now that I am thinking of it the “strong female character” discourse perpetual motion machine has honestly done terrible damage to how people write female characters, especially in YA books, because it encouraged people to write individual characters in terms of things that were generally wanted or needed among female characters.
so reader A wants women who are independent, so I’ll make my protagonist independent. reader B wants women who are strong, so she’s also strong. Reader C wants women who are feminine, so she’s feminine, but reader D wants women who are not traditionally feminine, so she isn’t too feminine, and reader E wants women who don’t need a man, so we’re going to avoid focusing on romance, but reader F wants women who are sexually independent, so we’re still going to have her be sexually active and explicitly not give a shit about her virginity, and it keeps going and keeps going.
and what you end up with is a bunch of characters that exhibit a limited range of qualities because few people want to write women that strongly contradict *any* of the things people want from female characters, because we’ve been reading it like every single female character has to individually model what a Good Female Character should be like, and the majority of YA protagonists are vaguely the same level of feminine, independent, vulnerable, skilled, clever, and sexual, and it’s actually suffocating
There used to be this concept going around called the “Galbrush Paradox.”
To find the original text…
It’s a little angry, haha. But the point is there.
Basically: There is a perception that with female characters, a woman must be representative of women as an entire demographic. There is no such perception with that in male characters. And this is bad; out of well-meaning concern for women as a demographic, it stifles what kind of female characters can be created, and that in turn sort of pushes female characters further into specific niches
Okay this is the best thing I’ve read all day thank you for showing me.
Okay this is the
best thing I’ve read all day thank
you for showing me.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
I mean, if Galbrush is the only woman on that pirate ship, the question of if she’s being discriminated against for being a woman is definitely boogieing in the spotlight. If no less than half of the other pirates are women, though, the question is answered and you can write her just as you would have Guybrush. (Presuming the answer is “no”, which is something you’d actually have to write as such)
ALT
