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distaff counterparts
Jan. 30th, 2010 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mustinvestigateThere's a new Nostalgia Chick up this morning called The Smurfette Principle, which has had the husband and me debating modern token chicks and chickification. He's hopeful that the mass brain-dump that is the internet, particularly youtube and the like, is establishing a lot more variety as the 'default' of both demographic groups and just 'human.' I'm a bit less hopeful, as it seems those who really want attention (and get the tap to join the ‘legitimate’ media family) usually revert to shrill, retrograde stereotypes of whatever demographic they fit.
Or, actually, I’m not as grim as all that. Like, I have fanatical love for the canon Sally and Laurie, because they’re legitimate crimefighters, entertaining, attractive in a sort of big-strong-manly-faced way, and there’s the whole meta where what limits or ruins their lives is the different limiting ruining definitions of ‘woman’ their two generations face. And I don’t care that probably wasn’t so much what was intended as just how two male writers might unthinkingly box up two female characters. (See several previous tealdeer natterings on the subject.)
Then there’s the fanon Jupiter/Juspeczyks, which is generally a whole different and even more awesome thing. Especially when I think back to what was available when I first discovered fanfic as a young ‘un (mostly on geocities and surrounded by animated gifs) – and the Harlequin treatments commonly given to Scully or Buffy or Dr Crusher in order to make them fit fannish plots that didn’t have to get approval of executives and advertisers…yeah. I’m actually getting quite hopeful for the future of fictional women, if these are our wish-fulfilment versions.
Or, actually, I’m not as grim as all that. Like, I have fanatical love for the canon Sally and Laurie, because they’re legitimate crimefighters, entertaining, attractive in a sort of big-strong-manly-faced way, and there’s the whole meta where what limits or ruins their lives is the different limiting ruining definitions of ‘woman’ their two generations face. And I don’t care that probably wasn’t so much what was intended as just how two male writers might unthinkingly box up two female characters. (See several previous tealdeer natterings on the subject.)
Then there’s the fanon Jupiter/Juspeczyks, which is generally a whole different and even more awesome thing. Especially when I think back to what was available when I first discovered fanfic as a young ‘un (mostly on geocities and surrounded by animated gifs) – and the Harlequin treatments commonly given to Scully or Buffy or Dr Crusher in order to make them fit fannish plots that didn’t have to get approval of executives and advertisers…yeah. I’m actually getting quite hopeful for the future of fictional women, if these are our wish-fulfilment versions.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-31 12:02 pm (UTC)Back in my other life when I was in a writing program, nearly all of my guy friends in it would complain to me that it was impossible to 'write women' and would I tell them, since they were stretching so far as to attempt to write a female protagonist, would I tell them what 'a woman' would do/say? Because male characters are individuals, but female characters, like females themselves, all come from a single template.
And these (mostly) weren't bad fellas, and they'd all (mostly) had contact and even relationships with actual individual women...
I dunno. I am part of the problem, because I totally criticise female characters that their creators are trying to do something different with more harshly than male or stereotypical female characters - you should hear my many rants on Buffy. Or not, actually :) I just get angry that, no matter how the character is set up, there's always these sort of 'checkpoints' that establish that underneath the individuality, she's really a 'woman' (ie loves uncomfortable shoes and hates not looking pretty and makes unreasonable demands on men who just want to get along with her), so it's ok. She's still the deviation from the norm no person could expect to understand or identify with.
One way I have seen to draw a gender-neutral audience to a female main, which is sort of distasteful if not part of the original idea, is overt visual sexuality - the Lara Croft / Xena Warrior Princess mold. Which...eh. I'm not saying the sexless polar alternative is better, but to me this just falls back into the Woman = Must Emphasise Boobs At All Time Or Cease To Exist trope referenced above.
My ideal in this sense would be the female protaginist option in Fallout 3, where you can choose to run around in cute Raider armor, but when you get serious about protection, you grab the gender-neutral power armor.
Since this comment is flying all over the place, I'm just going to stop now and find some coffee :)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-31 06:13 pm (UTC)(Now I'm sad thinking of how many women on TV fall into those three categories exactly! Sigh.)
Actually I would love to hear your rants on Buffy! Hearing people give Joss Whedon unqualified feminist kudos makes me itch. Sure, he got some things right, but other things... eenh.
Checkpoints! Yes! That's so true. Of course she has to want to be pretty, be unreasonable at times, and usually be either man-crazed (under 35) or baby-crazed (over 35)...
caution: tealdeer crossing
Date: 2010-01-31 09:54 pm (UTC)But as a character, she's a prime example of what I hate about latter-day feminism, in which being 'feminine' (in a primarily consumerist fashion) is more laudable than any other effort, particularly in media figures. There's so much emphasis put on the '...and she's sexy!' bit of any character's description that starts out 'She's a doctor/scientist/mother/professor/athlete/tomb raider' that it's as if it's unnatural to not want to be traditionally attractive even if spike heels and tight clothes would get in the way of your job.
