Cassie and the impossible ideal of the perfect girl

Introduction

Euphoria (2019-) is a tv show that really knows its audience. The lights, the pale coloured dresses, the little to no depth of field, the tumblr - dreamy aesthetics alternating with a more "grungy" / "adult" look, the music, the story, the pace. Everything feels perfectly measured to be the series of a generation, the series of our generation (in a way, not fully, but hear me out). It's trendy in a way that defines what trend is, encapsulating most of what makes our world - as young people - the way it is, from social media to dress codes, from gender roles to toxic relationships, from future plans to the way these character see themselves. It's a psychological game of guessing what we want before we want it, and Sam Levinson is great at it.

The two specials - just like the film Malcolm & Marie - were stripped down to their bare essentials due to Covid restrictions, so it became evident how inconsistent in itself and reliant on "other things" the series was. Without the lights, the soundtrack, the multiple story lines, the parties, the cinematography, this show would collapse on itself. But luckily, it doesn't, and this lets what's good about it come to the surface. In fact, I think the show - with all the elements coming together to complete and structure it - is actually great for our time. Kat, Maddy, Nate, Fez (we need to talk more about Fez), Rue, Jules, Lexi, Cassie, everyone has a role and every role speaks directly to us - as teen agers (which I guess I'm not anymore but we'll let that go for the sake of the argument). And in that, I think Cassie's role told a much bigger truth than what it seems.

Cassie looks "perfect"

There's a song from The Regrettes called Ladylike / WHATTA BITCH and it goes like this :

"Be soft, be shy, read a book and learn to cook

Be nice, be dumb, clean the floors and wash your pores

Be light, be small, wear a dress below your knees, not less

Be insecure, be a wife, cater to one man for the rest of your life."

Cassie looks like a Barbie, she is blonde, has great boobs, a tiny body, blue eyes, and the purest of smiles. She's literally the apex of the white straight male fantasy, she's like a small doll-princess, and she's extremely sweet and innocent-looking, which is the dream for most dudes. In a way, she embodies the perfect coincidence between beauty standarded expectations and what reality can actually handle (she still makes sense in her world, she's not an underweight super tall top model, she's a fantasy realistically come true), but in another way, she's pinned as the slut, the brainless, the dumb, the one who always says yes because she doesn't know how to say no. In all truth, though, I think she says yes because she doesn't know that she can say no.

[ By the way, I just want to make a point before moving forward : I would never want to objectify in any way Cassie or Sydney as an actress, or anyone, reducing them to only some attributes such as her body. My analysis is about patriarchal expectations towards women and girls, the objectifying male gaze and its consequences on society. I hope this is very clear : no matter how you dress, or how you look, you deserve respect and love and acceptance, it's your body and you should be able to do with it as you please, without judgement, and I'm fighting for your freedom to do so because I truly believe that "I am not free while any woman - or any one - is unfree" (Audre Lorde)! And also fuck the patriarchy! ]

Moving on, Cassie does look like a homecoming queen or the girlfriend you would bring home to meet your parents, but there's something below the surface that isn't quite as "appealing" to the public opinion. She's an "easy" girl, presented as such since the very first episode of season one. She's the slut who sends nudes. Nate literally tells McKay she's not girlfriend material and that he should fuck her and then “kick her to the curb”. It's obvious that Nate's words reflect more of his demons than an actual truth about Cassie, he's a frustrated, repressed young boy who's been fed an overly strict and prudish view of the world and of what a "good girl" should be - Rue says it in S1E05 "that's the thing with guys like Nate, they don't actually want a person, they want something they can own, and possess". But Nate speaks for his whole world, his friends, his generation : the easy girl is an object to be used, you don't fall in love with her, you don't make her your girlfriend, you don't marry her. The easy girl, in a patriarchal society, is a woman who "chose" that the only thing you should see about her is her body and nothing more.

The crazy thing is that Cassie being pinned a slut is depicted as a choice she consciously made - as a seventeen-year-old girl - and it's all her fault if now she's only viewed as such. It's as if she had asked to be filmed while having sex with a boy, or as if she has asked for her private nudes to be sent to everyone.

It's actually shown towards the end of Season 1 how Cassie is "forced" into sending this type of photos or into being filmed. Cassie is a people pleaser, she's always trying to make the other person - usually men - happy and, by doing so, she forgets about her own happiness. In S1E2 there's a scene where McKay is at her house and they're watching tv while he's complaining about his coach at college, and Cassie - reminder that she's used to only being seen or valued for her looks, nothing more - tries to comfort him the only way she knows how: through sex. McKay refuses her saying "why do you always have to make everything so sexual", to that Cassie moves away and says she's sorry. You see what I'm saying? McKay is an idiot who doesn't deserve her, but she does not react : society made her believe that women shouldn’t have sexual desires, that they should be absolutely asexual until a man asks them to open their legs. I mean, it's insane but it really feels like she's always looking for ways to please others and never herself. Until she does, for example on the carousel in the Carnival episode, it's thanks to drugs and it results in a mess cause she does not know how to control this "drive" that simply needs to come out.

Child pornography is a big theme in the first episodes of Season One, Cassie isn't the only protagonist of the discussion, Kat too has a bad experience being filmed during intercourse and having the video being seen by literally everyone. The difference is Kat takes control over the situation, she actively reacts, blackmailing her own "attacker". She rejects her condition of victim, she turns the tables in her favor and actually grows from that experience into a much more confident version of herself.

I'm not saying Cassie is a passive victim, I'm just saying that she really does not know how to take care of herself, to listen to her needs, to put her desires first.

Her story is Season One is really sad and it really makes you think of how fucked up our world is.

