why do i use so many colons omg

[elapses]

book_babe emailed me this article this morning ('A Plague of Strong Female Characters: Tough, Cold, Terse, Taciturn and Prone to Not Saying Goodbye When They Hang Up the Phone'), saying she figured I would appreciate it. Um, understatement! It is a fantastic read, an article about the conundrum of the "strong" female character which basically states how I have been feeling about that whole thing forever much more eloquently stated. Here is a v. long excerpt, but really you should read the whole thing:

“Strong women characters” are a canard. They refer to the old-fashioned “strong, silent type,” a type that tolerates very little blubbering, dithering, neuroticism, anxiety, melancholy or any other character flaw or weakness that makes a character unpredictable and human.

The absurdity of the strong-female-character expectation becomes apparent if you reverse it: Not only does calling for “strong male characters” sound ridiculous and kind of reactionary, but who really wants to watch them? They sound boring. In fact, traditional “strong male characters” have been almost entirely abandoned in favor of male characters who are blubbery, dithering, neurotic, anxious, melancholic or otherwise “weak,” because this weakness is precisely what makes characters interesting, relatable and funny.

Just to give an idea how entrenched, pervasive and distorting this idea can be: A few weeks back, I was in the car listening to Elvis Mitchell interview Paul Feig, the director of “Bridesmaids.” Mitchell remarked that “Bridesmaids” seemed an unlikely project for Feig to have taken on. Feig replied that he had wanted to do a project for “strong women characters” for a while and pointed out that, after all, “Freaks and Geeks” was Lindsay’s — a teenage girl’s — story.

Funny, Mitchell remarked, Kristen Wiig’s character in the movie didn’t exactly strike him as particularly strong — she actually seemed like kind of a mess. Feig conceded that, yes, she was kind of a mess, but it was O.K., because they had made sure to establish in two scenes that, before she was temporarily derailed by the recession, she was a talented and successful business owner and would soon be back on top.

I don’t really believe that Feig, whose movie is the first in a while to feature women who sound a lot like women, thinks that the reason that we feel empathy and not contempt for Wiig’s delightfully, deliriously, awesomely messed-up and pathetic character is because she used to own a bakery. I think he meant it in the other sense, in the sense that he meant to do a story told strongly from a woman’s point of view. Either that or what happened was that he felt himself pulled into a discussion that’s been so distorted by this pervasive and stifling either/or fallacy that confronting it actually makes people get nervous and say weird things. I’m sure he’s perfectly aware that the movie has struck a nerve because its female characters are such a jumble of flaws and contradictions. Wiig’s not likeable despite the fact that she never gets her brake lights fixed and thoughtlessly hurts someone even as she herself is experiencing the pain of being hurt; or despite the fact that she’s jealous of her best friend’s happiness or of her best friend’s new best friend’s money and apparent perfection; or that she lingers in a destructive relationship with a guy she knows is treating her like dirt; or that, unlike the protagonists of the average romantic comedy aimed at women, she is forced to live with weirdos, who treat her miserably, and she doesn’t live in an adorable downtown loft complete with a pale blue refrigerator that retails for $2,000. (Nice touch, “Something Borrowed.”) We don’t relate to her despite the fact that she is weak, we relate to her because she is weak.

If you will indulge me while I talk about myself: I was my parents' first child, and as two young, liberal, Austin hippie-types in the very late 80s/early 90s, they had all kinds of lofty ideas about how I would be raised. They prepared for me with gender-neutral toys like Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys and large, ambiguous blocks. They vowed never to buy me barbies and anything else that might expose me to beauty standards. My television and movie choices were heavily screened. When I was two, my dad would take me to the park to watch the girls play soccer, in hopes that I would imprint on them or something and turn into a soccer star.

I didn't, though. In fact I aggressively pursued every stereotype of femininity: as soon as I was old enough to have a say in what I wore, pants were out. Dresses and skirts only, and the "spinnier" they were the more worthy of attention they were. I took, at various points in my childhood, ballet, violin, piano, figure skating, and gymnastics, and did my best to avoid anything "sporty". I only wanted to watch movies about princesses and balls. I had zero interest in socializing with boys, other than a brief "romance" with a boy named Chance when I was three. I decided I wanted barbies, so my grandparents bought them for me (actually though my dad did too, just once: my fifth birthday party, he went against all his principles and bought me the thing I wanted most: Happy Birthday barbie).

