sometimes i think back on rose tyler being the companion to usher in dw to a new generation and she was portrayed by billie piper as a common girl with baggy clothes and messy hair and such uncommon beauty and i’m just like, wow rtd really did give us a wholly imperfect, utterly extraordinary companion and made her the actual hero of the show … the power
This was actually a huge draw for me when I first started watching it. The first thing that we saw was this person with realistic bedhead waking up in a realistically messy room, and I was like YES. It was completely different from the manicured Hollywood version of girls/women that I’ve always seen, and it was so refreshing.
What strikes me as most transgressive about her character is that she’s working class - unambiguously, unapologetically. She doesn’t just wake up in a messy room; she wakes up in a tiny bedroom that barely fits her bed. Her hair is not expertly coiffed, she did it herself with a shitty blow dryer in front of a bathroom mirror with bad lightning. Her clothes, make-up and jewelry scream “late 00′s lower class girl”; she doesn’t have the money to develop a refined taste, but makes do with what she can afford. In all her seasons, she always looks kinda trashy, in a way none of the other companions ever did.
And that’s something I don’t think I have ever seen before, at least not in this kind of fantasy/adventure show. Even if the characters tell us they’re struggling economically, they always have that vague aura of middle/upper class about them, that comes with having an expensive wardrobe, perfect make up, a nice apartment, etc. Rose is different; nothing about her, from her home to her workplace is even remotely glamorous.
Class is something that is so seldom addressed in fiction - when it isn’t the whole point of the story, anyway.
I recently read an article about a therapy group for depressed people who had all attempted suicide at some point. The breakthrough question for them was, “If your goal was to be just as miserable as possible, what would you do?” Most of them listed things like not getting enough sleep, or isolating themselves from everyone… the list goes on, but the point is, they listed things they already do. But now they saw those “coping mechanisms” for what they really were: things that were actively making their condition worse.
I read that article at 2:00 AM, asked myself, am I TRYING to be miserable tomorrow? And it was easier than usual to put my phone down and fall asleep. Even my intrusive “lying down” thoughts about meaninglessness and existential dread were easier to suppress when I framed them as things I’d think about to purposefully make myself feel as awful as possible.
