Rants About Writing | extras

My Old Rant About Female Characters

I saved this so I'm going to leave it here :P

I am so sick and tired, guys.

Why do women and girls in television and films now, and frankly, yes, popular books too, have to be men to be worth anything?

I am typing this because there have got to be other women out there who are annoyed, who are growing very irritating with insufferable, overpowered, and downright offensive female characters who act like villains and are portrayed as heroes. From Emily in Paris to the MCU's Carol Danvers, this corruption of female portrayal in media is now seemingly everywhere.

Why does every woman have to be a man? You know exactly what I mean. The "strong female character" trope has a chokehold on both books and Hollywood, with everyone convinced that women all have to be badasses who can take down men twice their size. We know what they're really doing. These are male characters written into female bodies, with all the stereotypical negative male traits and none of the positive ones. They speak like men through women's mouths, or else, they speak generic political talking points or something. They are stoic and unfeeling, and it's so incredibly boring to watch. This is why they come across as so unlikable. Because everything that makes a woman a woman aside from her genitals is ignored.

Why is everyone so damn afraid of portraying femininity now? It's like the writing world is trying desperately to overcorrect. They feel that women were far too sexualized before, so now they must be stripped of sexuality entirely. I have watched movies and shows full of women who are covered from head to toe in frumpy, ugly clothing that they obviously would not have chosen to wear themselves, that are obviously a conscious effort to make beautiful actresses less appealing. And for what purpose? I remember watching the Avengers films and thinking Black Widow was awesome. I never thought she was oversexualized. I mean, was she? Probably. But it didn't matter to me at all. I thought she was cool, she was hot, she had every man wrapped around her finger, and she stole the show in every scene she was in with considerably less screen time than her male counterparts because she was written so well. She was everything I wanted to be and more.

Considering how much modern media loves to oversexualize children and teen girls, it's honestly ridiculous how little adult women are allowed to be sexy all of a sudden. (But my frustrations with sexualized minors are to be saved for a future rant.) Does the inherent sexuality of femininity intimidate you, oh Hollywood writers? Does my womanhood offend you? Do you deny the power it gives because you are afraid of it? Not every woman is a sexual being, of course, and she should never be reduced to a sexy lampshade regardless. But why is she not allowed to express her feelings? Why is she not allowed to have a love interest? Why is she not allowed to dress the way she wants? Don't give me that "she don't need no man" BS. Not every woman needs to be an asexual being who loathes men. (Let's not even get into the fact that they're not even bothering to try to represent asexuality, they just hate men so intensely it comes across as a rudimentary version of it at times. Because if they can't even write women, don't expect asexuality to be represented well anytime soon...) I'm trying to figure out what's going on in the writer's heads. I know full well there's women with power fantasies writing this, bitter women who are jealous of the other women around them. There's also men following these formulas, probably thinking they can score diversity points without ever having interacted with a woman in real life. Just write a man and slap boobs on it, it's good enough!

Women, you are not enough. You must be tough and strong and aggressive and emotionless. You must not feel, you must not look pretty, for fear of intimidating those around you. It's almost like every harmful standard pushed on men is now being pushed on women, except this is all we're going to get. Where are the strong female Captain Americas, with sensitive hearts and good souls? Look. I am going to give it to you. Listen closely, Hollywood writers. I know how to properly do a strong female character. You did too, once upon a time.

To successfully write the strong female character you need to actually explore the mental health struggle behind it, if you're going for the stoic masculine type. A strong character with heavy trust issues and other mental illness might be brash, reckless, impulsive, and aggressive, along with displaying other megative masculine traits. Alternatively, she might be emotionless, cold, and distracted (an example of mine is Penny from Lost Destinies - she's the token "strong female character"). These are FLAWS. SHE MUST ALSO HAVE FEMININE TRAITS. Is that so hard? HELLO? HOLLYWOOD???? IS THAT SO HARD?? MORE THAN ONE PERSONALITY TRAIT, PLEASE? These have to be more than just "good at fighting" because that's a given with this character type. Maybe she has a motherly side, or maybe she's very compassionate but in a nonverbal way so people don't notice. Maybe she cares deeply about honor and justice. This is what we call a three-dimensional character. It's not effing hard.

Oh, no. I'm not done. Strong female characters aside, insufferable snarky characters aren't off the hook. You guys are SO annoying. I talked to Este about this and she made a great point - we were immersed from a very young age in this trope. I'm a Zoomer, and my generation grew up with sarcastic Disney Channel protagonists who were frankly self-centered and irritating, looking back on it today. They didn't need no man and could solve everything the dumb bimbos couldn't, to quote Este directly. We were raised with the mindset that snarky, nerdy underdogs were good and rich popular girls were bad (but that rich popular guy is fair game, of course). It's no wonder we grew up and were totally okay with the bitchy, selfish, take-nothing-seriously leads we keep seeing today. This is just as prevalent, if not more prevalent, in books than in movies compared to strong female characters. The whiny pick-me in YA, a derivative of this trope, is the bane of my existence. America from The Selection? Bella from Twilight? Avery from Inheritance Games is on thin ice; I would probably call her a pick-me as well. Man, I hate love triangles. Anyway, whether they want every man on earth or claim not to want one at all (it's probably a contradictory mix of the two), insufferable snarky characters are the absolute WORST and we're only noticing it now because we've been used to them for so long but at this point it's getting old.

And finally, the thinly disguised villain. This can fall into either or both of the above categories, so I'm addressing it separately. Female character who commit atrocities but get away with it just because they're women and women can't do anything bad. I keep seeing Disney Marvel do this for some reason. Ex. Scarlet Witch is forgiven for kidnapping and torturing an entire town in WandaVision ("They'll never know what you sacrificed for them") and is completely let go. Probably the entirety of She-Hulk, but I don't want to relive that. The fake mom character in Black Widow, I forget her name since it's been a while since I've seen that movie - she was a huge part of manipulating and brainwashing hundreds of women but it's no big deal I guess?? And I haven't seen The Marvels, but allegedly the plot involves Carol having CAUSED SEVERAL GENOCIDES AND A CIVIL WAR?? HOW IS SHE STILL A CANON SUPERHERO LMAO? DOES SHE EVER EVEN DO ANYTHING GOOD THAT DOESN'T INVOLVE CLEANING UP HER OWN MESS????

What I'm getting at is that there's a really weird pattern of women being forgiven for wrongs committed simply because women can do no wrong, and that's absolutely lazy writing. Explore consequences, you coward. That's literally my favorite thing to do in a storyline. It's fun. You should try it. It really makes women look bad when you give them terrible characters and then shove them in our faces like, "Look! See! A hero! A female role model!" And we're all just like uhh... Don't get pissed when people hate your villainous character wearing a halo. Just because you changed the camera angle doesn't change the content of the shot. Some of the most historically hated characters of all time, like Emily in Paris for example, suffered from this problem: she was portrayed as a cute sweetheart when she was actually a cold-hearted and terrible person. As writers, we must be self-aware at all times. We have to know exactly who are characters are, and curate a careful picture for the audience so they see what we are intending them to. If there is a disconnect between the writer and the audience, the piece of media comes across as tone-deaf.

Similarly, writers who have internalized hatred for women or who simply don't know the first thing about writing them should not be in charge of popular media. The audience cannot connect with one-dimensional, cartoonish, man-women. If you can't write female characters, just write male characters. That's fine. It's better to do that than to continuously write hilariously horrible and sometimes seriously offensive women... we're sick of it.