So Buffy wants a 'normal life,' but as she doesn't seem to have a burning desire to be a professional ice skater or an architect or a supreme court judge (I don’t think she even declared a major in college?) or a mom, this comes down to wanting to date boys and buy expensive pretty things - a sort of proto-Carmela Soprano. I don't have much sympathy for her, if that's the normal life saving the world keeps her from.
Her whole identity for most of the show is about hiding her strength, for partially logical reasons, as it’s better for the secret identity etc, but primarily because ‘physically strong hero’ is not an identity for a girl to embrace and be proud of. Boys certainly hate strong girls. So she’ll go out and fight the monsters no one else could, but only when she’s nagged to by the mean Watcher and only in spike heels and tight clothes. Because she’s a normal girl that they want the audience to relate to, not some freak who’d revel in her abilities and heroically make like Atlas in the face of overwhelming responsibility!
There’re a few Slayers in the show who do exactly that (particularly Robin’s awesomely fierce mother), but they’re wrong and in fact they die specifically because they don’t have ‘a life’ outside slaying. And then in the last season and comics, you’ve got dozens of other slayers, and they’re uniformly tiny, pretty, and wearing tight clothes and make-up. Can there not even be one big super-strong girl who’s gung-ho like Vasquez in Aliens?
All this to say, I’d like Buffy ok as a character who reacts one consistent way to having awesome superpowers along with a grim destiny, if she wasn’t so stridently designed as New Feminist Icon while trampling over a big aspect of my identity.
Re: caution: tealdeer crossing
Date: 2010-02-03 03:05 am (UTC)latter-day feminism, in which being 'feminine' (in a primarily consumerist fashion) is more laudable than any other effort, particularly in media figures.
God yes. It is consumerist. I never really got that until just now. It takes so much money and time and energy and more money to achieve a look which is considered properly feminine now. Just being in a natural state and making no modifications whatsoever is so often considered (gasp) mannish. And of course shopping itself is painted as feminine too. Thanks for pinning down for me what has always sort of subconsciously bugged me about "Pussycat Dolls Feminism"--It doesn't feel like an honest expression of sexuality or womanliness--just an expression of how well you can please the universal male gaze, coupled with an expression of how close you can get to the upper upper class. Lord, the money obsession is eating itself.
So Buffy wants a 'normal life,' but as she doesn't seem to have a burning desire to be[...]
You're right, she didn't seem to have lifelong ambitions beyond "get a normal life" which is implied as "date boys, go shopping." Which if you look at in a metaphorical sense... really sucks. Giving up super strength and a purpose to become kind of a stereotype? I used to think maybe she was this way because she thought longterm plans were useless in the face of a job which had very low life-expectancy, but then again... did she not have any goals or dreams before being chosen? For that matter, hobbies at all?
There’re a few Slayers in the show who do exactly that
Yeah, that's disturbing. Robin's mother dies, Kendra dies... Faith suffers but ultimately lives, since Faith is walking sexuality and also super hott.
Can there not even be one big super-strong girl who’s gung-ho like Vasquez in Aliens?
Seriously! Gung-ho in attitude and in body would be great. I mean, petite women can be totally fierce, but can we please also have some women cast in a fighter role who actually look like fighters, with muscles and scars and maybe even a big frame sometimes? And no matter what they look like, don't really care all that much about pretty?
Re: caution: tealdeer crossing
Date: 2010-02-06 07:13 pm (UTC)"Pussycat Dolls Feminism" is such a great term for this! I've got a vendetta against it, which is partly personal...I moved from a culture where there was at least a 'tomboy' template to one where genuinely enjoying exercise for its own sake is deeply suspect. Forget keeping your hair short and make-up minimal on top of this...there's probably a re-education camp somewhere in Surrey for my kind. Sigh.
But on a larger scale, it impoverishes a culture's grasp of eroticism and sensuality. It's like, women who fancy guys have a pretty good range of lust objects...there's the male Pussycat equivilents (whoever took over after Brad Pitt and George Clooney started taking actual acting roles), but you can also quite acceptably lust over JEH, Ron Perlman, Tom Waits, any 'quirky' male figure and consider it normal sexual focus. It's not even considered too outre in most circles to admit to girl-crushing, either - hell, guys do that, and they're the default, so it's gotta be fine for women to imitate it :D
Whereas straight men are conditioned that finding any women outside this very narrow (and mostly unobtainable) look isn't normal sexual attraction but fetishism. It's something a bit weird that needs a market-demographic name to make them feel like they're at least part of a group of like-minded weirdos. Which is really pitiable! Like, the husband has had quite an education in the pervy female mind since we started dating. He knows I write slash, and the gist of the plots, and why I find what I do unbearably hot...which, from mainstream society's perspective, is all pretty damn weird stuff, right? And yet he'll only be partly joking when he asks, 'Is it too weird that I find her really, like really, hot?' - in regard to, for instance, the solid, strong, determined wife in A Serious Man.
My point of this ramble being, it's bad for women, and it ties men up in knots just as much, and it's all frakking pointless except to advertisers. Humph.
Re: caution: tealdeer crossing
Date: 2010-02-07 06:46 pm (UTC)