I'm 21 now, but I am honestly not that far from the four-year-old that I was. My favorite way to broach small talk is "I love your shoes!" I like chick flicks so much more than I like action movies, 98% of the time. All of my truly strong friendships have been with other women. My favorite topic of conversation is gossip. My wardrobe is so aggressively skirt-y that I tend to own one pair of non-sweat-or-pajama pants at a time (my identity in high school was "that weird girl who always wears dresses and heels"). I suppose that there are still some ways in which I differ from the absolute feminine stereotype: I'm not particularly overemotional, I was good at science and math, and I tend to be a bit of a commitment-phobe. But I am, and have always been, like 95% there. Girliest of girly girls, what can I say. And it is dumb but I feel a sort of automatic connection to other girls: I mean, I don't know, however different we are, we probably went through the same insecure teenage years. There are stupid shallow girly things I can (usually) say to them that I can't say to boys: and I need that sometimes, I mean both the last text and the last email I sent out were related to me painting my nails. (On that note I can specifically remember the last four conversations I had with boys my age because I always have to reach for topics, and they were: physics vs biology, indie music [which is actually hard with boys sometimes because they never want to talk about poppy british indie, just like the boring rough stuff], MBTI typing/birth order psychology, and Star Trek. BUT LET'S BE REAL I EVEN WATCH STAR TREK THE 'GIRLY' WAY, cannot be tamed). There's a whole conversation to be had about how "girly" stuff is sociologically coded as "bad"/trivial and "boy" stuff that is just as trivial is coded as worthy/superior, and how so many girls pat themselves on the back for not being into "stupid" girl stuff, and how even smart, intelligent, self-identified feminists will walk into a bar and comment on how many "sorostitues" are out tonight, or see a pack of 15-year-olds shopping together and say "they look annoying". But no, that article was about fictional women, so let's bring it back to that.

The point is that I have always had this general tendency to gravitate towards women, in life and also in fiction. When I was little I liked to read books about girls, like Anne Shirley and Alanna of Trebond and various members of the Babysitters' club. And when I got into tv it was much the same: sometimes I was fond of boys, but I was always fondest of fellow females. (I think it is in everyone's nature, especially when they are younger, to want to see characters that are like them in fiction: whether that means physically or emotionally or situationally, and it's hard to find "people like me" who are male. Which doesn't mean I like characters only because I identify with them: a lot of my favorites are not like me at all. I just, you know, it's there.) Which ends up meaning I spend a lot of my internet time mad at the universe because no one ever wants to talk about the things I want to talk about. And in a lot of ways the newish-but-not-really-anymore wave of fandom feminism/general political correctness has helped because people are at least aware that girls should be paid attention to too, but a lot of times it's also just. Awkward, I don't know. Because people have "lady shows" and they feel obligated to like "lady characters" and also I feel like when I express frustrations (like WHY DO PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT THE GOOD WIFE ONLY TALK ABOUT CARY) I sound snotty or something? It's like this weird attitude that liking girl characters makes us better people or something weird like that. I don't know. Sometimes I have a hard time with my own reactions, because there is a lot I will excuse from female characters that I won't from male characters (see: my reaction to manpain vs my reaction to ladypain), and that is just the way I am, and is it fair to judge l if other people are the same way but then opposite? Okay with manpain, not okay with ladypain? Because if it is then it's like I'm asserting I'm a better person just because of the way I intrinsically am. And I don't think I am. It's just hard to figure out where everything fits, because there's something awkward about everyone forcing themselves to pay attention to characters because they are girls or because they are characters of color, but at the same time we DO need to do that, we do all need to learn to check our privilege and wonder about the ways society shapes the way we view gender and the way we view race. But the fact is there are people out there who will go on about their favorite female characters when they want to make a specific point about what great feminists they are (but meanwhile all the omgsqueeing is still about boys, LIKE JUST OWN WHAT YOU ACTUALLY LIKE), and other people who will defensively assert that they like boys because women "just aren't written well". And sometimes they aren't! And that needs to be discussed of course, but the point is that, in life and in fandom and everything, women are held up to these weird imaginary standards that men aren't held up to. Even self-purported fandom feminists will do it: use pseudo-academic language to tear down a female character because she doesn't measure up to their standard of what a "feminist character" should be.

