The Dairy of a Teenage Girl is a 2015 coming-of-age film about an aspiring comic book artist named Minnie who starts having a relationship with her mom’s boyfriend, an adult man named Monroe while keeping the whole thing a secret in her audio diary. It is based on the same novel from 2002.
Tropes in The Dairy of a Teenage Girl
- Age-Gap Romance: Minnie dates Monroe. She’s 15 and he’s 30.
- Bittersweet Ending: Minnie and Monroe break up but she ends up selling her comics on the street.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Minnie has some shades of being spoiled and whiney at times.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance
- Minnie dating a 30-year-old man and her mother didn’t report him to the police. Not to mention everyone’s drinking and smoking with no problem for all ages. Yeah this would very much likely still happen today as it did in the 1970s!
- Homosexuality was looked at as a negative thing in this time in the 1970s, and this film describes Tabatha as “risk-taking”
- Also casual sexism was common as well. This is shown between Monroe and Minnie. Especially sexual harassment being normalized and the fact that Monroe grabbed Minnie’s breast as soon as he met her.
- Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Minnie often had realizations during her hallucinations when taking LSD with her friends.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold
- Monroe, while he is careless does show a level of care for Minnie and understands she is naive and wants to find herself.
- Minnie is rude and manipulative but means well and is nice to her friends and the people around her.
- Period Piece: Released in 2015, takes place during 1976.
- Porn Stache: Monroe has one of these.
- Refuge in Audacity: Minnie and Monroe respectively. Monroe openly dates this little girl and Minnie herself has a dirty mind and has sex with random boys (complete strangers) in the bathroom, and she draws the dirtiest things ever to add to it.
- Wham Line: Minnie says this to Monroe on their first date.
I want you to fuck me.
