In praise of weak female characters

I am going to quote Mlawski’s “Why Strong Female Characters Are Bad for Women” at length. Because once in a while there comes a topic so solid that even I, even in these latter days of the Law, cannot relegate it to the ephemerality of Twitter.

• “It was very clear that [the 2007 Transformers movie] was made for a very specific audience: young white nerdy men who wish they could bone models after watching them sexily fight robots so sweat cascades down their luscious tanned bodies.”
• “This Super Strong Female Character is almost like a Mary Sue, except instead of being perfect in every way because she’s a stand-in for the author, she’s perfect in every way so the male audience will want to bang her and so the female audience won’t be able to say, ‘Tsk tsk, what a weak female character!’ It’s a win-win situation.”
• “Good characters, male or female, have goals, and they have flaws. Any character without flaws will be a cardboard cutout. Perhaps a sexy cardboard cutout, but two-dimensional nonetheless. And no, ‘Always goes for douchebags instead of the Nice Guy’ is not a real flaw. Men think women have that flaw, but most women avoid ‘Nice Guys’ because they just aren’t that nice. So that doesn’t count.”
• “And, by the way, it’s OK if these women are hot. The characters I just mentioned above… are all quite attractive. But they also DO get beat up and they DO look like they could kick your ass. Except for Zhang Yiyi, who’s like thirty pounds. But she at least looks graceful enough that she could fly and kick your ass with a sword, and she looks angry and batshit crazy enough that she’d do it twice.”

And now that I am done quoting it, you are going to read the whole thing.

In praise of weak female characters posted June 25th, 2010 in Feminism, Writing | 8 Comments »