So if there’s one thing I’ve focused on a lot in my six years of occasionally blogging, it’s female characters. Because aside from my own writing, I’m a huge consumer of media, I’m a feminist, and I care a lot about the way women are represented across media. So: female characters. I think about them a lot. And thus, non-shockingly, of the roughly seven billionty blogs that I read regularly, a fair amount discuss female characters.

This makes me happy: a lot of other people care, too! And it’s interesting. Reading other people’s thoughts have helped me sharpen and figure out my own, become a more active watcher/reader, and has given me recommendations that have led me to new shows/movies/books that I’ve loved. I’ve also had some interesting discussions when I’ve disagreed, but generally, I come away with a lot to think about. My opinion is: analyzing female characters = super cool.

Except for this one thing that I keep seeing with depressing frequency: explaining why one female character is awesome by talking about the flaws in another lady from the same genre. Or in other words, writing as if two female characters (often both generally pretty good characters, who are flawed in different ways) are in a competition to prove one of them is more awesome than the other.

Why? Why must we do that?

(Note: I’m not linking to specific posts from here because I’m talking about trends I’ve seen, not trying to call out anyone in particular.)

The first time I started to write this blog post (it’s gone through four drafts now) it was in response to a whole rash of articles I’d run into about how great Parks & Recreation is (and it is!). And specifically how great Leslie Knope is (omg SHE IS). And how that’s great, because Liz Lemon over on 30 Rock is a mess. Wait, what?

They’re both the central characters of NBC, Thursday-night comedies. And Tina Fey and Amy Poehler both were on SNL, and are friends in real life. People are used to talking about them as a unit. But unless you’re comparing specific facets of the two shows, why frame it as one character being better than the other? For that matter, if you aren’t talking about both shows to begin with, why detour into it just for that purpose?

I’ve also seen Community’s Britta Perry thrown into this mix occasionally. And here’s the thing: one of my closest friends really identifies with Britta. Another of my closest friends really identifies with Leslie.¹ But I actually think it’s super awesome that there are two very different female characters, both hilarious, so that two very different (but both hilarious) friends of mine have characters they can identify with.²

And just to drive home the point, here’s a video of Amy Poehler being awesome and refusing to fall into the sexist trap of pitting characters, shows, or her actual person against Tina Fey, because they are friends and they are both funny:

This is not an isolated issue of 30 Rock vs. Parks and Rec issue, though. I ranted about it on twitter a couple of months ago, when I ran into a cool blog post about how great Jane Foster of Thor is. And while Thor didn’t do much for me as a movie, I do like that Jane was a scientist devoted to her research above all. What distressed me was that someone immediately commented to argue that actually, no, the better female character from a superhero last summer was Peggy Carter of Captain America. Which again, why? Because they’re both women in superhero flicks? The characters have even less to do with each other than Liz Lemon and Leslie Knope, but the comment was definitely a case of “this character is better than that character.”

And then, more recently, I ran into the same thing again, in an article about how great Ellen Ripley is. And you know what? Ellen Ripley is pretty great! The Alien franchise is pretty great! But the article took a long detour through explaining how much Sarah Connor sucks. But, um. Sarah Connor doesn’t suck. And even if you think she does, her sucking doesn’t make Ripley a better character. The fact that they are both women from lady-led genre franchises does not mean that if you like one, you can’t like the other.³

Look, I am down with criticizing the Terminator franchise. And superhero movies. And 30 Rock, which I generally enjoy, but which also sometimes makes me go, “Yiiiiiikes,” and wince. I think critique is generally a good and important thing, yes, even when it’s critiquing a thing I enjoy. But critique can also fall into nasty narratives of its own: in this case, acting as if women have to be in competition.

They aren’t. They don’t have to be. Instead of talking about which awesome action heroine, or which hilarious sitcom lady, or which superhero’s ladyfriend is greatest… well, why not enjoy how many of those characters there are? Instead of fighting over who gets one slice of pie, let’s enjoy the fact that the pie is getting bigger. Pieces may have slightly different flavors, and some may still be undercooked or not to your taste, but the pie as a whole can still be delicious and filling. And wow that metaphor got overextended.

The point is: this isn’t Highlander. There can be more than one awesome female character at a time.⁴ Not all of them are to everyone’s taste, and denigrating one does not make another seem more awesome. But it does fall into the sexist tropes of thinking of all women as being in competition, and that one representation of women is enough. Neither of those things is true. Let’s please not write as if they are.

Last week, mlawski at Overthinking It posted a graphic titled The Female Character Flow Chart. I saw it, thought, “Huh, interesting,” and that was that. Then a couple of days later one of my friends posted me towards some criticism of it, leading to discussion and more thinking on my part.

