Feminism and female characters and stuff
In reply to a reply to a comment made by me on an article posted by fallingtowers here. It's a protected post, so you might not be able to read the context :D.
However, the older I have become, the more I start looking for the women in any story and looking at their POV, as it annoys me that the default option often seems to be that girls / women will also identify with men, but boys / men will not identify with female characters -- and therefore, there are fewer female characters and also fewer kinds of women in quite a few stories. Both the underlying assumption and its results are ultimately insulting and maybe even harmful to everyone, I think.
But what if the default position is correct? I read a very interesting article on the appeal of slash fiction on women, and one of the elements listed to explain the phenomenon was that men tend to be content with the story, while women tend to see more context. Women will occupy themselves with what happens off-screen or off the page, while men seem less inclined to do so. Hence the (re)interpretation/subtext that happens in fandoms, usually by women.
I’m not saying this is necessarily a correct statement, as I’m sure men are often equally interested in subtext, but what if it’s true that men tend to identify only with a (male) protagonist, and women don’t?
It’s also interesting to note here that when it comes to audience appreciation, men seem to appreciate wish-fulfilling characters more, while women will appreciate realism or characters who are recognizable or relatable. Again, this is not an absolute, but if it’s true, it explains why shows designed for women tend to have characters who are much more flawed and who stumble trough trivialities coloured with escapist crayons, while men tend to go for straight-hero type of things. Compare, for instance, Gilmore Girls with the CSI franchise. Even the murky characters in all three shows tend to be heroic, successful and not bothered by things like ordering the wrong Chinese take-out and where to buy new drapes.
So if the default position is correct, then it’s actually logical for women to be represented so poorly in popular culture and counter culture alike. It’s not so much that women have to identify with non-female characters because there are no women, but that there are no women because we don’t need them. I know that there are about sixty things wrong with that statement, but I’m not inclined to simply automatically assume that the default position is faulty.
Look, for instance, at what happens when new female characters are added to already existing shows. For instance: 13 replaces Cameron on House M.D., in the course of season 4. Actually, initially, Cameron is replaced by two women: the openly ambitious, calculating Amber and the slightly vague Remy. Amber was bound to loose to Remy, because she’s a female House, and while she’s fun to watch and her relationship with Wilson is all kinds of awesome, there’s no room for two Houses on any show, let alone House’s own show. So Remy it is.
Remy is accomplished, intelligent, not without flaws, a character who’s sexuality is not unrealistically tight in with that of her (male) co-workers and who has a semi-interesting back story.
Women, en masse, hated Remy. If possible they hated her even more than Cameron. Women also hated Amber, in fandom often referring to her with the nick-name House gave her, namely ctb (cut-throat bitch).
It’s exceedingly odd that a show that revolves around a brilliant, ambitious and ruthless surgeon would attract people who refer to another smart, ambitious and ruthless surgeon as… a cut-throat bitch.
Or, on a much smaller scale, look at the reception of first Jenna Kaye and now Lori Weston on the reboot of Hawaii 5-0. Jenna was only accepted after it became clear she wasn’t intended as a love interest for either Steve or Danny (who are heavily shipped in the fandom), and Lori is still not receiving any rounds of applause, even though she’s just a white, boring Kono.
Is it as simple as the fact that women perceive a new female character as a threat to their already established conceptions concerning the existing cast? Is it that new characters infringe on their subtext? But then why do women have an extra-tough job of being ‘the new guy’?
Even though Taub is a bore and a half, and Kutner was cool but totally underwritten and underused, they weren’t beaten up half as bad by fandom as the two women. And everyone is positively gleeful about more Max and Kamekone on Hawaii 5-0.
So it’s not like women are happy to see women on screen, not even the ones that are interesting, different, realistic, unexpected or (and this should be standard but isn’t) not a page 3 girl. On the contrary, more often than not women who are written out properly, have a good backstory and a consistent character arc are criticized more harshly than men.
If I were a writer on a show, and I wanted to add a new character, I would think about these things before introducing an interesting women. Maybe I would rather introduce a bland guy, because what are the odds that fandom is going to roar its ugly head about a bland guy. And with fandoms becoming more and more vocal, mailing in and blogging about things they don’t like by the hundreds, sometimes even thousands (think of the Luke Snyder / Reid Oliver story arc on As the World Turns, where significant changes were made under fan pressure), it would become an ever more important factor to consider.
