Why the Wicked Stepmother Trope is So Powerful

The thing about tropes is that they don’t stick because they’re false — they stick because they’re familiar. And the “Wicked Stepmother” trope? It’s dangerous precisely because of how real it can be.

My parents divorced when I was a toddler. My dad remarried not long after, and I met his new wife early - but I didn’t live with them full-time until I was eleven.

By then, a lot had already happened. My mother, struggling with her own untreated mental illness, had tried and failed to raise me in a stable home. Out of desperation, she signed me over to foster care after a year and a half stint living in our car. Eventually, I ended up with my father and his wife.

I wouldn’t call her a monster. But I knew from day one that she hated me. She didn’t hide it. She couldn’t. Her angry face still lives somewhere in the deepest, avoided closet of my psyche. Being around her felt like walking barefoot on hot coals - painful, disorienting, and dangerous if you didn’t know how. And no one ever taught me how.

She had her sons - my half-brothers. I met them when I moved in. David was seven, Brian was younger. Later, Sabrina was born, too late to know our father before he declined. I was an only child before all this. And now, I was supposed to be their sibling - something that never quite happened. We’re still strangers today. The gap between us is too wide, too deep. Like I’d need to Evel Knievel myself across it on a rusted bicycle, and I’ve never been strong enough to make the leap.

My stepmother didn’t scream. She didn’t need to. Her rules did the talking. Chores were exacting. The vacuum had to leave perfect, straight lines on the carpet. Those pig vacuums were no joke at twelve. If someone walked through after, you started over.

The bathrooms were scoured with Comet and scratch pads weekly - toilets, sinks, tub-shower combos, floors swept and mopped. Rinse poorly, and you’d do it again. Easiest if you've just showered, though doing it literally requires you to rewash yourself.

Dishes were judged by the color of your hands: not beet red from heat? Unacceptable. There will be germs and unseen parasites, no matter how much soap you used. Do it again.

But the details that really broke me weren’t the ones you’d think.

She made sure my glasses were tinted - a brownish amber, “to protect my eyes.” But it left me the only kid in my entire school with colored lenses, an automatic target.

My hair was thick and curly, so she decided on a poodle perm and a pixie cut. I hated it.

There were no mall outings that I can remember, save for the optometrist. No bonding. No trust.

My clothes came preapproved from the Sears or JCPenney catalog. She’d hand me a pen, open the pages, and tell me to pick what I’d wear for the year.

No one taught me how to shave because I was deemed "too young". But, as the daughter of Santana (a'la Mexican heritage, not Carlos), my body hair is dark and I was one of only three girls still not shaving. When I did try, I shaved a thick ribbon of skin off my shin, and had to bandage it daily for weeks. I also got yelled at for doing it.

Style was a foreign language. Hygiene was trial and error. Thank god for YouTube - but YouTube doesn’t undo the memory of being the odd one out, standing in a locker room full of girls who all seemed to know the rules except me.

Since home was the proverbial hate chamber, Church became my refuge. Not because I believed (though for many years I really did), but because it was the only place she didn’t follow. My father stayed home too. The pews were quiet. Structured. And they reinforced the same idea her house had already tattooed on my brain: be obedient, stay small, try harder, never be enough.

I’m AuDHD - autistic and ADHD - but back then, it wasn’t something anyone talked about. Especially not in girls. What looked like rebellion was often shutdown. Meltdowns were interpreted as defiance. The world expected me to conform, and I tried. I really did. I used her rules like scaffolding and tried to build a version of myself that would fit. I failed over and over again. But that’s what trauma trains you to do - fail quietly, and never let anyone hear it.

And then, years later, I became a stepmom.

And I felt that same pang - the fear of being second, of not belonging. I remember clearly the moment my stepdaughter sat down on the couch between her father and me. That sting? I knew what it was. And I knew what it could turn into. So I faced it. Worked through it. Loved her anyway.

I don’t even say “stepdaughter” anymore. I just say “mine.”

Her mother and I are friends. We chose to be a bigger support system instead of shutting each other out. We chose something better. And I’m certain we’re all happier for it.

The “Wicked Stepmother” trope isn’t wrong because it’s false - it’s wrong because it reduces a complex, slow erosion into a cartoon villain. It allows women to dismiss their own harmful behaviors under the justification of “at least I’m not that bad.” But emotional withholding is its own form of violence. It doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it’s silent - and just as scarring.

I don’t know when we decided that women and girls needed to compete for love. But I know it’s killing us. We’re made of the same blood. The same fears. The same need to be seen. To belong.

Some stepmothers are beautiful souls who love their kids fiercely.

Some don’t mean to cause harm, but do.

Some know exactly what they’re doing - and hide behind good intentions.

The trope is powerful because it rings true.

But it’s dangerous because it lets too many people off the hook.

And the truth is, I was just a child.

A child who needed to be taught, not controlled.

Loved, not tolerated.

Seen - not erased.

So I became the adult I needed.

And I broke the story in half.

Author Note: I’m building a trauma-informed emotional AI that actually gives a damn and writing up the receipts of a life built without instructions for my AuDHD. ❤️ Help me create it (without burning out): https://bit.ly/BettyFund