I was surprised to see so much commentary on it because it never occurred to me that the chart was aimed at someone like me, who already spends time thinking about the representation of women in the media. I don’t think good intentions (which I assume mlawski had) or intended audience arguments excuse all flaws (more on those in a second), but I definitely read the chart as intended for readers who hadn’t already thought about women in the media. I could certainly see someone running across this who hadn’t noticed those problematic tropes, the lack of dynamic female characters, or that many, many female characters are defined solely by their relationships to men and children could have an eye-opening, “aha!” moment.

Regardless of who it’s aimed at, I don’t think anyone’s wrong for reading it critically. There are two different braches of criticism that I’ve seen (though I haven’t looked around extensively; I haven’t even read the comments on the original post, since I looked at the post when it first went up, ages before the comment count rose). One is about the privilege and lack of nuance in the chart; the other is about the chart as reductionist when it comes to the characters in question.

The first, I can’t put any better than this post from homasse at deadbrowalking:

A wee bit down on this mess of a flowchart, you will find “Useless Girl” with the example being Uhura from Star Trek.

And why is this fail? Because, once again, feminism shows a woeful lack of awareness of race and the impact race plays.

Uhura was “useless” not because of her gender, but because of race–this chart ignores the political and social situation of when the show was made and the decisions made in regards to her character because she was Black: They couldn’t ever put her in charge of the bridge because people in the south specifically would have flipped out at a black woman being in charge (this was why Ensign Chekov was given the bridge and she never was even though she outranked him).

I’d also like to point out bossymarmalade’s post about Yoko Ono, someone who I consider awesome. It sucks to see people buy into the cultural storyline that she broke up the Beatles, when that is just false, and further, when she’s great.¹

So yes, I think there are some problems with the chart in that regard, and I’m glad people pointed them out. But I don’t entirely agree with the argument about the chart being reductionist, and diminishing the characters who are on it. Or rather — I do, kind of. The best way to put it was something said by my friend Jess: “Basically, if that one box ending in ‘strong female character’ wasn’t there, I’d like the chart a lot better.”

For me, that sums it up. I think the chart actually branches out into a lot more specifics than I’d use if I made something like it — like, there are multiple slots for women whose motivations come entirely from their kids — but the main problem I have is that any one of these slots/archetypes/clichés/whatever you want to call them can indeed be written well. They can be thorough, three dimensional, story-carrying, awesome characters.

My go-to example is Sarah Connor. Sarah is listed the character representing “Mama Bear.” And when I saw that, I went “a-yup.” TV Tropes has her listed as both a Mama Bear and Action Mom. The first Terminator movie is based on this premise: Sarah Connor must live, because her son saves the world. Not “Sarah Connor must live because she saves the world.” While she’s the awesome character, the series is always about her (at that point unborn) son. When we next see her in T2, she’s had John, and devoted herself to preparing him for his fate — and keeping him safe. When he rescues her, an act that explicitly saves her life, she scolds him for putting himself in danger. She’ll do anything, up to and including sacrificing herself, if it saves John. While Sarah is the protagonist of the first two movies, her motivation — the entire premise of the series — is based on protecting John.

The thing is, though, that Sarah is awesome. In the first movie, she grows from damsel-in-need-of-rescue to bandaging injuries and learning to make bombs. She’s the one who finally destroys the Terminator. She has help along the way, but she’s still a character who learns skills and saves herself. In T2, she’s even more complex. She’s in an institution because people believe she’s insane, but we as viewers know she’s right. But being right doesn’t make her entirely mentally able, though — it’s clear she’s got PTSD or something akin to it (and understandably). She’s amazingly kick-ass (her escape is my favorite sequence in the movie) and morally complex. We know she’d kill someone to save John, but she isn’t able to kill Miles Dyson, though she thinks doing so will keep Skynet from existing — and though she expects herself to be able to do it. And that’s without even getting into the sadly too-short lived TV show.²

Sarah Connor is a great character. She’s three dimensional and dynamic. She’s capable of carrying a story. But as much as I’d be all over a the story about how Sarah Connor must live so she can lead humanity in the battle against Skynet, I don’t know that it would necessarily be a better story than Sarah trying to save her son. Different, yes; certainly unusual. But Sarah Connor is both an Action Mama Bear and a great character. (And further, just because Sarah Connor is great doesn’t mean there aren’t other characters who fall into that slot who aren’t poorly written, or that the Mama Bear archetype is never problematic.)

The way I see it, while there are indeed plenty of archetypes and tropes out there that are problematic simply for existing — racist and sexist stereotypes, for example, which come up all too frequently — once you’re beyond those,³ just because a character (female or otherwise) hits an archetype doesn’t mean the character is poorly drawn.

I ran some errands during my lunch break yesterday. I had some checks to deposit and the most convenient place is a cramped ATM vestibule near my office. It has four ATMs, but no space for anyone waiting to stand, and when I got there they were all busy. I stood near-ish to the last one, with a line of people who came in behind me, so it was pretty crowded; I was wearing my headphones and listening to my iPod, which is true of about 90% of the time I’m outside my apartment.¹

I was endorsing a check, writing on the back of my book (because I always have a book in my purse, duh). I had a vague sense that the woman at the nearest ATM was flustered, inserting her card again and again. I heard her say something in my general direction, but thanks to the iPod (and noise-canceling headphones, I hate earbuds) I didn’t hear what. I took off my headphones and moved maybe a half-step forward, and said all of, “Hm?”