Second, even if you don't identify with a female character, in visual media, you will still see her - her body, her looks, her appearance. There's the old proverb that "an image is worth a 1000 words", and thus the way women on TV / in the movies / in magazines, comics and video games look still influences people, even though they may not focus on it.
My sister made the comment over dinner that women used to choke themselves in way-to-tight corsets, and a lot of our male students (we’re both teachers) add protein shakes to an already unhealthy (for a growing body) diet and fitness regime to get ‘a sculpted body’. Yes, media play a big role in the shaping of the image of ‘a normal body’ in our mind. But so do our daily interactions with others, and so do our daily interactions with bodies. If I’m asked to cover up my boobs but my much more modelesque co-workers are not, that also has an impact not only on how I perceive my body but how in turn my students perceive the bodies of their teachers. All these things come into play.
Princess Leia may have less of an impact than your mum telling you to hold your breath, or that your unkempt hair makes you look like a hobo.
And yes, her ideas of beauty may be derived from Princess Leia, but chances are they were given to her by her mother.
It’s not the content of the beauty idiom that’s stifling, it’s the fact that we feel pressured to conform to it. And it’s the women around us who pressure us into doing that, a lot more than the men.
It’s going to take more than Glee and The Killing to change that, if it is at all possible. After all, men fall victim to the exact same process: be tough, be successful, be ambitious, have many/good sexual conquests. Parents put the same pressure on their sons to adhere to stereotypes as they do on their daughters. For women, beauty seems to be all-important, for men it’s success. But both trim us of a lot of our beauty and strength, and both are reflected in popular culture and counter culture alike.
And still, even they, or rather their actresses, have to fit into a narrow visual slot of how they look like: mostly in their 20s and 30s, mostly white, always thin, mostly conventionally pretty, perhaps "Hollywood ugly" on occasion. The actress who played Leslie Winkle on the BBT is anything but a booth babe - but I think she's still rather adorable and attractive, even within the framework of dominant beauty standards. (She probably has to be, or her career would be hampered, and how sad is that.)
I have to admit that I enjoy watching beautiful people. Of course, I have a rather special idea of what constitutes beauty, but when I can’t get Stephen Fry or Jodie Foster on screen, I’ll settle for pretty. And on TV, any man or woman is pretty. Look at Melissa McCarthy, now shining on Mike & Molly as ‘a fat woman’. I fell in love with her, quite literally, in Gilmore Girls. When she’s on screen, even if I just see her from the corner of my eye, I can’t keep my eyes off her. Because she’s gorgeous. And of course she’s gorgeous: for most people, TV is escapism. You want to see a better, more interesting, more fair world. You want so see pretty people.
Or look at the cast of Glee: Jane Lynch (such a gorgeous, gorgeous woman), Amber Riley and Ahsley Fink are obviously not cast for their great looks, but they’re still gorgeous women.
Maybe the truth is that there are, in fact, very few really ugly people. With a bit of nail polish and a good hair dresser, we all look pretty good.
I agree with you on the age issue though. It’s one of the reasons why I love Boston Legal: it’s a show about people who are not thirty anymore. And it’s smart, unlike $#*! My Dad Says. Then again, I personally think both How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory are really smart shows about people who are actually their own age, and those are definitely twenty/thirty-something shows.
However, fanboyish geek culture is commonly perceived or painted as a haven from these expectations. You may not look like the macho commando guy from a console game, but you still get to live vicariously through his action-filled story - and girls are mostly out there as some "reward" to negate your self-esteem issues and your insecurities. It's the "nerd girl gets hot trophy girlfriend" narrative.
And are you now saying that women have no such outlet, even within geek culture? Because that would be discarding not only billions of rainforest trees who have been recycled into Candlelight novels, but also every Jane Austen ever put on screen anywhere and the entire concept of fanfic, especially (but not only) the Mary Sue.
Imagine you’re a guy, and you have to compete with Mr. Darcy. Go at it, I’d say. I’d quit while I was ahead, to be honest.
Yes, you get to live vicariously through the game. Just as women get to live vicariously through the game, or the show, or the book, or the piece of smut they just read on their favourite lj-list.
