Problems With the Whole "Strong Female Characters" Thing

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.

I agree with you entirely Rac. The stereotypical ideal for female characters is very annoying, and personally, it usually makes me like them less. Especially with cases like Scarlett Johanson’s character in Iron Man 2, where, like you said, the character has no personality, and just goes around kicking butt.

You are my hero for writing this post Rac. Couldn’t have said it better myself. 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.

An interesting topic. I must type an overly long post to get out my feelings! In regards really, why I think people treat female characters this way. (Even though I dislike Ariel, though I’d dislike her even if she was male, so that counts right?)

I think a part of it, in the end, comes down to history. For a substantial amount of time, in (most, though not all) fiction, girls were utterly passive prizes for the main (white, male) character to ‘win’ as it were. Stupid, thoughtless pretty pictures. Dolls. They had no real personality to begin with with each female character being indistinguishable from the last. The “passive good girl looking for the right man” and to be tied to the railway tracks. Men got to be heroes and take an active role. Women for the most part were passive or when they did something, were obviously “wrong” or “stupid” or easily prone to “hysterics” compared to the level headed male hero!

Eventually over time, this just wasn’t wanted nor was it realistic (it wasn’t though to be fair, realistic even then when women could only be housewives anyway, but no-one really listened to women, and many still don’t). I think we have to remember of course that things don’t exist in a vacuum, and because female characters were once so TERRIBLE, people are naturally harder on them now. This is on top of I think (interestingly) a little bit of sexism too of a different sort meaning they have a specific idea on what a “strong female character” even is (more on that later).

After all, sexism still exists. We also, have problems with characters within minorities at times. Fictional character portrayals there WERE insulting and yes, insulting portrayals still do occur today, just often less blatant than they were back then- and racism obviously still exists as well. This means that with a white, straight cis-male character people aren’t going to go through a fine toothed comb with regards him and everything he does. Because people mentally think of those characters as standard. Straight, white cis-males after all don’t need empowering- they’re already powerful in Western society. Hence we have this thing I think as a society about being a lot harder on portrayals of characters which are not this. Because for so long… the portrayals in fiction were genuinely awful, and obviously so now in todays standards. Also, occasionally real problematic portrayals still come to us if but in a more subtle way. And sometimes people who weren’t this “standard” didn’t get good role models at all, or they were really hard to find, and instead they got offensive stereotypes. I do think that media portrayals can have a certain effect on a person, especially if they are bombarded by certain stereotypes all the time, though it depends on a certain other factors too. It’s a difficult issue, though yes, unfortunately, female characters are unfairly “bashed” as it were at times, and labelled a “Mary Sue” or a “bad role model” when neither is technically true. They do exist, and heck, I’d wager that white, straight cis-guys also have their own bad role models- particularly if say such a character treated female people as objects and didn’t respect other people as… well people.

The truth is though there are many ways to be a girl, or a boy or a person. I think if you follow your dreams, try not to hurt other people and realise and try to rectify your mistakes or wrong-doings as well as help those in need along the way you’re doing okay. Because everyone makes mistakes. It’s how you react to them that can help define you as a person.

I think a strange and problematic thing people sometimes do in gender is actually attribute traditionally masculine things as “strength” and traditionally feminine things as “weak”. That “girly” things are bad. A girl to be strong has to be masculine apparently and that’s what it takes to be “empowered”. And a boy who is more into traditionally feminine things is “weak”. It’s like the idea a girl or boy shouldn’t want to stay at home and raise children at all. Because the girl is betraying “feminism” and the boy is being a “pansy” or is obviously “whipped” or whatever. When really what feminism meant to do was bring about more choice for girls and women- being a housewife (or husband) isn’t a bad thing- it’s only a bad thing if it’s the only choice you’re allowed to have at all because society or someone else dictated that you HAD to.

There are many ways to be strong. Or brave. Most people are a mix of feminine or masculine to begin with in any case, and a guy who is more on the traditionally feminine scale isn’t weak or degraded or “less” of a man or person. Masculine and feminine are not synonyms for “strong” or “weak” after all.

It is perfectly fine for a girl to be mostly what is thought to be traditionally masculine, or feminine, same for boys, or at least it should be.

Unfortunately society hasn’t entirely caught onto that notion yet

Perfect, perfect post. Love it and agree entirely.

,…I like Ariel. hides

But anyway, that was perfect MG!! You always know just how to word things.

There’s a TV Trope for what you said, called Real Women Never Wear Dresses. Its basically about how female characters are never allowed to show feminine traits, or they’re “sexist.”

Rac, who is the far right pair in your signature? Sorry for the randomness.

I’m very interested inn these tropes. I might read on them.

Glad you liked my post IGV and Lenin!

Mmmm, I never actually managed to get to that trope Rac on the site, but it makes sense it’s there after all- it’s pretty common that The Empowered (Token?) Female will not be very feminine. One of the guys you know? That’s why I kind of like Katara in a sense (glad she’s apparently the example used of how this isn’t true- that ‘girly’ girls can’t be empowered!). Plus Toph is kind of more ‘one of the guys’- but she still had her own vulnerability to contend with- and despite the fact they sometimes clash, there was friendship between her and Katara, and Toph clearly valued her- saying Katara cared for her in a way she wished her own mum had. Toph and Katara are both girls, they’re just different and kind of on different ends of the ‘spectrum’. And both are good and interesting characters in their own way.

I don’t consider TV Tropes to be 100% perfect, but it’s certainly an interesting site. And one you can get trapped on for hours, if someone is evil enough to link it…

(No. NO! Fight your evil urges MG!)

In any case it isn’t always a family friendly site TV Tropes (but then certain themes in fiction aren’t really family friendly to begin with in media.)