And then she yelled, “You’re too close, Jesus!”

I got as far as, “Sor — ” before she stormed off.

So I used the ATM and walked off grumpily. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had been attempting to apologize. And frankly, rudeness irks me pretty badly (don’t even get me started on the guy who walked into the vestibule from the other side and cut the whole line, something that is never, ever acceptable). It wasn’t until I was down the road on my way to the post office that the situation flipped in my brain.

From the perspective of Grumpy Stranger Lady, she was using the ATM and clearly having some sort of issue with it. Some stranger was standing too close, making her uncomfortable, and was off in her own world wearing headphones instead of paying attention to what was happening around her. Maybe she was having a bad day, or was just easily flustered, or short on patience for whatever reason. Regardless, it occurred to me that if she were to tell the story of our very brief encounter, she’d be the reasonable one, and I’d be the rude one.

The thing is, she isn’t wrong; that was reality as she lived it. I’m not wrong either; she was pretty rude. In objective reality, we probably both could have done better, with me paying more attention and her being less snippy. Whatever, it was an encounter that lasted about two seconds, and didn’t have any lingering after effects. But it was a tiny moment of eye-opening for me.

I’m bothering to write this down because I’m someone who reads all kinds of blogs where people share very personal experiences (not to mention I work at a website which features personal stories in a major way). You can see some of my favorites in the link sidebar, but I read a lot about feminism, anti-racism, GLBT activism, anti-ableism, and so on — lots of people examining and trying to figure out how to dismantle societal privileges and *isms of many sorts. I don’t tend to say much, because I rarely feel like there’s anything I can add to the conversation other than “thank you for sharing”/”I agree with you”/etc. And generally, the conversations aren’t about me. What is me talking about my experiences as a white person going to add to a post where a person of color is talking about her experiences with racism? It’s not that I don’t have thoughts, it’s that they aren’t necessarily relevant and there’s no need for me to hijack a thread about someone else to talk about my own junk. It’s a conversation I can learn from but not one I feel like I can add much to, so I am a serial lurker who is glad the big, wide internet has so many people brave enough to talk about their lives.

Back a bunch of years ago, when I first started this blog, I wrote a not-very-well-articulated, but none the less honest, post about some sexism I’d run into at the bookstore where I worked.² It was the first thing I wrote that got read, let alone linked to, by anyone other than my close friends; I wasn’t quite prepared for that, but who is? I followed a few track back links and ran into some other people’s discussions of my post. One stands out in my memory; the thrust of the post-about-my-post was, “Well, she says that, but I think she was misreading it. It wasn’t about sexism, it was just an in-group, out-group thing.”

At the time, I was really upset by that and didn’t know why. I get it now: the post was about my experiences, things I knew were true because I’d lived them. It isn’t fair for someone to say that wasn’t what happened and I was misreading the situation (let alone someone who wasn’t even there, but that’s not even close to the point). I knew what my experience was and didn’t understand that what bothered me was someone saying no, my lived experience was incorrect.

It was a pretty minor life experience. Blatant sexism, but nothing with long-lasting consequences on my life. (I learned someone was an asshole. I avoided him after that. The end!) If I was that unsettled by being told my life experiences were wrong in something fairly minor, I can only imagine how people who share significantly more personal experiences must feel.

This is probably the most no-duh-worthy thing I will ever type on this blog, but: privilege is a huge part of what makes that kind of dismissal possible. It allows people to be oblivious to the very fact that there’s another perspective to consider, let alone the validity of that experience. It lets people ignore the whole concept of empathy, of taking a few seconds to realize that other people may have experienced a situation differently, and their experiences are legitimate — even if it’s just why someone is rude at an ATM.

It isn’t just about reading blogs. It’s about being polite, because there’s a good chance the rude person you’re encountering is having a shitty day. It’s about letting things roll off your back when they aren’t personal, and it’s about respecting people when they say things are personal. It’s about having empathy and realizing you are not the center of the world, and other people have thoughts and feelings and experiences, too — and doing your best to treat them that way.

And it’s about never, ever cutting people in line.

So I watched the VMAs last night, and I’m still pissed at Kanye West.¹ I’ve been thinking about why I’m so upset all day, because until last night, I could not have named one Taylor Swift song. She’s been remarkably off my radar, considering I contribute to a blog about tween- and teen stars; I knew her name, knew what she looked like, but her music had made zero impression on me at all. So it isn’t even like I’m offended because I love her or her music particularly; I’m basically entirely indifferent to her. And obviously it was a totally dick move, wrong just because it was wrong, and it would have been wrong regardless of who he interrupted.

But it really, really bothered me. I think I finally got a bead on why: because female performers — especially young, female, pop performers — really don’t get much respect.

