Christmas means different things to different people; for Mary Sue, it will be yet another excuse to queen it over her friends. Her Christmas pudding will have been made from scratch, her carefully curated tree decorations will tell myriad stories of a perfect home life, her tasteful National Trust Christmas cards will have been sent out on 1 December. To queen it over her acquaintances, enemies and admirers, rather – for Mary Sues have no friends. They’re far too awful.
Do you know a Mary Sue – a self-adoring paragon of virtue who can only ever admit to faults which are actually boasts in disguise? Mary Sues are ‘perfectionists’ or ‘too passionate’ – but never, ever lazy or liars, envious or spiteful. In job interviews, asked for their worst quality, they’ll simper ‘I’m too conscientious’. Other giveaways are ‘I’ve only made one huge mistake in my life – I once thought I was wrong about something, but it turned out I wasn’t’ and ‘My fault is that I tell it like I see it – I’ll say it to your face, not behind your back’ and ‘My greatest weakness is my sensitivity.’ The words they use most about themselves are ‘kind’ and ‘empath’ – about others, ‘unkind’ and ‘narcissist’. They’re that friend you’re thinking of letting go because they can’t seem to give their opinion on anything from Monopoly to monogamy without delivering a mini-lecture; they use the words ‘as part of a loving, committed relationship’ so much, so sanctimoniously that they make you want to run out and join a dogging community before going to live in a free-love orgy-house. Mary Sues are that annoying.
Occasionally men can be Mary Sues too; one thinks of Prince Andrew saying that he kept seeing the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein as it was the ‘honourable’ thing to do or Saint Gary ‘Gandhi’ Lineker saying anything. But they’re far less common, as virtue is encouraged and prized more in women than men; in male heroes, their vices are generally absorbed into what goes towards making up the desirable bad boy trope. A man can be both a hero and a cad – see James Bond and numerous others – but a woman cannot, hence the Mary Sues willingness to make an unaware fool of herself by presenting an idealised facade.
So most famous real-life Mary Sues are female – and they’re quite a varied bunch. Many Labour women – Yvette Cooper, Lisa Nandy, Stella Creasy, Jess Phillips – seem more determined to demonstrate their #Bekind credentials than make themselves unpopular by actually standing up for women in every arena from toilets to trophies. Holly Willoughby, before Queue-gate. Teresa May, running through a wheat field was the worst thing she ever did! Gwyneth Paltrow, the Mary Sue pin-up poster girl. But the biggest Mary Sue of all is Meghan Markle. In the book Finding Freedom, her Groom of the Stool Omid Scobie records breathlessly:
that Meghan’s willingness to help others and her drive to excel meant she often was deemed ‘fake’ by classmates at school who felt it was impossible for anyone to be that ‘perfect’… a good friend of Meghan’s called her Grace Under Fire, because despite whatever pressure she was under she didn’t fall apart… not partying like most of her normal college kids, her friends would never run into Meg, as they called her, at a bar in the middle of the week. Friday nights, when her sorority sisters were all going out to parties, Meg was headed to professors’ houses to babysit… extremely organised, Meghan immediately impressed Harry with her packing skills. She has always taken pride in being a great packer – going as far as layering dryer sheets in between her clothes to keep them smelling fresh.
We’re not worthy! I became aware of Mary Sue Syndrome quite recently when a Facebook friend messaged me that I was ‘the least Mary Sue writer ever’ on the occasion of my re-posting an account of a trip to Amsterdam in 2017 which I wrote for this magazine. I could see his point; there are many of what I think of as faux-confessional writers around but, whether it’s an account of a bad romance or a fertility failure, these hackettes always emerge as plucky little heroines, more sinned against than sinning. In the interests of being interesting – a far more desirable goal for me as a writer and a person than being popular – I painted a truly monstrous if accurate pen-portrait of myself in the Amsterdam essay; being very vain (a sin a Mary Sue would never confess to) I was eager to read about this awful type which I was not.
According to Wikipedia, Mary Sue has her origin in a 1973 story by Paula Smith, the heroine of which was one Lieutenant Mary Sue who parodied idealised female characters prevalent in sci-fi fan fiction at the time.
Thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise; ‘Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet – only 15 and a half years old.’ Captain Kirk came up to her. ‘Oh, Lieutenant, I love you madly. Will you come to bed with me?’ ‘Captain! I am not that kind of girl!’ ‘You’re right, and I respect you for it. Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us.’ Mr. Spock came onto the bridge. ‘What are you doing in the command seat, Lieutenant?’ ‘The Captain told me to.’ ‘Flawlessly logical. I admire your mind.’
Since then the term has broadened out to describe ‘a woman who is often portrayed as inexplicably competent across all domains, liked or respected by most other characters, unrealistically free of weaknesses, extremely attractive, innately virtuous, and/or generally lacking meaningful character flaws.’
But Mary Sues aren’t just famous and fictional; they walk among us. Though I wouldn’t tolerate any in my circle, my more patient friends came up with many examples. Michele Kirsch, the award-winning writer of Clean, worked for many in her time as a cleaner;
They play it both ways. They say in a bragging sort of way that they have OCD and shrug helplessly in a silly lil ole me sort of way. But there’s is a fine line between perfection and pathology – who decides which is which gets a lot of money. They’re the sort of people who study your skirting boards and are privately judging the fact that you are not a 5 am-er, who gets up an hour early to do the Peloton machine then meal prep for a week. And make a TikTok about it. Whilst having stage 4 cancer.
My friend T says: ‘I knew a young woman years ago who was really fun – then she got accepted into police training college and turned into a Mary Sue. She drove everyone mad by checking their car tyre treads with a 10p coin; the letter of acceptance from Hendon unleashed her inner Stasi.’ L told me:
A rich Mary Sue of my acquaintance knew full well that relatively, my life was a struggle, financially and time-wise, bringing up a child solo. She had her husband and her ex living with them. Both men quite literally did everything for her; she took on ‘laundry’ alone as she loved doing laundry well. Weekly she’d text me from a trip out they were all doing in the camper saying ‘I’m wrapped up so warm in my blankets with a hot choccy while xxx and xxx have taken the kids for a paddle/adventure/whatever. So pleased to be getting on with my book.’ Where to start? But ‘choccy’ alone deserves of a stiff gaol sentence.
C says: ‘Choirs are full of them – usually retired teachers or senior nurses who love bossing people around, lining us up and telling us that our clothes are unsuitable.’ From J:
I felt guilty for years about all the birthday cards that came through the post from a neighbouring Mary-Sue, until I realised that was all she ever did; when I needed proper help, she refused. A private income and/or rich husband can create a particularly nasty MS; one called me when I went back to work after baby saying it was ‘much too soon’ even though she knew I was sole breadwinner.
A few misguided feminist writers have attempted to rehabilitate Mary Sue, on the grounds that she gives teenage girls a chance to see themselves as heroines of their own story; there’s even a website called The Mary Sue which took its name as an effort to ‘re-appropriate’ the term. But if virtuous perfection is a goal girls are encouraged to reach for it sounds like yet more of the over-achieving which notoriously ends in tears, eating disorders and anxiety which are already epidemics among girls.
No one wants their daughter to grow up to be a Mary Sue; they’re dishonest prigs – a toxic combo. Though they would never admit it, they adored the pandemic; all that elaborate masking and performative ‘social distancing’ and ostentatiously doing tests before they went anywhere. Now they’re reduced to plaguing the rest of us on social media; announcing themselves smugly as ‘girly swots’ while being as thick as mince, or declaring that they’re ‘a Highly Sensitive Person’ (‘You might be highly touched by beauty or emotionality. Highly sensitive people tend to feel deeply moved by the beauty they see around them’) while stomping over everyone else’s sensibilities. Even their flaws make them better people; they never have Tourettes, kleptomania or flatulence. Which all adds up not to perfection at all, ironically – but to being profoundly boring. So with the party season upon us, keep your eyes peeled for incoming Mary Sues and if you see one – identifiable by her flickable hair, her self-satisfied smirk and her castrated husband – run.
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