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Skylar White Hate

Just curiously I browsed the Skylar White tag on Tumblr, and Jesus Christ, the shit people say about her is fucking ridiculous. I may be upset over a fictional character, but I feel like it goes deeper than that to a level of crazy misogyny and trying to place blame on someone. She’s just a “dumb bitch” who “doesn’t appreciate Walt’s sacrifice”. Are you kidding me?

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Love Letter to Skylar White

Even though Breaking Bad ended over a year ago, it is still being talked about and hailed as one of the best television shows of all time. One debate I continue to hear about the show is over Walt’s wife, Skylar. I have heard many people, both men and women, say that she is their least favorite character. Among their reasons are that she is whiny and annoying, that she gets in Walt’s way, and that she is too emotional and erratic. I really believe that a lot of the hate towards Skylar is rooted in sexism, causing her understandable behavior to be labeled as irrational.

Breaking Bad is dominated by a male cast, so Skylar really sticks out to me as a strong and important female presence throughout the show. Compared to Walt’s calm rationalization of his violent new career, Skylar does seem extra emotional. But the truth is, she is the most down to earth and realistic character. We see the show largely through Walt’s perspective, so sometimes we forget what an insane life he has brought on himself. Skylar’s reactions to everything are actually very normal. Soon after she discovers that she is pregnant, Walt is diagnosed with cancer and starts acting very strangely, disappearing randomly and lying about everything. It’s no surprise that a pregnant Skylar has a hard time with all of this. She may seem like the stereotypical needy and nagging housewife to the audience when she is constantly asking Walt to open up, but this is exactly how any concerned and frustrated spouse would act.

Skylar’s other actions, like cheating on Walt and taking the kids away from him, might seem antagonistic because they affect the protagonist of the story (Walt) in a negative way. In reality, these are understandable reactions to her crumbling marriage and her discovery of Walt’s dangerous new job. Skylar’s extreme emotions throughout the series mimic how any sane person would respond to being unwillingly thrown into Walt’s dark underworld of drugs and betrayal. Viewers seem to forgive Walt’s crimes, even though they are much more serious, but castigate Skylar for her indiscretions. While this is due in part to Walt’s status as the protagonist, it is also do to the negative ideas society has of women who make their own choices independent of men.

Instead of focusing on what they perceive as her negative qualities, viewers and lovers of Breaking Bad should appreciate what a strong and interesting character Skylar is. She certainly has her flaws (I wouldn’t love her so much if she didn’t), but she is also an incredibly smart, supportive, rational, and brave woman. She cares about her husband through most of the series, she tries to help the family when Walt’s choices threaten them all, and she knows when she needs to put herself and her kids first. We sometimes focus so much on Walt’s character development that we forget about Skylar’s. From dutiful wife to partner-in-crime to fiercely protective mother, Skylar’s journey is perhaps the antithesis to Walt’s dark descent.

So to everyone who thinks that Skylar White is an annoying and weak character, I have this to say:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBPrdX-cqF0

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Something I love to point out when people hate Skylar is that women in media are not allowed to be morally gray. Women are heroines, women are pure, women are moral centers of stories, women are good, women are the light. Or alternatively, women are wicked, women are villainous, women are temptresses, women are fantastically evil. And here and there we are afforded a woman who presents herself as a wicked villain, a woman who kicks ass, but whose heart is secretly soft and moral where it counts. We are almost never allowed to see women who are not “”””good women””””” but they are not evil people. For a woman character to be likeable, she has to be a saint or she has to be a “strong female character” with a machete and combat boots or she has to be a villainess. Skylar begins the story as an accessory to Walt. A motivation for him, a piece of his narrative. Skylar was just a housewife, Walt’s wife, foil to Walt’s ambitions; and over the course of the narrative, a housewife who at every turn demanded what she deserved, took control of situations, would not be deceived, and used nothing but her role as a “defenseless and innocent woman” to dominate men, for no other purpose than the preservation of herself and her family. And to the viewers who for so long identified with Walt or even with Jesse, Skylar’s behaviors were constantly getting in the way of them achieving their goals, and even as the tides of the story turned and it was clear that Walt was the antagonist, even then Skylar wasn’t enough of a helpless victim for the dudes watching to sympathize for her. No wonder people watching Breaking Bad expecting her to fill the role of the ‘good, supportive, moral wife’ and saw her instead take control of her own narrative by harsh, manipulative, demanding means hated her. Skylar was manipulative. Skylar was demanding. Skylar was assertive. And Skylar was loving, Skylar was compassionate, Skylar was maternal. Skylar genuinely believed in her family. Fought for her family when it was broken beyond repair. Defended Walt, lied for Walt… Lied to Walt, lied left and right as she played the most destructive game that she never asked to play and won. By God, if you can say that anybody won in Breaking Bad, it was Skylar. Skylar was emotional, Skylar was vengeful, Skylar was bitter, Skylar was intelligent as all fuck. Skylar was the epitome of womanhood as a trope, the very archetype of the mother and wife, and without ever breaking away from that trope to turn into something ‘stronger’ or ‘more badass’ than a mother and wife, she played the game like a fucking champion with all her wits and all her fear and all her courage and she came out on top. Skylar was content with her domestic life and her writing and her husband, and she was confronted with a situation so evil and out of control she could never have fathomed it, and she responds with terror and hatred and bitterness and depression and grief and resentment and weakness and pettiness and fear, AND SHE STILL DOMINATES THE FUCK OUT OF IT. I WORSHIP SKYLAR WHITE SKYLAR WHITE IS THE MOST COMPLEX AND HUMAN FEMALE CHARACTER TELEVISION HAS EVER SEEN AND I WILL PUNCH A FUCKER OUT FOR HER HONOR