I think part of that is the genre generally. Pop music tends to be dismissed out of hand by many, many people, as “just” pop. Growing up loving boybands and Britney Spears, I’ve heard time and time again that pop stars just don’t have musical credibility, because they often don’t write the songs they perform. That has always struck me as utter bullshit because here’s the thing: writing music and singing are different skillsets. They are related, in that they both have to do with music, and one is often found in tandem with the other, but they don’t have to be. Honestly, when I’m listening to music, I rarely care who wrote it. I’m listening for performance; when I’m at a concert, I’m there to be entertained. I respect the people who do the writing and the producing, but they aren’t the ones who make the musical experience for me. Basically, what I want from a singer is that she be a good singer.²

And even were that not true, I think it’s important to remember that female entertainers are least likely to be given the creative freedom to do what they want. Another reason it’s easy to dismiss pop (and especially women in pop) is because it’s all about crafted image (though… what isn’t?). But, as Kelly Clarkson called out, the industry is a boy’s club, and people didn’t want to listen to her because she was young and female. If these young, female stars lack credibility because their images are so carefully crafted… Well, who is doing the crafting? And would these young women be given a chance to put themselves out there and make music at all if they didn’t submit to that image crafting?³

And of course, there’s the fact that pop music is fun. It’s not generally designed to be moving, or deep, or even Great Art. Pop is meant to be…popular. It is entertainment that does not strive to be anything but entertainment. And fun is often seen as frivolous.

So thought number one: pop musicians, especially young, female ones, don’t get much respect because they — and their genre — are seen as lacking credibility, even though that that’s an unfair statement.

But to go further with that, you know why else pop music is dismissed so easily? How about this one: because girls like it.

Seriously. This is not a terribly original thought, but it’s always run true to me. Speaking in broad cultural terms, things that guys value are considered normal; things that women value are seen as frivolous. To talk in clichés: sports vs. shopping. It’s not that every single person is accepting of guys who just want to watch the game (or get more fanatic about it); it’s that culturally, that’s considered normal. On the other hand, women shopping is a punchline, seen as silly. LOL ladies spending money on things like clothing and — hee hee hee — shoes! The attitude is derisive. Projects that are by women, for women, are written off as chick flicks (and chick lit). Women enjoying things by and for themselves is not particularly welcomed.⁴ Things by and for women are not particularly valued.

So you’ve got young female artists in a genre that isn’t considered credible, who are primarily popular with other young, female people and thus their art (even if it is not High Art) is easily dismissed. That upsets me. And even though I have just about no opinion on Taylor Swift, that moment at the VMAs pretty much encapsulated that mindset: young women and the things they value aren’t important, so an adult man felt it was entirely okay to interrupt a young woman who was receiving recognition for being good at what she does.

Obviously, there is a lot more to talk about than that, like how it also stole Beyonce’s moment and put her into the position of having to clean up someone else’s mess; whether or not people would be this outraged if a white man had done what Kanye did, or if it had been done to a black woman instead; and why MTV has an awards show to recognize outstanding music videos when it does not, in fact, play music videos.⁵ But that’s why the incident got to me, in particular. I love pop, and I love teen stars, and I absolutely hate how culturally disrespected they are.

One final note: I’ve had a couple of discussions today about how this is all actually good for Swift, because this has gotten her major exposure and made her a national figure of sympathy. I do get that, but I also think it’s important not lose track of the fact that Swift was getting national exposure and recognition for being good at her job, and that was ruined for her. I have no idea whether she’d trade in that moment of joy and respect for a larger moment of controversy and exposure — but I know I’d rather see a young woman get the respect she has earned than see her get humiliated. And I hope that she would feel the same.

I think the whole idea first occurred to me probably a couple years ago, but not in any huge way. I was at the ATM in my tiny, adorable neighborhood in the city, having trouble opening the door, and the person behind me offered to do it. Then she said, “Holy shit, Becky Allen?”

She was someone I went to school with. Being from a small town with a tiny school, by the way, that means she’s someone I went to school with for about twelve years. We had both ended up in Inwood, by random coincidence. And having known each other for years — never having been close, but always friendly acquaintances — of course we recognized each other.

But it was, I think, easy to recognize me regardless. So that’s where the thought came from: in my mid-20s, I looked, for all intents and purposes, exactly like I had in my early- to mid-teens. I have always had long brown hair (somewhere between a bit below my shoulders to a bit above my waist); I have always worn glasses; I have, for well over a decade, worn essentially the exact same outfit on a daily basis (sneakers, jeans, t-shirt, hoodie — yeah, every day). And I’ve always felt pretty fine with it, because I’m just not someone who’s ever really cared a whole lot about how I look. I can remember being pretty young — maybe nine or ten — and explaining to my mom that I wanted to join a nudist colony because clothes are just such a hassle. Like I said, I’ve had long hair; I’ve never done anything with it except stick it back in a pony-tail to get it out of my way. I dressed simply, didn’t put any time or thought into it, and that has never mattered to me.

