This is a bit of a personal rant I’ve been sitting on for a while now. I’ve never considered myself a feminist, more of what I like to call an equalist. Not that there’s anything really wrong with feminism, as long as its gone about in the right manor. To me, we should just treat both sexes equally, and have no double standards whether they be “women can’t fend for themselves” or “its okay to hit your boyfriend, he can take it and its empowering for the woman!”
That said, there has been a common label put on female characters that I feel not only makes them one-dimensional and cliche, but also sets back feminism as a whole. I call it the “Strong Female Character” phenomenon. There is no such thing as a character that happens to be female, there is only a Female Character. Female Characters are treated as something completely special and as if they represent the creator’s view of the entire gender. All too often, instead of seeing a comment like “Betty Ann was a great character, I really enjoyed her. She was smart and resourceful, as any leader should!” we get “Betty and was a great female character! Clearly the author respects women! She smart and resourceful, as any good woman should be. Girls can look up to her!” Or, alternatively, “Suzy Smith was a wonderful villain. Manipulative and crazy! A great antagonist for Bob.” we get “The woman Suzy Smith was cast as a villain, proving that the creator thinks all women are manipulative and crazy and need to be put down by a man like Bob.” When that is not the case, so-called feminists will instantly label any Action Girl as a “strong female character” regardless of her actual strength in character (so a woman that holds a gun, having no other personality traits whatsoever, will be a “Strong Female Character,” but a well-rounded, 3-dimensional woman who doesn’t fight is a useless girly girl and Bad Role Model).
Continuing with this, female characters are often rated on how well girls can look up to them, not how well they are written. Almost EVERY time a female character is put in a children’s or even sometimes an adult film, especially a Disney film, she absolutely has to be a Good Role Model, or at least what that commenter considers a Good Role Model. This really limits what you can do with a girl character in a kid movie. She makes bad decisions and has to learn from them because she’s a teenager(Ariel)? Bad Role Model. She isn’t instantly good at everything she does and sometimes gets help from friends who happen to be men (Mulan)? Bad Role Model. However, MALE characters, even in movies not solely aimed at girls, are allowed to run away from responsibilities, steal, and be selfish Casanovas (Simba, Flynn and Naveen respectively), yet no one gets all up in arms about how that’s sending a bad message to boys. Apparently, us girls can’t think for ourselves and need the media to think for us. Yep, that’s feminist.
Its gotten to the point that you can pretty much guess the exact personality of a girl character in any given movie, especially if she’s a princess or otherwise noble: beautiful but strong willed, headstrong and rebellious, athletic in fighting skill and unusually modern for the oppressive time period she’s in. She wants more out of life. Most often will share a snarky, belligerent relationship with the male lead. Of course, those characters are nice, but can we have some variety please? Maybe if we stop thinking of characters on terms of gender and on terms of their writing and actions, we can actually have more equal representation in media.
It’s become really grating to me–I really wish characters (or heck, even real people) would simply be defined by their character and not their gender. I don’t think gender even factors into who they are as people.
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