Wish You Weren’t Here: Stereotypes in Fiction
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Have you ever started reading a book and thought to yourself, “I know this character from somewhere else.” The reason might be because stereotypes exist in spades throughout fiction of all genres. The worst of the worst seem to occur in threes. Here are the stereotypical females, males, teenagers and children.
Just a word about where they come from: history. And since historical writing was dominated by men, most stereotypes are how men perceived (and to some degree still do perceive) themselves, the people in their lives and even people they didn’t know well or at all. Of course, that means they’re not very complex or even accurate but they persist in writing today. They’re best to be avoided unless you can make them unbelievably original.
Female
Somewhat unsurprisingly, all of the three main female stereotypes originated in the Bible.
Mother – The Ultimate Support
It shouldn’t come as any great shock that mothers are one of the biggest female stereotypes. After all, until quite recently, there weren’t many other options for socially acceptable life goals for women (even in fiction). Still now, there is an expectation that every woman will (and should want to) be a mother (barring infertility).
The mother stereotype goes all the way back to Eve, an instinctive mother who bore and raised many children without having any examples to guide her in her motherhood (what a saint).
Of course, mothers do exist and it’s not unrealistic that a female character of a certain age might be a mother. But she won’t only be a mother and it’s not enough for her motherhood to be her defining characteristic. It’s everything else that she is in conjunction with being a mother than helps her escape the clutches of stereotypicality.
Virgin – The Ultimate Sport
Before a woman can become a mother, she must first be a virgin. Motherhood is a pure calling and therefore virgins are the ones who answer that call. Total bollocks, of course. But what better way to convince women that sex is evil unless it is for the purpose of procreation?
The virgin stereotype, while probably existing long before the New Testament, was really crystallised in Mary, mother of Jesus. Wow, would you look at that, two stereotypes in one! Mother and virgin in one perfect woman.
Nowadays, virginity is code for innocence and wholesomeness and a well-worn trope in romance fiction – women who are saving themselves for “the one”. It’s horribly unrealistic, especially in light of a figure that says only three percent of women go on to marry the first man they sleep with (there wasn’t a citation so I can’t verify it but anecdotally it sounds about right). As with mothers, virgins do exist but there are very few of them who are solely defined by it.
Whore – The Ultimate Slut
If you’re not a virgin or a married mother, then that only leaves one other alternative: the whore. Spat on by men, shunned by other women, the whore does not occupy an envied place in history or in literature. Even now, slut-shaming (attempting to humiliate women who do not fall into the first two stereotype categories) is a popular pastime for many.
The Biblical example, at least for the uninformed, is Mary Magdalene. She was one of the unofficial disciples of Jesus and is often erroneously confused with an unnamed “sinful woman” (presumably a prostitute or promiscuous) who anoints the feet of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Still, mud sticks, just like in real life.
The whore may also be known as a seductress or a femme fatale and even though she has to be having sex with someone, it’s interesting to note that there is no equivalent stereotype – heck, there’s no equivalently disdainful term – for a man who enjoys sex with multiple partners.
Male
It’s no coincidence that the three main male stereotypes are all positive, even the marginally negative one.
Brave – Big Heart
Ah, the traditional hero. He’s gorgeous, he’s honourable, he’s adaptable, he’s always got someone to save. James Bond, Jack Reacher, Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, Batman. While others cower in the corner in the face of danger, he’s busy saving the day. He has no concern for his own safety and he’ll sacrifice himself if he has to but he’d rather live to have the tale of his heroic deeds told and to live off the glory for years to come.
The truly stereotypical brave hero will have military, martial arts or law enforcement training because physical strength and skill are generally how they defeat the villains. He might be brave but he’s also a bit violent and if we look a bit closer, he likely relishes the biff. Still, it’s all a means to an end. And when the violence is over, he’ll sweep a girl off her feet and they’ll live happily ever after until the next time he feels the needs to save someone.
Billionaire – Big Brain
If a man isn’t making oodles of money, then he’s just not worth writing about (apparently). After all, you have to be pretty cluey to make a fortune, right? (Or maybe you just need to be part of an already wealthy family that gives you a great starting point.)
Christian Grey of Fifty Shades fame is the most well-known recent fictional billionaire. Yeah, he’s a bit of a weirdo (more than a bit) but he’s rich so there are certain things Anastasia Steele is willing to put up with, things she never even contemplated. I haven’t read the books (apart from laughingly flicking through a few pages of someone else’s copy in the work lunch room one day) and I’ve only seen the first movie adaptation but I’m still a bit baffled about why he’s such a sought after bachelor. Oh, wait, I’m forgetting the money.
The thing about real-life billionaires is that most of them are workaholics who have very little time for anything not business related, certainly not extended sessions in red rooms or lengthy pursuits of women who don’t instantly accept their advances. A realistic account of a billionaire would actually be someone who is rarely seen by friends, family and love interests but the story demands someone who’s around a little more often, so the stereotype doesn’t let reality get in the way. No bad stereotype does.