But it struck me as really weird to think that at 25, I looked exactly the same as I looked at 15. Because I feel like such a different person. Or — well, I have the same core, but a lot of the traits that swirl around that core are different. And of course that’s normal, because darn near everyone will change drastically over a ten year period, especially one that sees you go from a high-school freshman to an adult with an apartment and a salary. So looking in the mirror, for the first time, I’ve been kind of unsatisfied with what has always been — due to convenience and accident, not design — my look.

Here’s some more stuff: I don’t do visuals. That is an odd statement, I get that, but I’m — best I can describe it is detail-blind. I have really poor visual recall; I don’t notice things like colors (I’m not color blind, I can differentiate them fine, but I don’t notice them) and I certainly have never noticed what people around me are wearing. (However, I have fantastic audio recall; I can memorize entire movie scenes after seeing them once, and recall conversations with near-strangers years later.) So the thought of walking through a store and trying to pick out an outfit freaks me out quite a bit. I can’t even tell you what colors clash, let alone what will flatter my body, or what styles are, uh, stylish.

And there’s a matter of time and importance and prioritizing. This stuff has just never been my priority. Ten years of a steady pattern happens in part because it’s easy. And aside from the fear of shopping, there’s also a fear of…other stuff. (Deep, I know.) Whatever phase it is in late middle/early high school, or whenever, when girls experiment with makeup? I missed. Where they learn to do things with their hair? I missed. Where they, you know, start to care about anything even remotely related to femininity? Oh wow did I miss that train. And now, at 25, when I see the makeup counter in a department store, I feel stupid. I wouldn’t know where to start, even if I wanted to.

And…it’s weird. Like, say I wanted to wear a skirt. It just has never struck me as practical for my own life. I don’t sit; I sprawl. My feet dangle in pretty much every seat (my office finally, kindly, got me a footstool for under my desk) so I tend to kick them up on something so they don’t get pins-and-needles-y all the time. That is not exactly ladylike — and I don’t really worry about being ladylike unless I’m wearing something where sprawling might, you know, show the world my underwear. I prefer to keep that somewhat private. On top of which, that whole outside temperature thing is a problem. I’m almost always cold, and skirts just don’t keep me warm like pants do. So I could only wear them in the summer anyway, and even that is very limited, because my office in the summer is kept at a crispy 50 degrees or so — we keep blankets around to huddle under — so it’s not like that would be comfortable, either. And besides, wearing a skirt always seemed to me to require wearing nice shoes, and — let’s just say I was once asked, when picking out a dress for one of the few occasions I’ve actually found it necessary to dress up, if I was going to wear a pair of Pumas with it. Because everyone who’s met me accepts that — cute little black dress and grubby sneakers together — as a serious possibility. (I didn’t. Given the bleeding and blisters that ensued, I wished I had for much of the night.)

And hair. I have occasionally blowdried it out of necessity, because long hair takes a lot of time to dry, and walking around in the winter turns wet hair into icicles. But…doing something with it? I’ve always felt like a pony-tail was not very flattering on me, but I’ve never had any idea what else to even consider. Getting my hair out of my way has always been way more important to me than anything else.

But the thought festered. I want to look different. Not in a huge way. Like with personality, identity: that core is still there. But I’d like the non-essentials to reflect who I am now, at 25.

So there’s a lot to overcome here. And I’ve been making progress. A few months ago, I cut 15 inches off my hair. This was a huuuuuuuuge change. It was above my shoulders for the first time — uh, I need to get it trimmed, my hair grows ridiculously fast — and too short to pull back. I luckily had a very, very kind stylist who talked with me not just about how I wanted to look, but how to do it. Products to use — yikes. And how to use them. And how much time it takes to do it. So even though this is possibly the easiest-to-maintain hair possible, it involves putting in a little bit of time, a little bit of effort. A little bit is a lot more than I ever had before.

And I try and think about it when I shop. Trying to look at things that aren’t jeans, t-shirts, and hoodies. Or at least that are different from the ones I already own. And trying not to wince at spending money on these things because I’m still getting used to the idea that better clothes cost more money, and yeah, it’s okay for me to look at priorities and decide to spend more on what I wear.

Which is a whole other point. I have plenty of valid reasons to think about how I look and what I wear; to put more time and energy and cash into these things. It doesn’t mean I’m selling out who I am — like I said, who I am is a core that is still very much in tact — but I do have to remind myself, over and over, that caring about those things isn’t selling out to the patriarchy and beauty standards. Because while I’ve passively rejected a lot of those things, though laziness or nervousness or poorness or habit, I’ve also rejected them actively because that is a bullshit game I am not interested in playing. I’ve always been happy with my body and how I look. (I have no idea how that happened; if I did, I’d already have written the self-help book.) Some part of me does feel like caring and putting in effort is selling out; that if I’m happy with how I look, I shouldn’t want to change it; that if I spend money and time on it, I’m selling out. Which is just plain unfair.

