When the manic pixie dream girl was branded out of, of all things Kirsten Dunst as Claire Colburn in Elizabethtown, back in 2007, it was as though a collective ejaculation happened among “men” because they were finally able to pinpoint what it was they had been seeking ever since 2001 when Margot Tenenbaum burst onto the scene.

That “it” quality that embodies both quirk and attractiveness was just the one-two punch to convince “men” that the search for this type of girl was fruitful, that her ilk truly exists. And sure, once the term was coined by Nathan Rabin, many a woman worked diligently to embody the archetype via a certain Shannyn Sossaman look, but their day jobs and latent desire for stability would always quickly reveal they were no “force of nature”–no Sandra Bullock in Forces of Nature, if you will. And that’s a real turnoff to a “man,” who just wants a woman who will open his mind (with her open heart and pussy) and be more reckless than him so he can live vicariously through it.

And yet, like a “man” actually willing to stick around and not be a generally huge flake the size of one of the flecks that come off of Ally Sheedy’s head in The Breakfast Club, the manic pixie dream girl is a myth, ergo the “man” who still seeks her has just one more fake excuse not to “settle down.”