And women tend to fictionalize men in exactly the same way: Lizzie is rewarded with Darcy’s affections despite having treated him somewhat appallingly and being generally quite undeserving of said affections (and let’s not mention poor colonel Brandon and Marianne - that girl deserves a convent, not someone willing to wait on her while she’s ill); Bridget Jones gets dragged away from Ben & Jerry and evenings with wine and self-pity by the very same Mr. Darcy; and weren’t we all rooting for Paulie Bleeker even at the very start of Juno, even thought Juno herself - again - treats Paulie rather poorly?
Even Jack dying to save Rose in Titanic seems to serve no other purpose than for Rose to be able to say: I have been loved. It makes absolutely no sense, and it only serves a very foolish notion of The Great Romance that women seem to devour and want more of.
Do women, in real life, hold their partners to those standards? If they do: how gullible are we? And if we don’t, what’s to say that maybe men aren’t complete nitwits either, and know very well that Princess Leia wouldn’t look at them twice, cause they’re no Han Solo.
But there should be more nurturing, kind, warm and friendly men in our stories, too. That's not a woman's domain - or it really, really shouldn't be.
Ah, here’s the interesting thing: check the men who are counterpart to those lone wolf women:
Richard Castle is kind, playful, creative, a good if what unconventional father who has a decent and respectful relationship with the women in his life, despite being a grown-up kid. He has macho pride, and a devil-may-care attitude. In short: he’s a well-rounded character, neither exceptionally masculine or feminine. Compared to him, Kate Beckett (and I love her, but still) is a card board cut out of a character.
Dani Reese is paired off with two men in Life: her partner Charlie Crews, a very strange men wrestling with a very difficult past in an odd but generous way; and love-interest captain Tidwell, a real guy’s guy with a very bad sense of humour and a beer belly who’s also kind, honourable and not afraid to make himself vulnerable to make his relationship work.
Neither of these men is, again, extremely masculine.
Teresa Lisbon works with Patrick Jane, who is full of ego, has a tendency to be very petty and vindictive (even in little things) but is at the same time extremely attuned to other people’s emotions, and extremely watchful of people’s moods and circumstances. He oozes kindness, even though he can also be extremely cruel.
Again, a well-rounded character, and not coded as either masculine or feminine.
I could go on :)
For me, it should at some point be self-evident to have a female Dr House and a male Deanna Troi type without it being worthy of any comment.
Here, here. I completely agree.
However, the older I have become, the more I start looking for the women in any story and looking at their POV, as it annoys me that the default option often seems to be that girls / women will also identify with men, but boys / men will not identify with female characters -- and therefore, there are fewer female characters and also fewer kinds of women in quite a few stories. Both the underlying assumption and its results are ultimately insulting and maybe even harmful to everyone, I think.
But what if the default position is correct? I read a very interesting article on the appeal of slash fiction on women, and one of the elements listed to explain the phenomenon was that men tend to be content with the story, while women tend to see more context. Women will occupy themselves with what happens off-screen or off the page, while men seem less inclined to do so. Hence the (re)interpretation/subtext that happens in fandoms, usually by women.
I’m not saying this is necessarily a correct statement, as I’m sure men are often equally interested in subtext, but what if it’s true that men tend to identify only with a (male) protagonist, and women don’t?
It’s also interesting to note here that when it comes to audience appreciation, men seem to appreciate wish-fulfilling characters more, while women will appreciate realism or characters who are recognizable or relatable. Again, this is not an absolute, but if it’s true, it explains why shows designed for women tend to have characters who are much more flawed and who stumble trough trivialities coloured with escapist crayons, while men tend to go for straight-hero type of things. Compare, for instance, Gilmore Girls with the CSI franchise. Even the murky characters in all three shows tend to be heroic, successful and not bothered by things like ordering the wrong Chinese take-out and where to buy new drapes.
So if the default position is correct, then it’s actually logical for women to be represented so poorly in popular culture and counter culture alike. It’s not so much that women have to identify with non-female characters because there are no women, but that there are no women because we don’t need them. I know that there are about sixty things wrong with that statement, but I’m not inclined to simply automatically assume that the default position is faulty.
Look, for instance, at what happens when new female characters are added to already existing shows. For instance: 13 replaces Cameron on House M.D., in the course of season 4. Actually, initially, Cameron is replaced by two women: the openly ambitious, calculating Amber and the slightly vague Remy. Amber was bound to loose to Remy, because she’s a female House, and while she’s fun to watch and her relationship with Wilson is all kinds of awesome, there’s no room for two Houses on any show, let alone House’s own show. So Remy it is.