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if one more person calls skylar white a bitch I WILL BE THE ONE WHO KNOCKS

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An act of persuasion

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“That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife’s slain body in his arms.” ― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

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I feel like one thing that most analyses of Skyler White - both positive and negative - tend to gloss over, is the fact that, for the first two seasons, the woman is heavily pregnant. Pregnancy is a physically exhausting, emotionally turbulent experience, and it is relatively late in her life for her be dealing with one that is unplanned. At one point, states that she wants to get a C-section because her previous labor was prolonged and extremely difficult, so that also has to be something that’s weighing on her mind. It’s not like her family is in the greatest financial situation, either, and so that’s just another issue that she has to deal with. It’s a good thing that she has her husband by her side, a loving, supportive man who is always there, ready to help her with any of the emotional or physical distress that may arise from her situation, right?

So now we have this pregnant woman thrown into a situation where her loving, supportive, husband suddenly begins to pull away and distance himself from her, just as she is about to give birth to their second child, and she dares to ask “Why? Where were you last night?” God, what a bitch. Skyler is made out to be an incredibly perceptive woman, so it’s not like she’s being completely paranoid (and take the that she’s ultimately correct; her husband is up to something) or a controlling housewife to wants to keep her husband whipped. When she finds out that he is perhaps distancing himself because he has cancer, she has the audacity to ask that he seek treatment (so that he can live longer and spend more time with his family… unheard of), to request that he stop turning to marijuana (which is illegal, by the way, whether you agree with that or not) to help solve his problems, and open up to her, his wife, and perhaps attend a support group. Walter opts for option D, which involves lies and deceit and cooking crystal meth.

Not that Skyler can fully know what he’s up to at this point, but she is a highly intuitive person, who will not be played and knows when she is being lied to. So an unexpectedly pregnant woman find herself with a terminally ill husband who refuses to open up to her about anything going on in his life? Yeah, her cries for attention are completely uncalled for, and she’s being such an ungrateful bitch for not loving and unconditionally supporting her husband, just as he does to her. It’s a good thing that he’s there for her to talk to so that she doesn’t feel cornered into smoking 2.5 cigarettes just so she can simply feel a release. Oh, wait.

For obvious reasons, however, Walt is initially incapable of telling her about his meth manufacturing, regardless of his “noble” motives. This leads Skyler to believe that her family is on the verge of bankruptcy, and so she packs up and goes back to work. A woman in her condition is usually requesting maternity leave at this point, but not Skyler White. She does the exact opposite. She decides to help her family in the only way that she knows how; by making an honest living at something she is skilled at and qualified for. She tells Marie that her boss’s sexual advances won’t be a problem, but then she has an affair with him. Is this bitch serious? Well, let’s explore her motivation:

When she unexpectedly goes into labor at work, Ted is one who drives her to the hospital and stands at her bedside as she delivers Holly.

Ted, a family man himself, is a warm, caring man (much like the Walter White she once knew and loved) who is a shoulder for her to cry on when her life becomes too much to handle.

She has repeatedly asked her husband for a divorce, and yet he refuses to leave her and her children alone. She knows that only drastic action will get her increasingly violent (remember that scene where he tried to rape her? While she was pregnant?) husband out of their lives.

And so now let’s a pause for a moment to recap all of the shit Walt has done (up to this point!)

Begun manufacturing and selling meth (arguably putting his family in grave danger).

Killed between 2 and 179 people (depending on what season you’re on and how much blame you’re willing to place on him) (I wouldn’t hold back too much here, though).

Told countless lies and fabricated innumerable stories in order to ensure the continued operation of his meth empire.

Nearly raped his heavily pregnant wife.

Retaliated against his wife’s affair by attempting to initiate one of his own, with his own boss - essentially getting him fired (yeah, remember that scene? Don’t fight fire with fire, Walt).

Probably more things that I’m forgetting, but feel free to add your own!

So can we stop crucifying Skyler White yet?