just thinking

[rusty_halo]

So aside from being massively amused by a stupid kerfuffle, I've been thinking about why I so rarely find female characters appealing.

Clearly, I am a self-hating misogynist... oh, wait... actually...

I think it boils down to the fact that I sense a falseness in the way the vast majority of female characters are written. These women aren't like me. They don't think the way I do, they don't act the way I act, their concerns and priorities and behaviors are completely uninteresting and irrelevant to me.

Maybe it's because they are usually written by men, and so they end up being filtered through this idealizing/objectifying/simplifying gaze. Fred, for example. She's perfect and brilliant and damaged, so every man adores her and wants to take care of her. How lame.

Or maybe it's because I'm just not a typical woman. I live on my own in NYC, with no interest in marriage and very little interest in men; I have no interest in children; my emphasis is on career; I don't give a fuck about fashion... etc. I was always that lone girl in the advanced math class full of boys.... the third grader who was off in the corner reading Star Wars novels instead of gossiping about who was dating whom... you know.

I remember when "My So Called Life" came out, and everyone was saying "OMG finally they've perfectly captured the actual teenage female experience." Um, no. That sure as hell was not my teenage female experience.

I don't care about fashion, or motherhood, or sisterhood, or lipstick, or shoes, or the mall, or fitting in, or ... whatever it is that these TV women tend to prioritize. Buffy wanting to be prom queen, or whatever it was? WHY DO YOU CARE? Or Sex in the City--it's not about individuality, it's about expensive shoes. I never gave a crap about that stuff... it boils down to conformity and consumerism, and I got over that when I was ten.

Women worried about being a mother, or finding a man--it seems like the priority of every TV woman is to find a man. I'm SO not interested in that typical woman's role, romance and motherhood and whatever. Buffy secretly fantasizing about "Wind Beneath My Wings" playing at her wedding, Angel leaving her because he couldn't give her children.... it's all irrelvant to me. Live your own life, stop worrying about fitting into this preordained social role. (Not to insult the women who DO want that--but I don't, and would like to see some fictional women who feel the same as I do [and aren't evil].) The thing that annoyed me the most about Buffy was her obsession with being "normal." She would've HATED being normal; it would've suppressed everything that made her unique and gave her strength; yet she never managed to get over this ridiculous obsession with being exactly like everyone else.

And sense of humor. Why can't a woman be strong AND funny? Why do the female heroes have to be so dour and miserable and serious all the time? Strong men can be dark and funny at the same time. Strong women are just written to be boring. Wolverine gets the cute one-liners. Storm and Jean Grey never stop being serious. (In the movies; never read the comics.)

And female characters are so rarely allowed to embrace their darkness. Male characters can be dark and fucked up and it can be a continuing story without a nice little wrap-up. Female characters who go dark have to feel all guilty and apologetic. Wesley could go dark and he never had to cry about how guilty he felt for being a "bad boy" (a phrase that has such a different connotation than "bad girl"). Buffy, OTOH, had to be all sad and guilt-ridden and repentent; she had to apologize to XANDER because she slept with Spike (??!!!), she didn't even seem to ENJOY her dark period, despite all the hot Spikesex. Willow's darkness was a joke; all she had to do was cry and say it wasn't really her, and all was forgiven. A male character could've gone SO MUCH DARKER and had such a much more interesting story--if they had done that with Willow, gone REALLY dark, that story would've been a million times better.

Fictional men are so much more often allowed to exist as fully realized characters, as compared to fictional women who are so often defined by their gender role. You don't see nearly as many male characters who are entirely defined by the fact that they want a relationship and children. You don't see male characters so obsessed with fashion and conformity and consumerism. They're allowed to exist as characters with their own uniqueness and their own agendas, their own ideas and positions that aren't ABOUT pre-ordained social roles based on gender.

I would LOVE to embrace more female characters, but there are so few of them out there that interest me. I liked Faith: she had a genuine darkness, an actual sense of humor, and her story arc wasn't ABOUT gender; she could've been a male character and it would have been just as good. I liked Anya because she was independent and funny, but she never got over her Xander obsession and the writers barely developed her. I liked early Cordelia, before she turned into a saint, because she had no shame and she was both smart and FUNNY. I liked Lilah, because she kicked ass and was dark and smart and funny, but of course she had to die. I like Chloe on Smallville, because she's smart, has a sense of humor, and has actual career ambitions; she isn't just obsessed with boys/clothes/self-pity. I liked Kyra on Star Trek DS9, if you want to go back farther. I liked Princess Leia in the first Star Wars movie, and was really annoyed when she just turned into an object for Han and Luke to squabble over. I like Danaerys Targaryen in A Song of Ice and Fire, who is learning to be strong and powerful and who consistently rejects traditional female roles in pursuit of what she believes is right. (I have issues with the whole destiny thing, but that's another topic.)

There are no female characters LIKE ME on TV. People who prize personal ethics and independence above fashion and conformity. People who don't give a fuck what society thinks of them. (Notice how all the goth chicks on TV are dismissed as crazy evil sex fiends? Women who embrace unconventional social roles always have to be demonized.) You find male characters like this, with whom I tend to indentify--Spike before he wussed out; Jaime Lannister in the Song of Ice and Fire book series; Wolverine in the X-Men movies; Methos on Highlander. Not that these guys are all perfect, but I relate to them much more than I do to the boring conformists on "Sex and the City."

