Why She Hides Her Evil
She’s beautiful, charming, and sweet as pie… or, at least, that’s what she wants you to think. This sweet and sour character trope goes by many names – bitch incognito, the fake cutie, witch in sheep’s clothing – but no matter what she’s called, you know her when you see her:
Whether she’s a Queen Bee we love to hate, a comedic obstacle, or a full on villain, there’s just something about her that keeps movies and shows coming back to the trope. So what’s her real story, and why does she really feel the need to hide behind that sweet exterior? Here’s our Take!
She always makes a good first impression because she’s smart enough to keep her true intentions hidden until it’s time to strike.
While she sometimes tries to fool everyone with her good girl act, other times she only uses it to stay in the good graces of a select few, like parents and teachers or a guy she has her sights on
She often appears in rom-coms as the terrible original girlfriend – even though she treats him terribly, the hero has a hard time leaving her because there’s just something about her he can’t get enough of.
If she’s a main character, she often rules her domain with a sweet smile and an iron fist, doling out just enough kindness to keep people on her side but also quick to reprimand anyone that falls out of line.
Her mask of sweetness is a tool of control not only over others’ actions but also their perception of her – as terrible as she is, she often still can’t stand when other people think she’s anything less than an angel because on some level she does think she’s being bad for the right reasons and because she knows how easily her entire world could fall apart if everyone stopped pretending to buy into her façade.
Shaped By Society
While this trope is a staple of modern media, it’s been around for centuries, dating back to tales of beautiful sirens using their sweet, alluring voices to draw sailors to their doom for their own ends. The ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ trope of course isn’t limited to female characters, but the specific ways that women in particular are often written into this trope is worth unpacking.
In society, it’s long been held that a ‘good girl’ or ‘proper lady’ should be sweet, caring, and pious – and the ‘bitch incognito’ has learned to use the façade of these traits to her advantage. She knows that if she’s openly brash or combative in attempting to reach her goals in the way that a man might be, she’ll get shot down and shut out. So instead, her angelic act allows her to hide in plain sight, keeping her true motives undetected by those who might be able to stop her. Sometimes, this charade is a learned defense mechanism to these larger societal constructs that she’s come to realize won’t let her get power in other ways, that she must overcome and learn to use for good. This version of the trope is often a main character, so we get to spend more time with her and understand why she is the way that she is, and so even though she’s not a nice person, she’s not totally unrelatable. The arc of this trope always finds the character being punished for her ways – often through major embarrassment or pain.
Cruel Intentions’ Kathryn Merteuil is a prime example of this version of the trope. Kathryn wreaks havoc on the Upper East Side with her brother Sebastian, but while he gets to cavort around without a care, Kathryn must present as picture-perfect to avoid scrutiny. Kathryn is made miserable by being forced to live this double life, unable to be open about her desires, but she knows that her performance of piety and self-control is what really gives her influence and power in her society. And while Sebastian’s many, many sins seem to be forgiven when he sacrifices himself to save sweet horse girl Annette, Kathryn is never even really given the option to repent. She’s set up as the villain of the film, and her school-wide embarrassment is meant to serve as a just and happy ending. But really… it kind of just proves her point.
Sometimes the story does allow the ‘bitch incognito’ to come out the other side of her punishment changed for the better. Regina George rules Mean Girl’s North Shore High like a teenage dictator, covering her authoritarianism with just enough fake smiles and semi-kindness to get by. She’s unkind to her friends, two-faced to the rest of her peers, and has even her teachers terrified – but her adeptness at performing a good girl act when needed keeps anyone from ever calling her on it. Once she’s been punished she is given the opportunity to change through a new outlet for her resentment and need for power.
