When someone breaks your heart, it’s time to get sad. Or get even. The latter might sound like something out of a trashy American romcom – does anyone actually date for revenge? Wasn’t that the plot of John Tucker Must Die? Didn’t that end pretty badly for all involved? – but in this heterofatalistic era that has cast men and women in juxtaposing villain-victim roles, it has become a go-to dating tactic.
Just ask Emily Ratajkowski, whose viral essay in The Cut details how, in the wake of her divorce, the model-slash-writer embarked on a dating tirade, embodying a character who needed nothing from men and could therefore be in total control, and totally detached, at all times. As the 35-year-old mother-of-one puts it: “The character I’d learned to embody after my divorce, in my period of compulsively dating, was a villain: Poison Ivy. Catwoman. Sexual but scary.”
