Dear Anna Gunn,
Thank you, thank you so much for the letter you wrote to us all via the New York Times, because I too am guilty of not liking Skylar White (though I’ve not participated in any sites on the Internet...maybe a tweet or two?). But you made me really think about why I didn’t like her. And certainly I’m not a misogynist, so I wondered both why I disliked her, and why other people hated her enough to start web pages.
I suspect that the main factor in the audience disliking Skylar is not quite that she’s an antagonist as you say, but that she’s a bit of a third wheel in the early seasons. I remember watching the first couple of seasons and being annoyed every time the story lingered in the White household. I didn’t care about Walt’s family, because the primary relationship of the series is outside of Walt’s family.
Breaking Bad is a love story, a buddy flik, and a father-son saga all between Walt and Jesse. We tune in to see Walt and Jesse. Not to see them cook meth or kill people as some have proposed, but to see them forge bonds, learn to trust one another, have each other’s back, betray one another, and reconcile. That is the relationship that Gilligan asked us to invest in at the start. So anytime Skylar came in with her completely reasonable and rational concerns we were annoyed. I was annoyed by Hank and Marie in the early seasons as well. Poor Walter Jr, no one gives a shit about him, because Jesse is Walt’s son in so many more meaningful ways.
For a long time, the Skylar storylines kept us from what we most wanted to see. So when Walt was nagged, we too felt nagged. And she was asking questions that we already knew the answers to, which is inherently undramatic.
But this does not explain the vitriol or the threats or the websites dedicated to hating Skylar. That I do think is about misogyny, about people feeling threatened by strong women.
People — both men and women — love to find reasons to hate women. I know in your letter you mentioned Betty Draper as another loathed character on TV, but I think the sources of people’s disdain for January Jones are far different. I think women resent how beautiful she is, and men don’t like how cold and hard and inaccessible Betty Draper has become. She’s that “out-of-our-league” girl that men resent because they’re so sure she would never given them the time of day. It’s not about her strength, because Betty Draper does not have or wield much power.
I have been quietly studying forceful, “bitchy,” powerful women for years now. There are the ones who people are OK with and the ones people are not ok with, and from what I can surmise, it all seems to revolve around physicality. Oprah was the first person I fixated on. Here is a very opinionated, strong, black woman who somehow became the most powerful woman in television. She’s smart, she’s savvy, she’s extremely good at what she does, but I bet you anything she would not be so successful if she weren’t overweight. I don’t know if it’s because her literal softness softens her figuratively in people’s minds, or if people perceiving her as “flawed” (since we are told by every form of media that anyone beyond a size 4 is flawed) is what allowed the establishment to be OK with her having so much clout. I have heard that her ratings went down when she got skinnier and went back up when she got heavier. And that’s weird. But definitely not coincidental.
Now the women I know personally who are headstrong and yet manage to work their way into the male establishment, they all have what I like to call “The Cute Factor.” They’re little or they wear cute clothes or they have cute faces. There is something in their physical appearance that undercuts their forcefulness and makes it more palatable to people who would otherwise be intimidated. Sexist men can justify these “cute” women having some power because they don’t feel like they’re giving anything up to them. Maybe they even feel like they’re doing them a favor. They may not be taken as seriously, but these women are still able to get higher up the ladder than women who don’t have much cute factor or women who are flat-out sexy. Very attractive, sexy women don’t seem to be taken seriously at all, perhaps because heterosexual men have a very difficult time concentrating in their presence.
You, Anna Gunn, have very little Cute Factor. You’re beautiful to be sure, but you’re not dainty or small. You’re a big woman and you’re unapologetic in your size, in how you carry yourself. And Skylar doesn’t give an inch. Not that she’s not vulnerable in moments, she IS, wonderfully vulnerable. But there’s a part of us that knows that Skylar could pound Walt into salt if only she would realize that she could. Skylar is formidable, and she was getting in the way of the story telling we wanted to see, and I think that combo, for the insecure men out there (and perhaps women who think other women shouldn’t be so strong) was too much.
[*Side note: Hillary Clinton also lacks the Cute Factor which is why I think she’ll never be elected President. Elizabeth Warren on the other hand is both cute and maternal, which I suspect makes her a more viable candidate. I’ve noticed as Hillary gets older, she is getting cuter, but her image during her husband’s Presidency is what shaped our vision of her, and it’s unlikely that the American people will ever see past that.]
The timing of your article was ironic, since the prior episode of Breaking Bad was the one where Skylar/you finally won me over. It was the conversation with Hank at the diner where she said nothing and walked out. That did it. That and when she threatened the nervous, brunette chemical supplier. But from a storytelling perspective, it’s bigger than that. Something has happened in Season 5, this schism between Jesse and Walt. They rarely appear on screen together, they’re no longer working as a team. Now Skylar and Walt have teamed up against Hank. And that is something for us to hang on to and root for. And I think that’s why Skylar has won me over. How Jesse will ultimately find his way back into the dynamic remains to be seen. I think we’ll all feel cheated if it doesn’t come around to Jesse and Walt in the end. If the final moment of the series isn’t about those two, I think the audience will be disappointed.
I’m sorry that you’re being vilified for playing a strong woman extraordinarily well. But thank you for doing it. The more characters like Skylar that we see, the more people will come to accept these strong women in real life. Thanks for paving the way.