Or it could just be that I'm a woman-hating misogynist. :P

Comments

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Personally, I tend to be equal opportunity male/female like in characters. It's just that looking at it, I realized that most of the female characters I've really loved have originated in the often female written genre of soap operas.

Growing up I really liked liked Anne Heche's "Vicki Hudson" on Another World. She schemed. She fought. She threatened to expose her mother's affair. She decided to take Jaime from "good girl" Lisa and did. When the affair went sour and he wanted custody of their child she fought back. She threatened to kill her ex-lover, and you believed her. She was the "evil" twin who impersonated her "good" twin, for that twin's own good. She was, in short, fun.

Equally, I loved rock-n-roll bitch Alicia Copola's Lorna Devon (also on the Donna Swajeski penned era of Another World). She dressed in black leather, wore long earrings. Stole good-boy Matt from good-girl Jenna. Discovered that her "worst enemy" (Jenna's mother) was actually her birth mother. Was hated by her biological father, but it was she who found him bleeding to death (he was murdered) on her living room floor and cradled him in her arms as he died (fantastic plot/heartwrenching scene btw.) And she had to drag her new-found mother into an intervention when "good girl" Jenna was of no use when their grieving mother slipped into alcoholism. Lorna rocked and I just adored the character.

I also find that I still love All My Children's nutcase Kendall Hart (all the better now that she's not played by Sarah Michelle Gellar any longer).

But, I suppose that really is a very female genre and far more likely to be penned by women. Prime-time it's far more difficult to find a female heroine of worth. In fact I can only think of two male written, prime-time female characters I've really loved -- Dana Scully and Aeryn Sun. Both of those women could kick butt and carry their own weight. But they are a rarity.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

Ah ... I've never watched soap operas, so I can't really comment on their portrayal of women. It sounds like there is interesting territory for exploration....

Oooh, Dana Scully, I forgot to mention her. I liked Scully in the early seasons. I think her story got kind of weird in later seasons, but I was watching sporadically then so I can't really say for sure. (I remember lots of religion stuff and wasn't she pregnant or something?)

I should really watch Farcape.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Well the thing is with soaps is that it can vary isanely. There are some soaps that are as misogynist as the day is long (General Hospital/Days of Our Lives, I'm looking at you!) And even shows which aren't blatantly misogynist have areas where they are. It's just that certain characters are allowed a great deal of leeway. There are the great "bitches" like Dorian Lord or Erica Kane who can (and do) get away with murder. And Erica's daughter Kendall is allowed to benefit from being one of those "Kane women." And the old Donna Swajeski penned era of Another World (mid 1980s) was a bastion of really strong women across the board on the show. However, soaps today are on a downward slide and you don't get the same sorts of characters that were around during their heyday. But, I do tend to think back in the day the female characters benefited by being in a female dominated genre. Unfortunately, these days most of the headwriters (and ALL the network heads of daytime progamming) are men. And it shows.

And yes, you SHOULD watch Farscape. Farscape has truly wonderful women -- Good, bad and in between. Not only does Aeryn Sun ex-assassin rock, but so does Zaahn ex-anarchist, and Chiana the thief, Sikozou the spy, even Grayza the bitch villainess. In fact the only really awful female character is Jool...but she got killed off. But the core females of Aeryn, Zaahn, and Chi are all quite individual delights.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Oh, and yeah, Scully was quite the paradox. She was the one who unlike Mulder demanded that everything have a rational explanation. . .unless it came down to matters of spirtuality/religion. In those cases she was the believer while Mulder constantly sought ANY explanation but a religious one. They balanced nicely in that case. The story did get strained in the latter seasons as the show bent over backwards to not show the Mulder/Scully ship while at the same time playing off of it. Still, Scully could fight. She was relentlessly logicical, relentlessly competent. She didn't give a damn about fashion or shoes. She was smart and could shoot a gun and rescue Mulder if need be. She could be remote and difficult... but I was never annoyed by it because it never attained Buffy bitchiness.

[jerrymcl89.livejournal.com]

I always thought Scully was a really good female 'role model' even though (or perhaps because) the X-Files never really talked about her in those terms, largely because she was strong in ways that a woman actually can be, instead of being 98 pounds and able to kick people through brick walls. And she could be very funny, although in an extremely dry and often exasperated way. The show got pretty far off the rails in the later years, but I didn't really think the shortcomings of the story stuck to the characters the way they did on BtVS.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I was a huge Scully lover because she was a woman that I could recognize. She was intelligent, competent, compassionate yet not fluffy. She was loyal and brave but wasn't (as someone on BAPS described Buffy)a man with tits.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

I always thought Scully was a really good female 'role model' even though (or perhaps because) the X-Files never really talked about her in those terms

I think because. They wrote Scully first as a character, as a person, as an individual, rather than as a Strong Woman. The result was so much more real and interesting than those phony constructed Women Who Are Written To Be Role Models.