1) Women fall down a lot. They are apparently extremely clumsy. But it’s cute. But only if they’re otherworldly beautiful.
2) Faced with so many astounding possibilities, more than anything else in the whole wide world, what they want is to get married. If they attend someone else’s wedding during the movie, they always look wistful, and try to catch the bouquet in a manner that might even appear to be assertive if they weren’t so busy falling down.
3) They are all willowy, by which I mean frightfully thin, but they eat large amounts of food in private with great shame but without ever gaining weight. They particularly love to eat ice cream, while melancholy music plays in the background, when the men fail to anchor or complete them. They have mothers as willowy as they are, who are similarly fixated on their finding a man.
4) They are unfailingly uptight control freaks who just need to let go (a.k.a get laid or, better yet, get married). When they do get laid, they always leave their bras on, favor missionary position, make the pain-love-face (“I’m so in love I’m in pain!”), and orgasm.Then they put on cute sleepwear, his light blue button-down shirt, or wrap themselves toga-like in the sex-speckled bedsheets.
5) They are also flighty, flitting, wired, “quirky” (this otherwise completely deadpan person falls down all the time and its “adorbs”) but never truly weird. They are chatty, bird-like creatures who love to do yoga, get their nails done, go to the gym, “do brunch,” and just happen to show up where their love interest just happens to be. It’s adorable, really.
6) They, the ones who get married at the end of the movie that is, are hot and boring (as I said, they can only have “quirks” such as adorably falling down), but they inevitably have a “weird” best friend. The best friend is unerringly “ugly” (also gorgeous and thin but wears plaid and glasses), “weird” (also kind of boring but wears glasses and says pseudo-spicy things that still remain firmly within the bounds of the status quo).
7) They love to talk about their vaginas (in the more recent movies). They are not funny, of course, but the closest they come to funny is talking loudly about their vaginas. Usually, it’s the “quirky,” “ugly” friend who does so because, as far as we know, the adorable-control freak-who-sadly-eats-ice cream-and-falls-down doesn’t have something so riddling or complex as a vagina—and, if she did, it would definitely be as beautiful and boring as she is.
8) If any woman is too quirky (wears glasses and plaid too frequently, talks about their vagina too much, or is actually funny) they need a makeover. This involves both physical transformation and a mandatory musical fashion show scene featuring Madonna’s Vogue no matter what year it is.
9) Women often meet men by bumping into them, like, literally. They love to tell men to meet them at certain places, such as the Empire State Building, at certain times. They hate the reliable men who stick by them and love them, but they go nuts for the one who appears to be incredibly unstable.
10) They love when these men stalk them, act creepy, and bully them into realizing they love them in an airport, but it’s cute—but only if he’s hot and rich and performs the “grand gesture” in front of an audience.
11) They love to slow dance with these men out of nowhere in places that are not the prom, or kiss these men in the rain or in a pool. If you see them swimming underwater, it is a “deep” movie and this reflects their inner life, which is why these scenes feel particularly void and lonely.
12) They (and everyone they know) are white, heterosexual, and privileged. Their lives unspool in designer clothes and bohemian lofts even though they almost always work in publishing. They adore dating architects or men who do whatever job is currently culturally trending. The highest peak a woman can climb, figuratively speaking, in the land of love, is to date a man who works in a food truck but lives in a mansion. On the weekends, he volunteers at a community garden with children and/or unpacks his confusing love for this flitting woman with his buddies while doing pick-up sports.
13) Bonus points if that game of pick-up sports takes place in the community garden, and if he takes the woman to “break into” it at night so they can have a dinner date there. Because women love when you sort of break the law for them. But not as much as when you’re mean to them at first…but then turn out to volunteer at a community garden with children. But all of this only applies if you’re tall and hot and also inexplicably (given the food truck job) rich. Side note: if the man doesn’t work in a food truck, the willowy women must still visit a food truck at some point, as they chat about him, without eating the food purchased at the food truck.
14) They must never know they love the man until he, or in some more “progressive” movies, they, have run through that aforementioned airport. It’s best if they dramatically blow their career to chase, or be chased, through this airport. Many women are in love with their best friend but are just not aware of it. They require an airport to help them figure it out. The airport is the thing that tells them, “this is the one.” Something about the planes and TSA agents and interminable lines tells them this.
15) Once the love is realized, the declaration must be made in front of a huge audience who, for some reason, cares deeply about the declaration even though they’re strangers (often in a busy airport). The love declaration also must be startlingly detailed in a way that is meant to be intimate but that feels clinical, distant, and not about real people or real love at all.