises women’s full humanity beyond appearance and age.
Editor in Chief of Ikon London Magazine, journalist, film producer and founder of The DAFTA Film Awards (The DAFTAs).