yagameoftomes:
Recently – awesomely – there’s been a move away...
Recently – awesomely – there’s been a move away from the whole damsel in distress thing. No longer does Peach only exist for Mario to rescue, or Leia hang around in the Death Star because Obi Wan Kenobi is her only hope. Fantasy movies and books tend to have at least one female character, and she’s not always just there to get in trouble and be rescued.
But because we can’t have nice things, we’ve got a new trope instead. The Totally Kickass Strong Female Character TM. And what a badass she is. She has a sassy comeback for every occasion! She’s not like those other girls, all wimpy and girly and superficial. She’s 100% sexy, 100% fearless, 100% unfazed by everything around her. She doesn’t need no man, at least until her true love shows up and shows her what she’s missing! Sure, sometimes she looks like she might be getting a little chilly, but her lack of sensitivity to things like air temperature and armor requirements is one of the things that’s so badass about her.
Assassins are awesome. Pirate queens and sword-masters are AWESOME. But they need depth, including things like weaknesses and fears and weird character quirks and goals of their own. And “fighting badass” isn’t all that female characters should get to be. When we’re presented with shallow sexy assassin after shallow sexy assassin, it’s like the story is saying, “hey, look, no! We’re totally feminist! Look how NOT a damsel this female character is!”, while STILL using female characters as wish-fulfilment for male viewers/readers. In fact, sometimes this trope is worse than the damsel, because it pretends to be empowered, while suggesting that anything girly is bad and weak, but that some female characters can transcend their female-ness by being purely sexy, purely fearless, purely quippy badasses instead. And in the end, these anti-damsels often still need to be saved by the hero so they can become his true love.
The whole male gaze thing isn’t really a problem in YA (yay!), but the genre does have a lot of badasses. Often, these characters are interesting, compelling and well-developed – certainly more so than many seen in the realm of adult fantasy novels – and I love the Celaena Sardothiens of the book world. But we need MORE too.
Give me damsels who AREN’T in distress. Give me silver-tongued diplomats who talk themselves out of trouble, and quick-witted schemers who play the games of court. Give me naïve dreamers and stubborn pragmatists and reclusive academics who never have a clue what’s going on. Female characters who control the war room and female characters who are staunch pacifists, no matter the situation or cost. Give me princesses who fight for power in worlds where their voices are dismissed, and queens corrupted by the absolute control they possess. Give me dragon whisperers and sorcerers and mouse-like farmgirls suddenly burdened with saving the world. Give me girls who are friends and enemies and grudging allies, who have professional respect for one another, or are attracted to one another, or make one another totally ragey. Give me people who happen to be female. And then give them stories worthy of their awesomeness.
~ Rhiannon (rhiannonbooks.tumblr.com)