Bad Boy – Big Dick
Forgive my crudeness but the recently created phrase “big dick energy” really sums up what it is to be a bad boy. He’s sexual, he’s only just on the right side of the law, there’s likely a leather jacket and a motorcycle thrown into the mix somewhere, and he’s not the kind of man you take home to meet your mother. If you do, he’s likely to seduce her as well.
The bad boy in fiction is such an appealing character – for a good time, not a long time – because bad boys in real life tend to be awful. The reality of bad boys is usually having to escape from the law, then escape from debt collectors, then escape from him when the domestic violence that was always bubbling just below the surface finally emerges. Thank God for fiction.
If you can get brave, billionaire and bad boy into one character, you’ve got just about every shorter romance fiction hero ever written and a likely bestseller (but critical failure) on your hands.
Teenager
Teenage stereotypes are a much more recent phenomenon (because previously there were children and adults and no real acknowledgement of the precarious years in between) and have mostly developed as a result of people who aren’t teenagers anymore trying to remember what it was like. These three main stereotypes are also distinctly American. While other countries may have similar categories, they will likely be given different labels.
Jock – Good at Sports
In the stereotype world, almost any problem a teenage boy has can be solved by being good at sports. Because being good at sports leads to scholarships at university, then to professional sports and finally to multimillion dollar yearly earnings.
The jock is a derivative of the brave man, overcoming insurmountable odds with the support of a good woman (more accurately described as winning the game and getting the girl). It’s been done to death. And unlike the mother stereotype, which can be justified by pointing to all the women with children out there, jocks like this are actually few and far between. Yes, plenty of people play sport but very few are good enough to make it into the upper echelons. Reality rarely gets in the way of a bad stereotype.
Nerd – Good at School
The nerd is the diametric opposite of the jock. He’s not good-looking (or if he is, he does everything he can to disguise it). He doesn’t have any girls lusting after him. He’s hopeless at sports. In fact, most of the jocks and cheerleaders don’t even know he exists and if they do, he’s their punching bag. But he’s got one thing going for him: he’s smart as smart can be.
He’s top of the class, he’s the partner everyone wants for school projects so they can ditch him to do all the work and still get an A, he’s the guy in the small town who will leave for an Ivy League university and never come back.
A stereotypical nerd often comes good in the end, losing a pimply complexion and whatever it is that seems to repel girls during the teenage years to become wealthy and attractive thanks to a genius invention or a booming business. Yawn.
Cheerleader – Good at Sex
The cheerleader is a derivative of the whore with one exception; she is the devoted girlfriend of the jock and spends all of her time motivating, supporting and pleasuring him and him alone. She has no goals of her own that don’t revolve around him and all things going well, she will transition smoothly into the mother stereotype.
Snore.
Mother, virgin, whore, cheerleader – the pattern here is pretty clear. All the female stereotypes, even the teenage version, are defined by their relationships with men. Mother, a vessel for the children of a man. Virgin, a vessel for the sexual goal of a man. Whore, a used vessel for the sexual goals of many men. Cheerleader, a vessel for the ego of a soon-to-be-man. It truly would be an awful world if this were all women could be.
Child
Child stereotypes also suffer from primarily being written by people who aren’t children. Even worse, they suffer from being secondary and often incidental characters, people no one would really care about from a fictional perspective if something terrible wasn’t happening to them or they weren’t doing something terrible to someone else.
Victim – Possibly Dead
The child victim is simply a chess piece on a very large board, bringing out the maternal and paternal instincts of whoever is trying to either save them or avenge them. They’re not old enough to have developed into complex characters themselves yet (or maybe it’s just that the writer isn’t prepared to devote that much time into developing them into complex characters because it’s only the idea of them that appears prominently, not the actuality) so their importance is defined entirely by their relationships with their parents/guardians/saviours.
They’re also a shortcut to imbuing adult characters with good traits. Cares about children? He or she must be a good guy or girl.
Orphan – Parents Are Dead
Aww, so sad, mummy and daddy are dead. What better way to garner sympathy from a reader? Cue tiny violins. There’s also their corresponding subconscious fear of abandonment to really ramp up the pity party. And just to make it super confusing, they alternate between being ridiculously clingy and determinedly independent.
The percentage of orphans in fiction is enormous compared to the ratios of them in the real world. And while, yes, just like all the other stereotypes, they do exist, rarely do any of them end up living in the lap of luxury with Daddy Warbucks. Most likely, they will end up living with extended family or going into the foster system and contending with many of the same issues that children with one or both their parents still around do.
Brat – Wish You Were Dead
And finally, there’s the child character that everyone wishes would just go away because of how annoying they are. You know the old saying that children should be seen and not heard? These characters are why. Just think Veruca Salt saying, “I want a golden ticket!” and “I want an Oompa Loompa!” and “I want a golden goose!”
The truth is that children generally only behave this way because they have parents who let them get away with it or who have never taught them to have compassion for others. Should we blame the kids or their parents? Or should we blame the writers who create them, usually only for dramatic tension?
*****
Stereotypes will never go away completely. They’re too deeply ingrained and also plenty useful as starting points for writers. But if you use them, make sure they don’t stay stereotypes for long. Your readers will thank you for it.