Even ignoring the double standards and the whole fact that women are judged on how they look more harshly than men are, why shouldn’t I work to look how I want? What’s wrong with that? Because if this about me, and what I want, isn’t working or spending money or taking time sort of…just how that happens?

I don’t know. I don’t have a huge resolution to this entry. I know I’m happier now, with short hair (and acknowledging that I need to get it cut more than once every year or two), and I’m happier with fitted jacket instead of a hoodie in the fall. And that it’s an adjustment just to acknowledge that. But there it is. A personal essay.

Apparently, when I promise to blog more I stop blogging for months at a time; when I say I’m too busy to blog, I get out a record number of entries (for me) in a month. Go figure. But one of the cool things to come out of the Dr. Horrible discussion (at least for me) was a long list of things to blog about.

Here’s one thing that came up a lot in that discussion: Strong Women. Because I felt very much that Penny was a weak character, and many people responded that she was very strong in nontraditional ways; in other places I saw a lot of angry muttering that not every female character needs to kick ass, and that Penny would have been ruined if she’d kicked someone in the face, in response to people wishing that she had been stronger. And the thing is, all of the above are true, and non-contradictory.

The heart of the problem is this: there are two meanings of “strong” in play here, and that’s making the discussion a lot harder to have. In one of my very first entries, I actually wrote this in a footnote:

I call them dynamic female characters rather than strong female characters to avoid conflating the idea of a well fleshed out, well written female character with a female character who is physically strong.

Still true! Basically, what we’re looking at is two definitions: physically strong (or emotionally/mentally/etc), referring to a character trait; and strong characterization, referring to well-written, three-dimensional characters. Penny from Dr. Horrible was, I think, emotionally strong — she was quietly, optimistically trying to make a difference in the world, from what little we saw of her personality — but was weakly written because we saw so little of her personality in a story that could have given us much more. What motivated her to help the homeless? What was it about Hammer that enamored her to him? What would her idea of a happy ending have been? I’ve got no idea. I know she was nice, and pretty, and very well-acted. But her presence in the story wasn’t as a character, it was as a prop; she provided motivation and a point of contention between the men. Penny may have been a strong person, but she was a weak character.

I suspect that the fact that Dr. Horrible was by Joss Whedon made the distinction even less clear — after all, Buffy is an iconic character. She’s strong, in that she’s able to throw her enemies across the room; she’s strong, in that she has her own motivations, a developed personality, and she was able to grow and change through the course of even just the handful of episodes that I watched. So I was disappointed that Penny was “weak”: not that she didn’t have Buffy’s superpowers, but that she didn’t have Buffy’s agency.

This is why I prefer the word dynamic to strong when discussing the quality of presentation of female characters. But overall I don’t think it’s a very hard concept — but often the two meanings of strong are mistaken and it’s rarely a good thing. I’d much rather read a story about a dynamic woman who is rescued from danger by a man than read a story about a physically strong female caricature who always rescues herself. Either way can be done well, but to tack physical strength on to a dynamic hero who doesn’t need it — who’s dynamic in other ways — can be confusing and detrimental. So to illustrate this, I’m going to critique a movie I actually really enjoy (Ever After) behind the cut.
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(Note: the conclusion of this piece non-specifically references elements of Dr. Horrible and The Dark Knight that could be spoilery, but gets in to no detail.)

An anecdote: sophomore year of college, I took an American Literature class (ranging from Native American narratives through about 1900, so… pretty vast) as part of the requirement for my major. As we got to the later part of the course, we read works by Thoreau, Emerson, Melville, and Hawthorne. My professor made an off-handed comment about how the books didn’t actually sell that well when they were first published, and the authors didn’t quite get why. After all, their works were important and intelligent, and in fairness, history did indeed prove them right on that count.

“So what were people reading?” I asked. Evidently, the answer is dime novels: romances, mysteries, and general silliness. Pretty much the same thing they’d read since the products became available, and the same things they read now. So, my question was, why weren’t we reading or discussing what most people were interested in?

The professor didn’t really get why I asked.

Here’s my stance: I think that what people — most people, the majority of people — consume is of deep importance. Culture is an inescapable influence on everyone; for better or worse, it creates the status quo and maintains it. It defines normal and exerts a constant invisible pressure that pushes people towards that norm.

Culture changes with time, but it’s slow to do so, and it takes a lot of people putting a lot of effort in to change it. This happens on many fronts, the most obvious being political, but social change is also a huge part of culture. For example, President Truman signed the order to integrate the army in 1948 — the year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. It seems to me that there needs to be a cultural tipping point for change to happen, but it doesn’t just happen. People need to work to create that tipping point, to raise consciousness, to shove cultural norms in a new direction inch by inch. Nothing happens easily or automatically.

I am a feminist.* I believe that, while there have been many, many positive changes in this culture, that we’ve got miles to go. I look around and see a culture that dismisses women as just bodies, that feels entitled to tell women what their bodies should look like, and what they should and shouldn’t do with said bodies.

