Films and TV shows that feel like Expectations by Olivia Rodrigo
The crushing weight of trying to live up to everyone else's idealized version of you while hiding your own messy truth.
- Lady Bird (2017): Captures the intense friction of mother-daughter relationships and the desperate urge to be someone extraordinary.
- Euphoria (2019): Mirrors the hyper-stylized emotional turbulence and overwhelming pressure felt by modern teenagers.
- The Edge of Seventeen (2016): Exemplifies the hilarious and painful reality of feeling misunderstood by everyone around you.
- Booksmart (2019): Explores the sudden panic of realizing you wasted your youth playing by rules that never mattered.
- Gilmore Girls (2000): Deals heavily with the exhausting burden of academic and personal expectations placed on ambitious young women.
- Eighth Grade (2018): Directly taps into the agonizing gap between the person you project to the world and who you actually are.
- 10 Things I Hate About You (1999): Combines high school social hierarchies with a fierce rejection of standard teen archetypes.
- To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018): Highlights the sudden chaos that ensues when your deeply private internal feelings are put on public display.
