Forrest Gump’s Girlfriend

The good are good, the bad are bad, and the villains are…

Hollywood stories aren’t famous for handling narrative complexity in their characters. Perhaps Forrest Gump’s girlfriend could be the exception, but…

It’s so well-known that even cartoons don’t have colors, like Deadpool. Creating morally ambiguous characters—ones that would make viewers feel completely uncomfortable, neither loving nor hating them—would be a rarity.

In the case of women, and as I’ve always discussed, they don’t have such a leading role within Hollywood’s film industry, but their characters tend to be more interesting when they’re in the position of perpetrators rather than victims.

We don’t write articles about “Top 10 Men Who Beat Their Partners,” but we do fill the internet talking about Samantha in Her, Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Summer in 500 Days of Summer, and Jenny from Forrest Gump. Misunderstood, misinterpreted, undervalued, and vilely criticized women.

I’ve seen the president twice – Forrest Gump

Forrest is “perfect,” but not for Jenny, since he might be foolish but he understood he was the love she never wanted.

Here I won’t speak ill of Jenny; on the contrary, she lived sexuality—from the abuse by her dear “father,” which from that moment generated trauma and marked her behavior for her emotional relationships in adulthood, to the enjoyment and discovery of her own sexual identity and living it in a way frowned upon by society then and still maintained today, not forgetting the offensive criticisms heard in many places worldwide: hallways, schools, universities, workplaces, among so many others.

Her self-destructive behaviors, toxic relationships, and substance abuse, plus “wandering” through the country seeking that idealized and unrealistic freedom, made Jenny appear as the bad girl of the story. And although she always had that beautiful love everyone wants, she didn’t want it—and that’s okay. Just because something is good doesn’t mean you have to settle for it.

Forrest saw life simply. Even something as horrible as war was simple for Forrest: “You pull the trigger and someone dies.” But it was never simple for her, and how difficult it is to see this when our concern centers on Forrest—we end up thinking Jenny acted badly.

But She Was Never Bad

he never did anything to hurt Forrest—quite the opposite. Jenny wanted to protect Forrest from herself. She knew she wasn’t good for him, and that’s why she always pushed him away. But Forrest doesn’t understand this, and therefore, 99% of everyone who has seen the movie judges her.

Jenny isn’t a “good” person. She isn’t a strong person. She’s complex and deep. And she’s hurt. She never does anything bad to anyone except herself. That’s why Jenny is so misunderstood. What she was really doing to Forrest was a favor, and if we could at least see her from this perspective, we’d surely find a brilliant woman, full of nuances unsuited for that era and even less so for this one.

They’d stop calling her a “whore”—a woman whose greatest sin was not being able to love the only man who ever loved her. I understand Jenny, but maybe some or many people keep dreaming of Disney tales with happy endings, but life isn’t rosy, and there lies the charm of a woman who did what she wanted and tried to be happy even while making mortal errors, but ones that finally led everything to make sense for a moment.

There Was an Idea for a Sequel But…