Helga Pataki had eaten nothing but dairy for two weeks in preparation for her role as “Milk” in the P.S. 118 student show.
In the first ever episode of “Hey Arnold!” ― which aired 20 years ago this week ― Helga is tasked with turning a group of lazy fourth graders into serious actors. She’s desperately in love with Arnold, who doesn’t even bother to show up for the play she’s directed. She’s wearing a milk carton. Things are stressful.
As she stands off-stage in a moment of frustration, she allows herself one brief moment of vulnerability to consider the burning hot love ― and hate! ― she has for Arnold. Just then, a bespectacled classmate silently comes up to her from behind, leaning in from the side of her milk carton costume to steal some kind of affection.
Helga immediately punches him in the face ― something she’ll be forced to do again and again and again throughout the series.
I know the feeling.
A couple years ago I sat at my favorite Irish pub enjoying a Guinness when a male acquaintance walked up behind me, seemingly out of nowhere, and told me that he’d just watched a movie that had bummed him out. He then asked if I was familiar with the concept of “social realism” in film. “I am,” I told him, and named a few films of that variety that I had seen and enjoyed.
He proceeded to give me an oral history of social realism in film regardless of the fact that I was already familiar with it, something I would later learn qualifies as “mansplaining.” At the time, what I really wanted to do was pull a Helga and punch him in the face.
Not only had he been condescending, but he’d also completely disrupted my alone time without acknowledgement or apology.
Sound familiar?
Women quickly become accustomed to the more petty instances of misogyny like mansplaining and manterrupting, catcalling and street harassment. Perhaps more upsettingly, we also become accustomed to the more threatening instances of misogyny like stalking, violence, threats and abuse. Yet as aware of all of this as we are, we’re still not really supposed to react to any of it.
We’re told to smile. We’re told to be flattered. We’re told to be nice. We’re called “bitch” or “cunt” if we do otherwise.
But Helga Pataki ― the lovesick, awkward, angry, unibrowed antagonist of Nickelodeon’s “Hey Arnold!” ― didn’t really abide by any of that. And this, of course, made her unlikeable. As anyone who religiously watched the animated show, Helga was not the character you were supposed to aspire to be.
Of course, she was rough around the edges. But that’s because Helga was awkward and hairy and taller than everyone and harboring a deep love for the nice, popular boy with the football-shaped head.
But maybe Helga was also rough around the edges because she was being stalked by a persistent mouth-breather named Brainy. Brainy showed up everywhere: in trees, on stage, on the bus, in class, in alleyways, in trash cans, in trash cans in alleyways, and, perhaps most terrifyingly, in a hall of mirrors.
She simply could not get away from him. In quiet moments of reflection, when Helga thought she was alone, Brainy would present himself ― or she’d hear him mouth-breathing ― and Helga would usually respond with a swift punch to the face, usually breaking poor Brainy’s glasses and/or teeth.
Looking back, it becomes clear that Helga was under a huge amount of distress! The situation she found herself in ― constantly stalked by a young man whose attentions she absolutely didn’t want ― is every woman’s worst goddamn nightmare. No wonder she was so amped up.
Of course, Helga is a fictional character. But her experience contains echoes of reality.
Ask Gigi Hadid, who was assaulted during New York Fashion Week and subsequently expected to defend herself for elbowing her assaulter in the face. Ask Kim Kardashian, who had her rear end kissed by the same creep ― and was stalked, bound, gagged, and robbed at gun point less than a week later. Ask the fifth-grade-girl whose letter to a clingy male classmate went viral last month. Ask literally any woman.
Because here’s the response you’ll get: If you are a woman ― regardless of whether you are a supermodel, a reality TV star, a fifth-grader, a fast-food worker, an astronomer, a pedestrian, a woman on the internet or an awkward ugly duckling with a unibrow like Helga Pataki ― wherever you go, there will be men there who try to inject themselves into your space. Into your tea runs, your errands, your walks to work. Your Snapchats. Your recess. Your pints of Guinness.
It’s not that Helga’s preferred method of dealing with such intrusions ― punching interlopers in the face ― should be encouraged or condoned. But it is worth re-examining Helga Pataki and offering her some compassion.
In a sea of elementary students who more or less stuck to the status quo, Helga was there to remind little girls that they don’t have to be nice to boys who make them uncomfortable.
Embrace your inner Helga, ladies. She was on to something.
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