Dear Feminists on the internet. Please stop suggesting, or insinuating, that
we are no longer in need of ‘strong female characters’. That’s not helping.
Look, one of the main tenants in feminism is that women are
equal to men. We go this route because,
like men, women are diverse and all of us have different wants and needs. Therefore the best we can do is try and
create a world where we all have access to do whatever we want to do and be
whoever we want to be. What we have to
remember, when we interpret this through media, is that one female character
isn’t going to speak to all of us on the same level. Superman isn’t going to speak every man in
the world—not as a role model or a good character or as wish fulfillment. That’s why guys have Superman and Batman and
James Bond and Frodo Baggins and Forest Gump and Homer Simpson and Hawkeye
Pierce… the list goes on and on for the white dude. Not so for, you know, anyone else.
I think what we have to remember, and what a lot of people,
especially Hollywood, is that ‘strong female character’ is a pretty genre
specific term. It’s in specific
reference to the action/sci-fi/fantasy/thriller genres where you have a lot of
fighting and a lot of things blowing up.
Strength, in this context, means going on the adventure, contributing to
the battle and doing more than sitting on the sidelines, screaming, getting
kidnapped or being left behind. I see no
reason why, in a show or movie or book, why a female character shouldn’t be
just as awesome, just as capable and just as badass as Jack Sparrow or Indiana
Jones or Danny Ocean. A wo-man if you
will. And you won’t, because
really. What a stupid term. So what if a female character is just like
the men folk in every way? There are
real, live women who are a lot more masculine on the gender spectrum who may
think it’s awesome to see a female character they can look up to or get wish fulfillment
out of. Just because a female character
doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean she doesn’t work for everyone or that she is
a bad female character earning our derision.
That’s not helpful. When you do
that, you shame women who actually found something relatable in the
character.
I do agree, however, that the call right now doesn’t need to
be for the ‘strong female character’ anymore.
This archetype was in reaction to the damsel in distress. The pendulum swung completely the other
direction. Before, the damsel in
distress was representing all women in the action/adventure movies. Now, the strong female character is
representing all women. We have already
agreed here that women are diverse and that one character isn’t going to speak
to all of us. So now the call doesn’t
need to be ‘more strong female characters’.
It just needs to be ‘more female characters’.
Here, take this comparison between TNT’s the Closer and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Deputy Chief Brenda
Leigh Johnson is probably everything we could ever want in a female
character. She’s a badass cop—driven, focused
and brilliant at her job and specialization in interrogations. She has no problem burning bridges with
people she doesn’t like or get along with.
She’s also very feminine. She
wears sun dresses and carries around a giant purse. She likes makeup. She worries about how she looks (not
constantly, but as she works in LA around actors, every once in a while it
niggles at her). She has a sweet tooth
and dives into a brownie as a form of comfort at the end of a hard day. She is a well-rounded, complex character
(and, in my opinion, the best character on TV right now).
Problem—Brenda is pretty much the only female character on
her show (there was Detective Irene Daniels for the first four seasons, but she
didn’t really do much beyond having an on/off relationship with Sergeant
Detective David Gabriel which ultimately caused her to leave although we were
often told she was brilliant at forensic accounting and now there is Captain
Sharon Raydor who, while awesome and about to receive a spin-off, is really a
recurring character in the show). If
you, as a woman, can’t relate to Brenda or don’t like her as a character, there’s
no other female character to connect with on the show. If you don’t like Brenda, you’re probably not
going to enjoy The Closer.
Contrast this with Buffy.
A lot of fans of the show dislike the character. If you, as a woman, can’t relate to Buffy as
a character, well then what about Willow or Anya (I like Buffy, but Anya is by
far my favorite) or Dawn or Tara or Joyce or Jenny or Cordelia or or or… If Buffy doesn’t speak to you as a role model
or wish fulfillment or just as a great character, there are a whole slew of
other female characters to choose from.
I think this adds to Buffy’s (the character) strength. She does not have to carry the torch alone—she
not the representation of all women ever nor does she need to be. Because she has a whole slew of female
characters backing her up.
The thing is, writers want to write a diverse cast of
characters. They want each character to
be memorable. The problem with female
characters is that, if you only have one or two in the story, it’s easy to fall
back on bad tropes because the writer is either lazy or trying too hard to make
the character a representation of all women ever that she loses her personality
and becomes this avatar of perfection.
But when a writer is willing (or forced—I’d be totally cool with forced)
to make 50% of the cast female, well, suddenly you have a better chance of
having a female character in this or that storyline that you can relate
to. And if there’s one amongst a bunch
of women all who are individual characters and complex and dealing with their
own issues whether she is a damsel in distress or a wo-man (I hate that term so
much)—well, that’s okay because these tropes aren't presented as representing all
women. (Not to say that this is perfect,
because there's shit storytelling and there’s always going to be shit
storytelling but it’ll be okay just to let that slide by because there are shit
stories about male characters too and now it’s okay to have shit stories about
female characters because it won’t be the end of any possible stories about females
in the future).
It’s important that
we (feminists) stop treating female characters like they’re representatives of
all women everywhere. We hate it when
others do it in the real world and I’m pretty sure we hate when it’s done in
entertainment, so I don’t understand why it’s okay when we do it. There is nothing wrong with the ‘wo-man’. Some women are like that. Some women relate to that kind of character
or see it as wish fulfillment. There’s
nothing wrong with the damsel in distress or a character who cries all the time
or any other portrayal of women so long as it isn’t the only portrayal. So cease and desist with the ‘no more strong
female characters’ or ‘strong female characters are bad for women’ memes and
just shift to ‘we need more women, period.’
That will help. This, not
helping.
Addendum: I will agree that we need to stop seeing women
through the male gaze—ie the lack of clothing or the shots/pictures that focus
on bust and butt. But I was speaking
merely to characterization here and I feel this other thing is sorta outside
it. Like, it’s rare that the choice of
clothing in a character is shown as a defining part of the character (Brenda
would be one exception with her sundresses and Willow is the other as her
outfits show her growing confidence).
But, like, is there any evidence that Wonder Woman is completely
attached to her star spangled underwear and that she would be devastated if she
was forced to wear pants (I know fans waver on this because her outfit is so
iconic to fans at this point, but I
don’t think it has anything to do with the character). And certainly the way a camera focuses on a
character doesn’t have anything to do with the character and everything to do
with who is controlling the camera. So,
yeah, a conversation that needs to be had, but overall I feel like it’s a separate
one from characterization. Jessica
Rabbit isn’t bad—she’s just drawn that way sort of thing.