I’m a fairly huge consumer of media. And I get really excited on the rare occasion I find a female character I can really identify with, because they are just that: rare. And yeah, that has everything to do with the sexism of culture, which is reinforced in myriad ways. These ways are hard to see, especially if you have privilege. But they don’t have to be blatant, because there are millions of them, so they can be each be tiny still exert great pressure. That’s why I speak of things in terms of trends and tropes and cultural context: because each individual problem may be tiny, but then you look at how many examples of a problem there are, you actually start to see scope and the influence of the mostly-invisible culture.

So to go back to my anecdote: I think pop culture is hugely important. I think studying the past can reveal those fought-for and hard-won inches of change. When did dime novels first feature characters of color? How were they represented? When did the first character of color show up as the protagonist? How about queer characters? How about women in non-traditional female roles? If I had the time and the funding, I would loooooove to actually do a massive examination of dime novels.

And of course, if you look at current media, you can see a reflection of the current culture. In light of recent discussion, some examples: the problem isn’t that a couple of movies fail the Bechdel test, the problem is that so many do. The problem isn’t that one superhero’s girlfriend died horribly so he could angst, it’s that so many do. Look: the actual problem is a cultural normal doesn’t treat women as people, and those are two examples that I run across all the time when I look at this culture. And like so many others, they’re things you might not notice at first glance, because they seem small, or completely unimportant until you notice them stacking up.

So I think it’s important to pay attention to pop culture, and to analyze it. Think about it. Talk about it. Write about it. Put a viewpoint out there so that maybe someone else can run across it and have a lightbulb moment, realizing that there’s a problem and it takes consciousness-raising to fix it. Because people have to be aware that there’s a problem in order to shift the cultural norms; the cultural norms have to shift so people’s attitudes will change. It’s a cycle, and all pieces of it are important.

I’m not kidding myself about this blog. It doesn’t have much of a readership (my traffic the day of the Dr. Horrible post skyrocketed to, quite literally, a hundred times what it normally gets). But at least it’s a place for me to throw my thoughts out there, which is what I want. So I absolutely have a specific outlook when I analyze and review media. And I can’t turn it off. I can’t un-notice these things; I can’t not care about them. I can and often do enjoy things despite their shortcomings, but I have high standards and something like a female character getting fridged can really destroy my enjoyment. Sometimes it’s a slap in the face, because I’ve been enjoying a product, as happened with Dr. Horrible. Sometimes it’s what I expect and I’m braced for it, but not left unannoyed, as with The Dark Knight. In all cases, I’d have liked the end product much better if the sexism hadn’t been there.

* Please note: that does not mean that I am only a feminist.

So I watched Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. And I really enjoyed it! Until the finale.

First, in full disclosure: I’m not a Whedon fangirl. I was at most pretty much indifferent to Buffy and Angel; I watched them on occasion, but never got the big deal. I could see a lot of effort being put into making Buffy a dynamic female lead, which I appreciate, but I also spent a lot of time going, “…Really?” because there were areas where the show seemed to me to fail. But I’m sure those criticisms have been tackled by others, who are far more familiar with the show than I am, so that’s not what this entry is about. Also: I’ve never seen Firefly/Serenity. I kind of meant to get around to it, but never really had much of an urge, so it hasn’t happened. However, I’ve also always appreciated that, while he doesn’t do a perfect job, Whedon at least seems to always try, when it comes to female characters. He knows the world needs good ones, he does his best to put them out there, and he never comes across as a grandstanding douche who just wants recognition for writing good women even when he doesn’t do a good job, Aaron Sorkin.

Wait, got sidetracked.

Basically, what I’m saying is that I’m pretty indifferent to Whedon, but positively-inclined. And so the end of Dr. Horrible pisses me off hugely, because it really seems like he didn’t even try, and embraced everything he’s always stood against. More, with spoilers, below the cut.
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Okay, I will admit it right now: I love Mary Sues. I always have; I love both the stereotype original character inserted into fanfiction and the super-extraordinary fantasy cliché characters. I just can’t help it; I find them compelling and always have. I’m also guilty of having written…well, we’ll just say a few. (Not nearly as many as I’ve contemplated, however.) But for this, I’m concentrating on the original meaning of the phrase, a perfect authorial-insert character into fanfiction.

So yes: I love them.

The major drawback to the characters include that they’re often very, very poorly written, and they rarely mesh with the actual ‘canon’ characters they’re interacting with. These are very fair criticisms, and I tend to avoid them by, well, avoiding reading badly written stories. Because the characters can work, when people get a better handle on writing and characterizations; some will probably always be crappy, but they don’t have to be. The poor writing, I think, is often the sign of a young or inexperienced writer (two traits which can, but don’t always, go hand in hand). I’m concentrating mostly on the idea of young writers — particularly girls — here, when I say that I love Mary Sues, as a very concept.