Is that really what we want? All the women in fiction to be stoic scientists who know how to work a gun and don't ever want children who are supernaturally gorgeous but don't ever embody feminine traits outside of their appearance? Because sometimes I totally love that. But I also wish we were ready to broach insecurity and motherhood and sexual confusion and fear of growing up and body image and all all the weird little things that make us flawed. But instead it's like we just want to gloss over the parts of these hbic-y or whatever female characters that are flawed and interesting and different, and just talk about how "flawless" they are all the time. Sometimes "strong female character" really just feels like a stupid buzzword meant to tell us which girls are and aren't worthy of our time. And then there's the diversion into how we are definining "strong", because it is basically used to mean one of three possible things: a) a female character who is physically strong/masculine, b) a female character who has strength of mind/character, c) a well-written female character, and no one ever specifies what they mean. Kara Thrace may be a and c, but she is a MESS, and River Tam is a but is she b and c? WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN WE TALK ABOUT THEM, OR ANYONE THAT WAY?

Anyway: I think we spend too much time talking about who qualifies for a and b when we should really be asking for c. And in that way (AND EVERY WAY) I think that the NYT article got it perfectly right.



God I talk a lot, AND DO I EVEN SAY ANYTHING??!?! Rarely.

Also I feel like I should note that I cannibalized some/a lot of this post from an email I sent thecolorbetween a couple of months ago, HI CLAIRE

Comments

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

I think fandom will always have issues because it is half literature (which is half philosophy, half theology, half poetry) and half play. I don't want to fight off any pro-fic people - it's my more or less steady opinion at this point, after ten years in fandom, and being on the verge of thinking of fic as As Legitimate As Anything in the past but getting past that, so, I'm just saying that to bracket what I will say next, which is:

Liking characters the way we do in fandom is weird, right? For me, anyway, you end up identifying more with a character, entering into that character more, than you might in, say, James Agee's "A Death In the Family." I'm picking that at random because I know there is no fandom for "A Death in the Family." So it takes something a little more than "interesting" or "well-written" to give birth to a fandom. But the communal aspect is also inflammatory. Somebody else liking a character can make you see things about the character, enter into him/her more, or just chase after their experience and make it your own by liking that character.

That tangled mess is really why I've never gotten into dealing with the race/gender discussions about characters in fandom (other than commenting on how the show creators might treat those issues) because, yes, we can track statistical problems or focus on certain kinds of explanations that we think are disingenuous or just make excuses, but... we're playing. There has to be something free when we play. I don't mean "you are free to go on pretending you hate female characters because they are X and Y", but, if it's all pre-planned in accordance with political ends and social consciousness, it's not really what it was, anymore. You can teach kids on the playground about what is off-limits, the parameters of civility, but you can't write their lines for them; there has to be something unthinking, investing, PLAYful about it. They have to indulge the secondary reality for long enough to get the satisfaction from it.

So uh, that's a ton of blathering about just one of the things you mentioned in this post.

I am not "girly" and have trouble even interacting with basic girly things - but for me it's more about not being trivial. I have buckets of scorn for trivial male activities, as well. I'm basically the snob everybody hates. *g* No, that's not true, there are exceptions. I like baseball, inside jokes, knowing lots of details about a given thing... okay, my attempt to come up with things has ended.

But I love Liz Lemon! Her whole life is sort of trivial. Yay Liz!

[elapses.livejournal.com]

You can teach kids on the playground about what is off-limits, the parameters of civility, but you can't write their lines for them; there has to be something unthinking, investing, PLAYful about it. They have to indulge the secondary reality for long enough to get the satisfaction from it.
Oh hmm, I really like your take on this! Because you are so right about the underlying aspect of play, and that's where I think the upsprig of social consciouness in fandom goes wrong, because it starts to dictate which characters we should love and like and also at times shames people for not following that pattern, but the fact is liking someone to the degree that we in fandom tend to cannot be predicted or planned or changed. And when you're so busy trying to see things the "right" way it can definitely strip some of the enjoyment out of it. Ultimately I'm still glad it happened because think it's important that fandom became more aware of these things: fandom can be a pretty good example of the troubling way a lot of women look at/think of other women, but. Definitely a double-edged sword.

Hahah! Baseball/sports in general are what I was thinking of specifically when I mentioned male trivial things, but I didn't want to say it because I feel like because I'm not particularly interested in it it would come off as a slight to those who are: but no, I like that it's trivial, I think it's pretty healthy to like some trivial things as long as you can balance your life out with non-triviality. What bothers me is the perception of male-coded trivial things as less "silly" than female-coded ones. That is the perfect description of Liz Lemon though, love it.