The Problem with “Strong Female Characters”
Why is “strong” the only measure by which we evaluate female characters we encounter onscreen?
By MEGAN CARROLL
Dear film critics, journalists, bloggers, and the like:
I have a humble request to make of you. Could you perhaps take it upon yourself to consider — maybe, possibly — trying to stop using the phrase strong female character?
I know it’s tough. What with the gnat-like attention span of your audience and the porch-light allure of that other site’s listicles, you have to take what you can get, right?
I mean, who can compete with titles like “You’ll Never Believe What This Man Did for His Dying Llama” and “This Girl Totally Just Nailed What It Feels Like to Eat a Bagel”? Who can go up against the “Top 10 Reasons Cory and Topanga Are Your Couple Goal”?
You have to carve out a sliver of the pie for yourself, and strong female character is the knife you use to cut through the noise. It plays well to the Tumblr crowd. And Twitter eats it up.
Look, I get it. Your job ain’t easy. You’re trying to be the critical touchstone for a wayward generation lost in a miasma of mass-produced, instantly-available television shows, movies, books, and pop music. Most of it is terrible. Almost all of it is sexist, racist, ableist, and offensive to various other minority groups.
So when you see a female character who isn’t a total dingbat, you want to praise her — praise her and the gods that made her, yes?
At least someone in this mess has some sense, you think. That guy can write a strong female character. Let’s heap some praise on his head, pat him on the back, and then pay $15 to go see his next male-led superhero blockbuster in IMAX 3D when it comes out, right?
Wrong.
I’m not interested in reading another review that praises a film for its one strong female character. In fact, these sorts of reviews infuriate me.
What in the world is a strong female character? When did she become the measure by which we evaluate all other female characters? And why do otherwise intelligent, thoughtful critics like yourself insist on using this phrase to describe characters you enjoyed? You are better than this insipid cliche. But in case I haven’t convinced you yet, let’s break down the language.
Think about the phrase strong female character. What does strong mean?
Why is strong the only measure by which we evaluate the female characters we encounter onscreen? What are you really trying to say when you refer to Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss or Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow or, most recently, Charlize Theron’s Furiosa as a strong female character?
Dear authors, why do you NEVER write about a strong male character?
Strong can mean any number of things. But in the context of the phrase strong female character, it generally refers to the qualities of the revered action hero:
- Strong is athletic prowess, calm under fire, absence of fear.
- Strong is fierce, opinionated, usually alone.
- Strong beats the bad guys and saves the day.
- Strong walks away from the explosion in slow motion without looking back.
- Strong is masculine. Masculine is strong.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with these types of characters. I love a good action hero as much as the next moviegoer. Give me Mad Max: Fury Road’s Furiosa over trite Katherine Heigel rom-com swill any day.
The problem arises when this type of hero is the only one who gets the praise — and she gets the praise because she is acting like the boys. She’s kicking ass and taking names. She’s physically powerful and emotionally distant. She’s indescribably cool, I agree. But is she all there is? Is her particular brand of strength the only kind worth our admiration?
Is there not strength in admitting fear? Is there not strength in knowing when to back down? Is there not strength in an unwillingness to be physically violent?
Is there not strength in the woman who raises five children on her own or earns her spot in the corner office in a male-dominated industry or works tirelessly in a thankless social work job or struggles to kick addiction or simply grows up black, gay, and on the wrong side of town?
Is there not strength in the woman who chooses abortion or dares to believe in her dream or continues to go to school despite a terminal cancer diagnosis? Does strength not exist outside the hardened masculine action hero archetype?
Are you starting to see the problem with strong female characters — and how the phrase does not allow room for different, more feminine forms of strength?
Again, let me ask you: why do you not write about strong male characters? Why? Because they do not exist. Because placing the words strong and male next to each other is redundant. Because our language tells us that strong is inherent in male. To be male is to be physically capable, athletic, fearless, opinionated, a hero.
But Frozen’s Elsa, The Hunger Games’ Katniss, and Divergent’s Tris are more than girls. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Black Widow, and Furiosa are more than women. Yes, they are this. But they are more. They are intelligent, capable, conflicted, damaged. They are complex. They have fears, desires, baggage. They make mistakes. They are human. Human. They are good characters.
If you’ve made it this far, I thank you for reading my rambling. There’s a point in there somewhere, and it is this: using the phrase strong female characters to praise fictional characters reduces them to their gender. It separates them from male characters — the given, the assumed, the expected — and holds them up as if to say, Wow! Look at this woman! We never expected her! We never thought she could be so cool/great/awesome/badass!
When you insist on writing about “strong female characters” you reveal our culture’s lack of expectation for female characters. We don’t expect them to be great. We don’t expect them to kill a bunch of vampires or fight an alien alone on a spaceship or drive a war rig across the desert in an effort to free several sex slaves. We don’t expect women to do amazing things onscreen. And when they do, we are so amazed that we have to talk about their gender.
Let’s stop pretending women can’t be as awesome as men. Let’s stop pretending that a well-written character needs the qualifiers strong and female in front of her in order to indicate her seriousness, her validity, her place in the conversation. Let’s just write about good characters. Let’s stop assuming masculinity and start assuming humanity.
Look, I know it’s a lot to ask. It’s an insane thing to ask, really, given that our entire language (and thus culture and thus reality) is constructed on the gender binary. But change begins with language.
So I beg of you, show me something about these characters I couldn’t see. Don’t fall back onto the stupid, sexist phrase strong female characters. Next time you sit down to write that think-piece about how the fault lines are rumbling in Hollywood, and attitudes towards women onscreen are (finally) changing, consider the language you use.
What is it that you actually mean to say? Dig beneath the phrase and figure out how you really feel and then write that. That’s what I want to read.
Respectfully,
Megan
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