Basically, it goes like this. There are two major archetypes of Mary Sues. The first, the one I’m more familiar with (as it appeals more to me) is some kind of Tough Girl; this is a character who can beat up anyone, tell anyone off, and is smart and intimidating. Depending on what the writer thinks is super cool, she may be a punk, goth, tomboy, or…well, almost anything else. The important thing is that when she walks into the story, she owns it: the other characters’ actions all revolve around her, either loving or hating her*.

The second major archetype are the more traditionally feminine characters; they’re more likely to be the perky cheerleader types. They’re charming and beautiful, and it almost goes without saying that all canon characters instantly fall in love with them. They’re also often martyrs or saviors; their sheer goodness protects the other characters, or they tragically sacrifice themselves to save everyone.

Of course, the Mary Sue phenomenon isn’t limited to these two archetypes, and individual Mary Sues don’t always fit neatly into one or the other. Other things they are nearly guaranteed to have in common: Mary Sue is close to always related to or dating a canon character. And Mary Sues are also always, in some way (or many ways) valued by the canon characters. In fact, that value is often automatic; one of the frequent complaints against Mary Sues are the they don’t earn their place in a Scooby gang, they just show up and are there. Once again, bad writing.

But here’s why I love it: this is a society which is still struggling greatly to overcome sexism. It’s one where girls are given a social message almost from birth, which tells them who to be and how to act. It’s also a culture where most of the heroes are male; even as female roles and characters are becoming more common (though I’ve written about that before), it remains true that it’s harder to find female characters that girls want to, and easily can, identify with. But with Mary Sue, you’ve got girls saying, “This is me, as I know I could be.”

That’s powerful.

It peels back layers. For me, it was this: I always wanted to dye my hair blue. But in high school, I never worked up the bravery. I was a nice, bookwormish, quiet girl; that wasn’t the sort of thing I was supposed to do. My boyfriend definitely didn’t want me to, so I never did. When I got to college, that feeling hadn’t really gone away, though I knew the liberal arts atmosphere would have been more accepting of it. After all, it was a big choice to make; it would have affected how I looked (which is, according to culture, of utmost importance for a girl). And my wardrobe didn’t fit with blue hair! My wardrobe was for a mild mannered writer girl, not someone brave enough to dye her hair bright blue and declare, in effect, “Look at me!” So I still never did. And now I’m allegedly an adult, with an office job, which requires me to look somewhat professional. Needless to say, blue hair wouldn’t really work. So I never did it, and now I don’t think I ever will. But my Mary Sues (and oh, do I have tons of them in my head) inevitably have bright blue hair, and it never looks silly on them, and everyone thinks it’s cool.

But that’s me, and that’s a pretty mild case.

It seems to me that in saying, “This is me, as I know I could be,” the girls who write these characters are sending another message. They’re saying, “I’m worthy of being the main character, I’m a person with agency, I’m someone lovable and respected. And if you don’t love and respect me, you’re wrong.” So in a culture that sends the message that it’s better for girls to be quiet and pretty and leave being the main character up to a boy, it’s pretty awesome that there are hundreds of thousands of stories where girls stand up and say, “No, it’s all about me.” They cast themselves in the spotlight, usurping the role of the main character, imaging the former male lead as their love interest. Whether the character is doing away with a villain, snapping off a sarcastic quip in a high school lunch room, or dying nobly to save everyone else, the writer is still creating a world that revolves around her; a world where she is, without question, worthy.

Of course it’s wish fulfillment, and it rarely leads to a well told story. But I don’t mind that so much: I’m just glad that somewhere, in their heads, on paper, or on the internet, girls are making connections to stories that often otherwise exclude them, and rewriting the narrative to include themselves. That’s just all kinds of awesome. And besides, if they’re still inexperienced writers, experimenting and learning, then who knows? These Mary Sue characters might someday transform, as the writer gains skills. They might just go from wish fulfillment characters in someone else’s world to dynamic characters in the writer’s own world. Everyone starts somewhere, starting by saying, “I want an awesome girl who reminds me of me to be the main character,” is as good a place as any — and better than most.

I don’t pretend that this is the only reason people write Mary Sues, that only girls write them, or that girls are intentionally writing Mary Sues as backlash to a culture that disenfranchises them. If women in fiction were suddenly to have equal footing with men, I don’t think that Mary Sues would die out. After all, sometimes we just really want to hang out with the cool kids we like to see stories about, even when the story is perfectly well told and there is no need to ‘fix’ it. The idea of being able to interact with the fictional characters we love is powerful. But as culture stands right now, I do think it’s awesome to see people who are underrepresented making space for themselves.

Incidentally, this is a really interesting look at Mary Sues as a tool for teaching.

*I suspect the breakdown goes something like this: if the author likes the character, the character loves Mary Sue; if the author dislikes the character, the character is instant enemies with Mary Sue. Unless, of course, they’re enemies who end up BFF/romantically involved in the end…