Remy is accomplished, intelligent, not without flaws, a character who’s sexuality is not unrealistically tight in with that of her (male) co-workers and who has a semi-interesting back story.
Women, en masse, hated Remy. If possible they hated her even more than Cameron. Women also hated Amber, in fandom often referring to her with the nick-name House gave her, namely ctb (cut-throat bitch).
It’s exceedingly odd that a show that revolves around a brilliant, ambitious and ruthless surgeon would attract people who refer to another smart, ambitious and ruthless surgeon as… a cut-throat bitch.
Or, on a much smaller scale, look at the reception of first Jenna Kaye and now Lori Weston on the reboot of Hawaii 5-0. Jenna was only accepted after it became clear she wasn’t intended as a love interest for either Steve or Danny (who are heavily shipped in the fandom), and Lori is still not receiving any rounds of applause, even though she’s just a white, boring Kono.
Is it as simple as the fact that women perceive a new female character as a threat to their already established conceptions concerning the existing cast? Is it that new characters infringe on their subtext? But then why do women have an extra-tough job of being ‘the new guy’?
Even though Taub is a bore and a half, and Kutner was cool but totally underwritten and underused, they weren’t beaten up half as bad by fandom as the two women. And everyone is positively gleeful about more Max and Kamekone on Hawaii 5-0.
So it’s not like women are happy to see women on screen, not even the ones that are interesting, different, realistic, unexpected or (and this should be standard but isn’t) not a page 3 girl. On the contrary, more often than not women who are written out properly, have a good backstory and a consistent character arc are criticized more harshly than men.
If I were a writer on a show, and I wanted to add a new character, I would think about these things before introducing an interesting women. Maybe I would rather introduce a bland guy, because what are the odds that fandom is going to roar its ugly head about a bland guy. And with fandoms becoming more and more vocal, mailing in and blogging about things they don’t like by the hundreds, sometimes even thousands (think of the Luke Snyder / Reid Oliver story arc on As the World Turns, where significant changes were made under fan pressure), it would become an ever more important factor to consider.
Second, even if you don't identify with a female character, in visual media, you will still see her - her body, her looks, her appearance. There's the old proverb that "an image is worth a 1000 words", and thus the way women on TV / in the movies / in magazines, comics and video games look still influences people, even though they may not focus on it.
My sister made the comment over dinner that women used to choke themselves in way-to-tight corsets, and a lot of our male students (we’re both teachers) add protein shakes to an already unhealthy (for a growing body) diet and fitness regime to get ‘a sculpted body’. Yes, media play a big role in the shaping of the image of ‘a normal body’ in our mind. But so do our daily interactions with others, and so do our daily interactions with bodies. If I’m asked to cover up my boobs but my much more modelesque co-workers are not, that also has an impact not only on how I perceive my body but how in turn my students perceive the bodies of their teachers. All these things come into play.
Princess Leia may have less of an impact than your mum telling you to hold your breath, or that your unkempt hair makes you look like a hobo.
And yes, her ideas of beauty may be derived from Princess Leia, but chances are they were given to her by her mother.
It’s not the content of the beauty idiom that’s stifling, it’s the fact that we feel pressured to conform to it. And it’s the women around us who pressure us into doing that, a lot more than the men.
It’s going to take more than Glee and The Killing to change that, if it is at all possible. After all, men fall victim to the exact same process: be tough, be successful, be ambitious, have many/good sexual conquests. Parents put the same pressure on their sons to adhere to stereotypes as they do on their daughters. For women, beauty seems to be all-important, for men it’s success. But both trim us of a lot of our beauty and strength, and both are reflected in popular culture and counter culture alike.
And still, even they, or rather their actresses, have to fit into a narrow visual slot of how they look like: mostly in their 20s and 30s, mostly white, always thin, mostly conventionally pretty, perhaps "Hollywood ugly" on occasion. The actress who played Leslie Winkle on the BBT is anything but a booth babe - but I think she's still rather adorable and attractive, even within the framework of dominant beauty standards. (She probably has to be, or her career would be hampered, and how sad is that.)