Cassie's family

Cassie lives with her mother, a beautiful alcoholic woman with no husband but many sexual partners - or at least that's what's hinted at -, and her sister Lexi. It's common knowledge that the children of alcoholics / drug addicts can either be very very responsible and take on the role of the parent - as Lexi does in a way - or become their parents, like drink too much, use drugs, sleep around and so on. Cassie is hard to understand cause she definitely loves others a lot and is not a "selfish" person, but she also doesn't know how to love herself at all which results in a bunch of inconvenient situations. She's a mix of the reckless and the caring, the sweet and the "bitch", and she really doesn't know which one feels more like her.

Her father left because her mom supposedly cheated on him, this brought Cassie into a state of adoration towards her dad, who's actually a drug addict, stealings silver spoons and shit, so like, not the best role model.

I'm guessing that Cassie's relationship with men must have been very important in her life from an early age, the need for that fatherly figure that's missing, his approval, his love, or even just male energy and confirmation in a household of all women. But it's not just about "daddy issues": Cassie wants to feel safe, to have a stable boyfriend, to "don't fuck up", to be a good person, she just doesn't know how. No one taught her.

Season Two

In Season 2 we find Cassie in a very bad state, she's drunk, alone in the parking lot of a drug store, she was supposed to go to the New Year's Eve party with everyone else but she got into an argument and left and now she's alone.

We left her, in the last episode of Season 1, getting an abortion she didn't fully want, so I can only imagine the mental state she could be in.

Nate finds her there and just as everything Nate touches, shit gets fucked up. He drives at high speed, screws her in the toilet at the party, then Maddy hears his voice and all that leads to Cassie in a bathtub. An overall pretty traumatic experience. This girl really has no luck! Anyway, she manages to leave after a while and for some reason she falls in love with Nate (???) and so does he (???) - like wtf. Stuff simply gets more and more fucked up, but the important part I want to get to is the scene where she tells McKay that she shouldn't be anyone's girlfriend because she doesn't think she's a good person.

Now, I don't think she's a great person or anything like that, but I feel like by saying that she's actually just reflecting what society wants her to believe, even though that has nothing to do with what she truly feels. I mean, I don't think Cassie's choice to have sex with her best friend's on-a-break boyfriend was a smart choice, or even a morally acceptable one, but she needs to let go of society expectations towards her or she'll never be happy. Maddy wouldn't have blinked twice if the roles were reversed, she would have fucked McKay right in front of her eyes just to get Nate jealous, not even for an actual desire to. But Cassie wants to please, Cassie wants to make others happy, make others love her, and this gets things really messy cause sometimes to make one person happy she has to betray another and she just becomes an object that changes its value whenever its owner changes.

I don't think she's dumb or stupid, she's definitely not a very introspective reflective person, or like the brightest, but she's smart, she aware of her decisions and how they impact her and other people's lives. She doesn't know how to control that, though.

Cassie's cage

If a world looking at you as a "thing" was all that you'd ever known your whole life, how would you behave?

In episode 2 of season 2, in the bathtub scene Maddy tells Cassie that her problem is that she doesn't know how to say no. I personally don't think that is her problem.

We're meant to believe that Cassie thinks she's a bad person because she keeps getting in bed with guys that aren't her boyfriend, but that's obviously not a real reason. Forget it's Nate she slept with for a second, and just think of what she's feeling guilty about (which is the same she felt with Daniel in season one) : Cassie's guilt comes from the fact that she does not take ownership of her actions and lives them passively, like as if she had no control over her life, as if she actually was an object.

The point isn't that she has sex with too many guys, the point is that Cassie does not know she has the power, Nate tells her in S2E2 "you don't know how much power you have".

In the carnival episode Kat and Cassie both follow their desire, but it's so clear that Kat is in control and Cassie isn't, just like with the nudes, she is taken by the moments, by the men in her life, never being able to make a decision on her own. So, the problem isn't that she doesn't know how to be single...

The problem is that she doesn't know she can choose whether to be alone or not, and that if the answer is no it is completely okay. I mean, she should probably ask herself why she doesn't want to be single, but at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with not wanting to be alone.

The perfect girl trope is a cage that taught her to be compliant, to please, it taught her to look for men's approval and confirmation, and to base her whole life on that, to depend on male desires and other people's opinions, to always try and live up to a fantasy. It's like Lexi tells her in S1E7 when Cassie asks her how she looks: "you look beautiful, Cassie, you look fucking amazing, it's literally all everyone's ever told you your entire life, like listen to yourself, it's fucking exhausting".

It is "fucking exhausting"...

Cassie lives in a trope so tiny that no one - not even a "small sized barbie" like her - could possibly fit in, without being absolutely destroyed by it.

Some people - maybe unconventionally beautiful, maybe fatter or shorter or without heteronormative features - need to build their confidence off of themselves (like Kat does for example, or Jules, or even Maddy as is explained through her past as a beauty pageant). Cassie built her whole world on whether others thought she looked pretty or not, she never had to ask herself that or how she felt or if she even wanted to look pretty.

Anyways... I can't wait to see where Sam takes her.

P.s. : Just wanted to clarify I'm 21, I've finished high school three years ago now, so I really feel like this show isn't meant for me anymore, I've outgrown these aesthetics, I'm not intrigued by the toxicity of unaware younger relationships, and I'm definitely over all of these different tropes. For instance, I felt much more connected to the time "The Worst Person in The World" was speaking to and of, a time shared by the same generation of Euphoria, just a step later in life I think. But still, Euphoria talks about my world in a way that is truly unique and I think somehow it manages to break this wall that divides ages and stages of life showing how universal some feelings are, even if when you're younger they're in their most enhanced form.