The term “manic pixie dream girl” was first coined in Nathan Rabin’s  article “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File #1: Elizabethtown” in reference to Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown. Since its application to female characters in film, critics have identified several characters in young adult literature who fit the trope. The term has since been applied to such characters as Summer from the film (500) Days of Summer, and Margo Roth Speigelman from John Green’s Paper Towns. The trope has often been criticized for portraying women that are more ideals dreamt up for the male gaze than they are well rounded characters, thus serving as toxic examples for girls who may look up to them. At present, much of the discourse surrounding the manic pixie dream girl is conducted on blogs and similar platforms, and mainly focuses on the presence of the trope in film. This project analyzes the trope from an interdisciplinary, academic perspective, drawing from literary analysis, film analysis, and women's studies. It examines the current discourse regarding the trope, and analyzes popular children's and young adult literature and screen media that exhibit the trope. 

For this project, I considered the following texts, which feature manic pixie dream girls or similar characters:

Paper Towns by John Green (2008)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1999)

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (2013)

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2013)

Looking for Alaska by John Green (2005)

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (2013)

Paper Towns written by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, directed by Jake Schreier (2015) 

Scott Pilgirm vs. the World written by Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall, directed by Edgar Wright (2010)

Ruby Sparks written by Zoe Kazan, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (2012)

Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog written by Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, Joss Whedon, and Zack Whedon, directed by Joss Whedon (2008)

 A small portion of this project, focusing on the character Margo Roth Spiegelman in both the novel and film adaptation of Paper Towns, has been accepted for presentation at the 2016 conference for the Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association. This presentation, "She Contains Multitudes: Debunking the Myth of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl in Paper Towns" was awarded the Daniel Walden Undergraduate Prize.

The project was also featured in an article in The Ithacan, Ithaca College's student run newspaper.