I have to admit that I enjoy watching beautiful people. Of course, I have a rather special idea of what constitutes beauty, but when I can’t get Stephen Fry or Jodie Foster on screen, I’ll settle for pretty. And on TV, any man or woman is pretty. Look at Melissa McCarthy, now shining on Mike & Molly as ‘a fat woman’. I fell in love with her, quite literally, in Gilmore Girls. When she’s on screen, even if I just see her from the corner of my eye, I can’t keep my eyes off her. Because she’s gorgeous. And of course she’s gorgeous: for most people, TV is escapism. You want to see a better, more interesting, more fair world. You want so see pretty people.
Or look at the cast of Glee: Jane Lynch (such a gorgeous, gorgeous woman), Amber Riley and Ahsley Fink are obviously not cast for their great looks, but they’re still gorgeous women.
Maybe the truth is that there are, in fact, very few really ugly people. With a bit of nail polish and a good hair dresser, we all look pretty good.
I agree with you on the age issue though. It’s one of the reasons why I love Boston Legal: it’s a show about people who are not thirty anymore. And it’s smart, unlike $#*! My Dad Says. Then again, I personally think both How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory are really smart shows about people who are actually their own age, and those are definitely twenty/thirty-something shows.
However, fanboyish geek culture is commonly perceived or painted as a haven from these expectations. You may not look like the macho commando guy from a console game, but you still get to live vicariously through his action-filled story - and girls are mostly out there as some "reward" to negate your self-esteem issues and your insecurities. It's the "nerd girl gets hot trophy girlfriend" narrative.
And are you now saying that women have no such outlet, even within geek culture? Because that would be discarding not only billions of rainforest trees who have been recycled into Candlelight novels, but also every Jane Austen ever put on screen anywhere and the entire concept of fanfic, especially (but not only) the Mary Sue.
Imagine you’re a guy, and you have to compete with Mr. Darcy. Go at it, I’d say. I’d quit while I was ahead, to be honest.
Yes, you get to live vicariously through the game. Just as women get to live vicariously through the game, or the show, or the book, or the piece of smut they just read on their favourite lj-list.
And women tend to fictionalize men in exactly the same way: Lizzie is rewarded with Darcy’s affections despite having treated him somewhat appallingly and being generally quite undeserving of said affections (and let’s not mention poor colonel Brandon and Marianne - that girl deserves a convent, not someone willing to wait on her while she’s ill); Bridget Jones gets dragged away from Ben & Jerry and evenings with wine and self-pity by the very same Mr. Darcy; and weren’t we all rooting for Paulie Bleeker even at the very start of Juno, even thought Juno herself - again - treats Paulie rather poorly?
Even Jack dying to save Rose in Titanic seems to serve no other purpose than for Rose to be able to say: I have been loved. It makes absolutely no sense, and it only serves a very foolish notion of The Great Romance that women seem to devour and want more of.
Do women, in real life, hold their partners to those standards? If they do: how gullible are we? And if we don’t, what’s to say that maybe men aren’t complete nitwits either, and know very well that Princess Leia wouldn’t look at them twice, cause they’re no Han Solo.
But there should be more nurturing, kind, warm and friendly men in our stories, too. That's not a woman's domain - or it really, really shouldn't be.
Ah, here’s the interesting thing: check the men who are counterpart to those lone wolf women:
Richard Castle is kind, playful, creative, a good if what unconventional father who has a decent and respectful relationship with the women in his life, despite being a grown-up kid. He has macho pride, and a devil-may-care attitude. In short: he’s a well-rounded character, neither exceptionally masculine or feminine. Compared to him, Kate Beckett (and I love her, but still) is a card board cut out of a character.
Dani Reese is paired off with two men in Life: her partner Charlie Crews, a very strange men wrestling with a very difficult past in an odd but generous way; and love-interest captain Tidwell, a real guy’s guy with a very bad sense of humour and a beer belly who’s also kind, honourable and not afraid to make himself vulnerable to make his relationship work.
Neither of these men is, again, extremely masculine.
Teresa Lisbon works with Patrick Jane, who is full of ego, has a tendency to be very petty and vindictive (even in little things) but is at the same time extremely attuned to other people’s emotions, and extremely watchful of people’s moods and circumstances. He oozes kindness, even though he can also be extremely cruel.
Again, a well-rounded character, and not coded as either masculine or feminine.
I could go on :)
For me, it should at some point be self-evident to have a female Dr House and a male Deanna Troi type without it being worthy of any comment.
Here, here. I completely agree.