"Sherlock Holmes gets to be brilliant, solitary,
abrasive, Bohemian, whimsical, brave, sad, manipulative, neurotic, vain,
untidy, fastidious, artistic, courteous, rude, a polymath genius. Female
characters get to be Strong." A Quote that I can't find who said it.
To all feminist (males and females), I have a question. Am I
a bad feminist for NOT liking strong females? Now before you answer that, by
strong, I mean females who are just strong and nothing else. How about hating
females who are just smart? Nice? Why do most females characters in mainstream
media just have to a single trait that has to make us relate to them? Most of
the females I related to, are seen as weak by other women because of minor
flaws in them, like they put other before their own needs, being kind, old fashion
and for ending up with a man. And to be
honest, females, the females that I look up to sadly aren’t really written by
women (but that is changing with more females learning that people don’t like
one trait females). In fact, everyone who write or draw females, should read
this and follow it,
“Screw writing “strong” women. Write interesting women.
Write well-rounded women. Write complicated women. Write a woman who kicks ass,
write a woman who cowers in a corner. Write a woman who’s desperate for a
husband. Write a woman who doesn’t need a man. Write women who cry, women who
rant, women who are shy, women who don’t take no shit, women who need
validation and women who don’t care what anybody thinks. THEY ARE ALL OKAY, and
all those things could exist in THE SAME WOMAN. Women shouldn’t be valued because
we are strong, or kick-ass, but because we are people. So don’t focus on
writing characters who are strong. Write characters who are people.”
— Lori, on tumblr, answering a writing question in her ask
box.
dude. yes.
ReplyDeleteI've always thought Princess Anna was an especially good example of a "strong" female character. She's no action hero, she's very feminine, and she does have her faults, but she's a hero in her own unique way.
ReplyDeleteAs a guy who designs characters, it's just harder to design females beyond tried and true stereotypes. That may be partly because of the lack of good examples I've seen. Being a girl is sometimes treated like a personality type itself. But I think it's mostly that we know women think differently than we do and we have difficulty figuring out how to imitate that difference while still allowing for a broad range of personality types. So we tend to write a lot of female stereotypes, most of which are either very feminine or very feminist.
Hermione is one of the female characters that I look up to. She is the main one actually..
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