This multi-dimensional version of the trope not only helps make the characters feel more like real people and not just cardboard villains, but it also makes them more relatable. While most of us aren’t trying to rule over our social circles through deception, many women can to some degree relate to having to soften our edges or be less direct to avoid being seen as, well, a bitch. While it’s certainly ramped up and often made more devious in on-screen depictions, the fact that women do often have to put on a sweet facade to cover their ambitions if they want to succeed is very real. While we’d never want to copy their habits, and certainly shouldn’t excuse their bad deeds, we can on some level understand the resentment and even rage that society’s confinement of their desires and drive has produced.
Rotten To The Core
While some ‘bitch incognito’ characters might just be reacting to societal pressures in an unhealthy way, others are just… straight-up evil and they know it. They don’t have, or even feel the need for, justifications for their bad behavior – they just want what they want no matter what it takes and weaponize people’s assumption that women are meek and naturally kind-hearted against them.
These are often more one-dimensional, secondary characters whose main purpose is to make another character look better in comparison – like an opportunistic stepmother or rival love interest. This version of the trope usually only exists to bat her eyelashes in a few scenes while making snide comments to the character we’re rooting for, before being punished and removed from the plot completely. She solely exists to showcase the wrong ‘type’ of woman, in contrast to the main character who is often Not Like The Other Girls, and thus shown to not be held back by so-called “feminine traits” like vanity and greed. We don’t really ever get much insight into why this bitch incognito is the way she is (beyond a basic desire for money or some guy.)
But sometimes ‘bitch incognito’ characters are much more nefarious – they’re not just after a guy or even social cache, but something much more wicked. They know that just by virtue of them being a woman, many people will naturally assume that they must be mostly harmless, especially if they play up their femininity or affability. They’re adept at lulling everyone around them into a false sense of security, only showing their hand when their prey is vulnerable.
Get Out’s Rose poses as a kind, loving girlfriend to lure an unsuspecting Chris to his doom. Rose represents a very particular and dangerous real-world occurrence of the trope, where white women use society’s view of them as pure and unable to do harm as cover while they help carry out unthinkable acts. Rose portrays herself as a progressive person, free from her family’s issues. And while Chris isn’t naive, she’s convincing enough for him to let his guard down enough to believe her. Unlike a Regina or Kathryn type, Rose’s duplicity isn’t about being suppressed by or trying to find a way around societal pressures and the status quo, but about upholding them at all costs. She’s not interested in the inequality that might hold her back as a woman in general, but instead, the inequality that provides her privilege as a white woman.
In Wandavision, we’re introduced to Wanda’s nosy neighbor Agnes in the first episode. Agnes seems to be kind, if a bit clueless, and even jumps in to help Wanda when she needs to prepare a surprise special dinner. Anges continues to appear as a kind of quirky sidekick through the season until it’s revealed that she’s actually a powerful witch herself and has been deliberately causing problems for Wanda and specifically came to town to steal her powers. All of her kindness was really just a ruse to get close enough to Wanda to drain her powers because she knew that no one would ever expect the ‘funny best friend’ to have any more going on underneath the surface. After her true nature is revealed and Wanda eventually outsmarts her, Agatha’s punishment is being trapped as clueless (and powerless) Agness forever.
This side of the trope is notable because characters that fall within it are usually grown adults, compared to the less vile and dangerous teens who are often just reacting (poorly) to being repressed. While the teens are often misguided, and thus able to learn to be better people in the end, these adults are more active in their evil doings because for them, causing others pain for their own gain is the goal. They are set in their ways and rotten to the core, with no chance of redemption and no ending available other than defeat.
Conclusion
While the trope has long been used to try to showcase some level of duplicity that storytellers felt was inherent to women, the best examples use it not as a way to bash women as a class, but to either explore how the structure of society breaks people’s spirits in a way that often causes them to lash out, or to examine the very real ways that dangerous people can be hiding in plain sight. Regardless of each character’s reason for hiding her true darkness behind a layer of sweetness, the stories all come to the same conclusion: eventually, your deception and artifice will be the source of your downfall. So the best solution is to stop taking out your resentment on easy targets around you, and instead focus your rage on the structural problems within society that make women feel like they can only behave in one way if they want success or influence.