~ Mia McCullough
Thank you, thank you so much for the letter you wrote to us all via the New York Times, because I too am guilty of not liking Skylar White (though I’ve not participated in any sites on the Internet...maybe a tweet or two?). But you made me really think about why I didn’t like her. And certainly I’m not a misogynist, so I wondered both why I disliked her, and why other people hated her enough to start web pages.
I suspect that the main factor in the audience disliking Skylar is not quite that she’s an antagonist as you say, but that she’s a bit of a third wheel in the early seasons. I remember watching the first couple of seasons and being annoyed every time the story lingered in the White household. I didn’t care about Walt’s family, because the primary relationship of the series is outside of Walt’s family.
Breaking Bad is a love story, a buddy flik, and a father-son saga all between Walt and Jesse. We tune in to see Walt and Jesse. Not to see them cook meth or kill people as some have proposed, but to see them forge bonds, learn to trust one another, have each other’s back, betray one another, and reconcile. That is the relationship that Gilligan asked us to invest in at the start. So anytime Skylar came in with her completely reasonable and rational concerns we were annoyed. I was annoyed by Hank and Marie in the early seasons as well. Poor Walter Jr, no one gives a shit about him, because Jesse is Walt’s son in so many more meaningful ways.
For a long time, the Skylar storylines kept us from what we most wanted to see. So when Walt was nagged, we too felt nagged. And she was asking questions that we already knew the answers to, which is inherently undramatic.
But this does not explain the vitriol or the threats or the websites dedicated to hating Skylar. That I do think is about misogyny, about people feeling threatened by strong women.
People — both men and women — love to find reasons to hate women. I know in your letter you mentioned Betty Draper as another loathed character on TV, but I think the sources of people’s disdain for January Jones are far different. I think women resent how beautiful she is, and men don’t like how cold and hard and inaccessible Betty Draper has become. She’s that “out-of-our-league” girl that men resent because they’re so sure she would never given them the time of day. It’s not about her strength, because Betty Draper does not have or wield much power.
I have been quietly studying forceful, “bitchy,” powerful women for years now. There are the ones who people are OK with and the ones people are not ok with, and from what I can surmise, it all seems to revolve around physicality. Oprah was the first person I fixated on. Here is a very opinionated, strong, black woman who somehow became the most powerful woman in television. She’s smart, she’s savvy, she’s extremely good at what she does, but I bet you anything she would not be so successful if she weren’t overweight. I don’t know if it’s because her literal softness softens her figuratively in people’s minds, or if people perceiving her as “flawed” (since we are told by every form of media that anyone beyond a size 4 is flawed) is what allowed the establishment to be OK with her having so much clout. I have heard that her ratings went down when she got skinnier and went back up when she got heavier. And that’s weird. But definitely not coincidental.
Now the women I know personally who are headstrong and yet manage to work their way into the male establishment, they all have what I like to call “The Cute Factor.” They’re little or they wear cute clothes or they have cute faces. There is something in their physical appearance that undercuts their forcefulness and makes it more palatable to people who would otherwise be intimidated. Sexist men can justify these “cute” women having some power because they don’t feel like they’re giving anything up to them. Maybe they even feel like they’re doing them a favor. They may not be taken as seriously, but these women are still able to get higher up the ladder than women who don’t have much cute factor or women who are flat-out sexy. Very attractive, sexy women don’t seem to be taken seriously at all, perhaps because heterosexual men have a very difficult time concentrating in their presence.
You, Anna Gunn, have very little Cute Factor. You’re beautiful to be sure, but you’re not dainty or small. You’re a big woman and you’re unapologetic in your size, in how you carry yourself. And Skylar doesn’t give an inch. Not that she’s not vulnerable in moments, she IS, wonderfully vulnerable. But there’s a part of us that knows that Skylar could pound Walt into salt if only she would realize that she could. Skylar is formidable, and she was getting in the way of the story telling we wanted to see, and I think that combo, for the insecure men out there (and perhaps women who think other women shouldn’t be so strong) was too much.
[*Side note: Hillary Clinton also lacks the Cute Factor which is why I think she’ll never be elected President. Elizabeth Warren on the other hand is both cute and maternal, which I suspect makes her a more viable candidate. I’ve noticed as Hillary gets older, she is getting cuter, but her image during her husband’s Presidency is what shaped our vision of her, and it’s unlikely that the American people will ever see past that.]
The timing of your article was ironic, since the prior episode of Breaking Bad was the one where Skylar/you finally won me over. It was the conversation with Hank at the diner where she said nothing and walked out. That did it. That and when she threatened the nervous, brunette chemical supplier. But from a storytelling perspective, it’s bigger than that. Something has happened in Season 5, this schism between Jesse and Walt. They rarely appear on screen together, they’re no longer working as a team. Now Skylar and Walt have teamed up against Hank. And that is something for us to hang on to and root for. And I think that’s why Skylar has won me over. How Jesse will ultimately find his way back into the dynamic remains to be seen. I think we’ll all feel cheated if it doesn’t come around to Jesse and Walt in the end. If the final moment of the series isn’t about those two, I think the audience will be disappointed.
I’m sorry that you’re being vilified for playing a strong woman extraordinarily well. But thank you for doing it. The more characters like Skylar that we see, the more people will come to accept these strong women in real life. Thanks for paving the way.
~ Mia McCullough
