The Forlorn Starlet

For this corrupted Lover archetype, to seem is to be. To be adored by strangers is to be loved. Yet she is lost, lonely, and empty. And sometimes she is a femme fatale.

Following Jung, consider four archetypes: king, warrior, wizard, and lover. The feminine variants are queen, mother, wise woman, and lover.

Now, let’s focus on the Lover archetype. She embodies passion, connection, and appreciation for beauty in all its forms. She is artistic and represents the ability to connect deeply with others and the natural world.

But she has a vicious twin.

The Forlorn Starlet archetype is a kind of distorted mirroring of the Lover. We’ve already covered Alexander Bard’s Pillar Saint and the Boy Pharaoh, who might be considered the vicious twins of Jung’s Wizard and King Warrior, respectively.

Where the Boy Pharoah loves his body and hates his mind and heart—and the Pillar Saint loves his mind and hates his body and heart—the Forlorn Starlet loves her heart but hates her mind and body.

Welcome to Hollywood, TikTok, and OnlyFans.

The Forlorn Starlet desperately wants love and connection, but she seeks it through facile and promiscuous adoration. At her best, she is a Selfie Girlboss. But every like and follow is ephemeral, like gold dust in a windstorm. At her worst, she is a Salome who manipulates others to get a head on a platter. She can engage in bitter competition with others like her, which she cannot win forever because time is a harsh Master.

She wants to be loved by the Academy. She wants to be seen on TV. This year, she’s an Instagram model. Next year, she’s a digital prostitute. But there will never be enough likes or follows or tips to feed her empty soul. There will never be enough climaxes to fill the emotional vacuum in her, even if she racks up thousands of dollars a month diddling herself in front of incels with credit cards.

My fans adore me, she tells herself. Why am I so lonely?

Because she has a great figure, you might think she loves her body. But love involves protecting the sacred. Nothing is sacred about the way she uses her body. That doesn’t mean virginity is ideal. It means at least that there is dignity in decency, privacy, and restraint. When she’s 45, she’ll find that the likes and follows have washed away. She’ll still be empty-hearted but have invested too much of her life in duckfaces and the somatic dance of digital seduction.

Social media has produced legions of Forlorn Starlets.

Femme Fatale

The Forlorn Starlet can be dangerous, too. In a wider sociocultural context, she can play the innocent victim in one half of a #metoo accusation. The Grand Narrative—which we have also called a micro-metanarrative—of #metoo is that The world is full of Male Oppressors waiting to take advantage of innocent Oppressed women using power asymmetries and Mickey Finns. The problem with this micro-metanarrative is that it imagines no counterpart, anyone who might be capable of being complicit—or a counterparty to this age-old transaction.

But as Boy Pharaohs run Hollywood, Tinsel Town crawls with Forlorn Starlets. These shallow creatures still scurry into California, even as people of substance are leaving.

I’m sex-positive, right? Why shouldn’t I use my feminine wiles to get that part? Who cares if my boyfriend’s jealous or my family’s ashamed? That’s just The Patriarchy talking.

She’s just one act away from getting the part.

Where the Boy Pharaohs Are

The relationship between the Boy Pharaoh and the Forlorn Starlet will end in disaster at some point. Each is equally dangerous to the other, but they make profane transactions all the time. And sometimes things go well. He—pock-marked and corpulent—gets the head and she—dim and lovelorn—gets the part. He can use her up and discard her, fail to make her a star, and deny anything ever happened. She can cry crocodile tears on Twitter X to summon a mob of screeching harpies who want nothing more than to see a rich guy go down.

For a long time, he had the advantage in this deadly game. But since #metoo, the power has shifted in her favor.

I had considered the idea of naming the male version the Lost Playboy. But for males, it’s usually not so much the validation and adoration of strangers he seeks so much as the validation and adoration of Bro-dom. Sexual conquests are notches in the butt of his gun. With every notch, he wants to high-five the Generalized Male Collective who are both conceptual bros and competition. He will try to measure his life's worth in terms of “body count” until he realizes that the last person to love him was probably his late mother.

A Bottomless Heart

Sometimes, a good person offers to love the Forlorn Starlet. But she can’t see it. Other times, she can’t hold it. She tires of those who try to love her deeply. Because she confuses affirmation and adoration with love, what and who she probably needs walks in and out of her life. To her, these entrances and exits are but stage directions. And when she figures out these players don’t come with all the roses and applause, she crawls back to another stage to get her fix.

Like. Follow. Like. Like. Follow.

Yet the loneliness is always there, waiting like a stalker.