By: Elizabeth Pinckney
We’ve
come a long way from females being seen as baby-makers and homekeepers, needy
damsels to be saved and annoying obstacles to get in the way of men. The world
is slowly heading towards total equality, which is great for every gender.
Fiction, at first glance, seems to mimic this, as all stories do. Heroines are
becoming more and more common as females gain their voice, and gender roles on
both sides are expanding. What was once seen as unacceptable is now turning
into the norm, and what stereotypes once dominated storytelling are starting to
disappear.
When
looking deeper, however, something starts to be revealed. Females are still
getting unfair treatment compared to their male counterparts. The heroines that
exist in many popular, modern works of fiction seem to fall into two
categories. They are either weak, confused and spend much of their time being
helpless to control their lives, or they go to the opposite extreme and turn
into strong, less-than-feminine, “ideal” protagonists that prove their
strengths mostly by acting mean and dominant over others...and this category
still tends to need men around anyways, lest they don’t come off as females at
all. What does it say about our world when the most positive portrayals for
heroines are, in a way, masculine tomboys? The best implication that can come
from this is that females should be tougher like males in order to be
competent. The worst implication is that real protagonists shouldn’t be
feminine at all if they want to come off as strong.
What is strength, though, in terms of characters, and why do male
characters get to be so much more than “strong”? The most famous male
characters get diversity and complexity to them, and many of them can be
described as not being stereotypically strong at all. Characters like Sherlock
Holmes, Harry Potter, and Luke Skywalker are interesting and memorable
because they seem like real people and are unique enough to stand out from the
crowd, regardless of them not being pinnacles of masculinity.
Female characters, by comparison, come off as notoriously flat.
When they aren’t overly tough, they are the eye candy. If they aren’t the eye
candy, they are there to be whiny obstacles. If they aren’t whiny obstacles,
they are jealous witches trying to seduce the main character, or they are there
to be protected and saved even when they are meant to be competent and
self-aware. There are certainly exceptions to this rule, just as there are
certainly some stereotypical tough-guys who manage to be memorable. However,
it’s about patterns and the implications of those patterns. Real-life females
are much more diverse and complex than fiction makes them out to be, and any of
them can be competent. Showing the one-dimensional, “strong” heroines as the
ideal female protagonists can easily be just as harmful as portraying them as damsels
or eye candy. It shouldn’t be too hard to hire female extras to play minions or
army members, or to write the doctor that heals the hero to be a female. If
gender isn’t an issue, more females should be added to the mix. What matters is
quantity and diversity, not adding more stereotypes into the mix and claiming
that we’re being progressive and feminist.
It goes for male characters as well. Despite the diverse
personalities and skill sets, there is still an issue that must be taken care
of. Even with the surprising lack of stereotypical tough male heroes, it still
seems to be the standard males are supposed to achieve. Audiences want their
heroes to be able to throw a punch and take command. As I said above, even
female characters are being held to the same unwritten rule. Fictional males
who can’t do these things are expected to grow out of it by the end of the
story, never-mind that there are plenty of real life males who don’t follow
this standard and can still be very competent, interesting and heroic.
I cannot stress enough how strength and aggression does not make a
good character. What makes a character well-written, relatable and memorable is
them having an actual personality and actual depth. The focus on masculine
“strength” and feminine “weakness” can easily be insulting, and in cases where
the characters don’t follow these molds, there seems to always be at least a
few jokes made about the characters acting like the other gender, or being
weak, or being too tough. As the new trend is to make females break their
stereotypes by acting similar to stereotypical men (who still need men
of their own to function, mind), this hits males harder. It’s still seen as
strange for a male to be sensitive, vulnerable, passive or simply incompetent
at fighting. If their sexualities aren’t being questioned, they are the subject
of many jokes and often need to learn to “be a real man”. Even though there are
a lot of times where male characters don’t fit the stereotypes, society has not
yet moved away from this notion of masculinity being the way of “true”
strength.
This is perhaps highlighted best with female-on-male abuse.
Whenever there are implications of a male character being nervous to,
subservient to, or outright abused by a female, it’s often meant to be a joke
or just a way to show how pathetically weak a man is. Verbal abuse? Whatever,
he’s just a wimp who can’t take some teasing. Physical abuse? He’s a man, he
should be able to take it. Manipulated by a female? It’s his fault for
being seduced. Sexual abuse? Either the joke is that he should like it and
there is something wrong with him for not wanting her advances, or it’s a joke
because a female is the one dominating him. This implies that females either
can’t actually hurt males, or that if a male is not tough he deserves mockery.
This is one thing that needs to be abolished. If it’s seen as
horrific and serious if a male character abuses a female, portraying
female-on-male abuse as a joke is harmful. It continues to perpetuate the idea
that females are generally weak and can’t defend themselves, so hurting them is
a sin- and since they are so weak, any male that gets overpowered by them is
doubly weak and should be seen as a joke for their misfortune. Abuse is abuse,
no matter who the victim is.
A person is a person, no
matter their gender. Double standards and stereotypes simplify things to their
most basic, most insulting, form. Rather than continuing to accept these in our
stories and convince ourselves they are okay, we should focus more energy on
getting these things to change. Characters, regardless of gender, should be
written with more diversity and be treated like actual humans in all cases.
Female characters need more diverse traits, male characters need to start
showing vulnerability and passiveness as traits that can be acceptable for
their gender in today’s culture. Things continue to change, so why can’t our
stories do the same?
