Screw Main Character Energy. I’m Embracing My Side Character Vibe.

This piece was written by one of our dear readers—a woman with something real to say. Each month, we handpick the best submissions for Dear Reader because we’re after that PROVOKED bite: truth, intelligence, and heart. These stories come from women our age—women who’ve lived enough to know better and still care enough to tell it anyway. Because being seen and heard matters. Because storytelling is how we stitch ourselves to one another. And because when one woman speaks her truth, another finally recognizes her own. — Susan Dabbar, Editor-in-Chief

Midlife is the perfect time to step out of the spotlight—and finally live like you.

When main character energy entered the online lexicon a few years ago, it hit with a bang. What’s not to love about the idea of owning your power?

I jumped on that bandwagon with both feet, and I wasn’t the only one. Hell, main character energy even has its own definition in Merriam-Webster. There’s no question the concept stirred something primal that sparked in our collective feminist mindset.

But stepping back from the frenzy of social media pop psychology, it started to dawn on me that the downside of being a main character isn’t any different from the regular stress of being.

Because the world has always, and I mean always, inflicted its impossible standards on the back side of my psyche. And main character energy, whether genuine or performative, didn’t do a lick to diminish the brunt of other people’s judgment. If anything, it made us a bigger target.

Main Character Energy Is a Trap

The main character was pretty or funny, never both. If she was strong, she wasn’t feminine enough. If she reveled in her sensuality, she was slutty. If she was into sports, she was placated. And if she was too smart, well, then she just made everyone uncomfortable.

And don’t even get me started on the galling stereotypes piled on women in midlife and beyond. We’re simultaneously admonished for trying too hard to look young and aging ourselves by how we dress. We’re allowed to be doting grandmothers or aging spinsters. Sometimes we get a pass to be funny, but only because The Golden Girls made it acceptable.

Those are the options after a lifetime of maneuvering the many stages of womanhood. From wives and mothers saddled with martyrdom to the women berated for choosing not to have families.

We’ve been put upon, looked down on, and thrown into ungodly circumstances with a swizzle stick and two bobby pins and expected to save everyone around us while sacrificing ourselves.

And even when we managed the impossible, and looked good doing it, there was still something to criticize.

The Rules Were Never Winnable

Our self-image is often influenced by the way others view us. I think it’s heightened now with so much of our lives put out for consumption and curated for better optics. But this isn’t something that started with social media. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t struggle under the weight of fitting into someone else’s comfort zone.

My perception of myself ebbed and flowed on tides I didn’t create. Worse, I didn’t even agree with them.

And, weirdly, I never saw it, never divorced myself from the outside expectations enough to realize the judgments I internalized didn’t have an iota of relevance in terms of who I really am.

When I cut through all the nonsense I’ve been fed by other people—all the labels I’m supposed to want to wear—and was honest with myself, I didn’t want to be her. She’s fine. She’s dutiful. She serves other people’s needs. But she doesn’t have a hell of a lot of fun and she’s not living into the ideals that are true to me.

This became blazingly obvious as I traipsed into midlife. Because as much as I don’t think age has any bearing on someone’s worth, the rest of our youth-centered society might beg to differ. And as constrained and ridiculous as the character archetypes were for the maiden and mother, they had nothing on the narrow confines for the “crone.”

Main character energy wasn’t a breath of empowerment, it was a way to package myself for mass consumption. Yet another spotlight to make me conform, and I was damn well done with playing by those rules.

Why Side Characters Have More Fun

After all, why be a main character when the sidekick gets so much more freedom?

Some of my all-time favorite characters weren’t the leads. They were quirky, funny, brilliant, gorgeous, messy, neurotic, fiery, and fragile. They brought to life all those characteristics and a stunningly twisted medley of interesting talents and flaws. And that’s the beauty of it.

Side characters can be anyone they want without the pressure of center stage, unattainable expectations, or the subtle as a sledgehammer weight of worldly disdain that gets foisted on the main character. She doesn’t need to conform to anything because there are no main character tropes dragging her down. That’s the counterculture superpower I craved.

And it’s not just me.

Take Jamie Lee Curtis, who started as a scream queen and the sex symbol who had teenage boys wearing out their Trading Places VHS tapes. She built a career on genre films, and kept going all the way to her Oscar win, all while flipping “ageless” on its head and giving us permission to own our story and live our honesty, gorgeous gray hair and all.

I’m reminded of Frida Kahlo, not only her brilliant paintings but her whole personality. As an artist, there’s something so evocative about her work, because it was real, heartbreaking, and honest. Looking at pieces like “The Suicide of Dorothy Hale,” there’s nothing in her artist’s soul that was willing to simply produce pretty paintings.

And the legacy of Diane Keaton, whose authentic performances left us breathless, but her style? That was its own revolution. Annie Hall, arguably one of the best-loved characters she brought to life, borrowed her fashion sense from the very real Keaton, giving generations of women a model of what it means to be comfortable in their own skin.

Side Character Energy Is the Real Flex

Side characters are often the main characters of their own story. These women and so many others show us the real face of empowerment.

She doesn’t need anyone’s permission to own all of her faults and her attributes.

She lives her truth out loud.

And that’s a vibe worth exploring.