The problem with "strong female characters"

There's been a recent backlash against portraying women as weak in fiction, and that's fine, but the result, the "strong female character" has become a stereotype in and of itself, and does absolutely nothing for feminism.

The problem with the strong female character is all she gets to be is strong -- and sexy. We've traded weak women for women whose only value comes from their looks and the power they have over men using their looks. And this is not an improvement.

The reason why we even talk about "strong female characters" (we never talk about "strong male characters") is because there's a severe shortage of female characters to begin with. Don't believe me? Try this simple exercise. It's called gender-bending. Take a TV series or movie and switch the gender of every single character. I'm using Sherlock. This also works really well with Breaking Bad. Or, most likely, any big box office film you've seen recently. Now look at the cast you have and imagine watching this show instead. You'll probably have a thought along the lines of, "Wow, it's all women." I know I did when I started developing my gender-bent Sherlock fanfiction.

But if it's "all women" now, it must have been all men before. So why didn't we notice the disparity before gender-bending? Why are we noticing it now?

We simply don't get to see as many female lead characters as male lead characters. And when there is a movie or show with many female characters, it's called Girls, or its female representation is the basis of the show. Do women distract from plots or something? This can't be true, though, because Orphan Black is loaded with female characters. And they're all played by the same actress. And they're all totally unique, interesting individuals.

Wow, Orphan Black is so good. Go watch it.

But maybe it's the fact that there are so few female characters that contributes to a vicious cycle. If you have a female character, it better be a good one. It can get scary; no one wants to do it wrong and be attacked. So you pour all your effort into one female character that's... um. Scarlett Johansson.

Okay, great. But you do understand that half of all people are women, right? So one women in a virtually all male cast is getting no one off the hook, no matter how "strong" she's meant to be.

And why can't female characters be weak? A lot of people are weak. More people are weak than strong. That's a much more relatable and realistic trait. But since there are precious few female characters around, the ones that we get can't be real in this way. They have to be some "ideal" representation.

If half of all characters were female we wouldn't be talking about how to best represent women in the media. Because we would see a variety. We would see real people, not a handful of stereotypes and love interests. Love interests that are slated to die so our hero can grow, and our actor can showcase his talents. (I'm looking at you, Amazing Spider-Man 2.)

The problem with the whole idea of "strong female characters" is that we shouldn't even be talking about it. We should have enough women in movies and TV shows that the way they are portrayed isn't a big deal at all.

Why media representation is important

We tend to judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions. But what's interesting is, we judge characters by their intentions. Talk to any Breaking Bad fan. We're not talking about what Walt did; we're talking about why he did it. This suggests that we view characters as an extension of ourselves. We don't simply observe their actions. We experience their lives.

And that, in a nutshell, is why media representation is so important. (And why I'm starting a new series of posts on the topic.) Why should we only get to experience the lives of straight, white, cis men?

Well, we get to experience the lives of others as well. But only in movies about (and for) women; in movies about being gay; in movies about being a person of color; in movies about being transgender. These types of movies make the viewer hyper-aware of the gender, race, identity and orientation -- and therefore unable to actually experience this character's life in the honest way we can experience the lives of white, cishet men in most movies. Not movies about white cishet men. Just movies. Movies about a character, an individual. Not about a segment of the population.

Sometimes there are complaints about how realistic it is to have a diverse set of characters. Something like, well, you can't have a black person and a transgender person and a gay person in the same room together. That's way too much. That's "trying too hard."

Okay, yeah. Maybe that isn't super likely to happen in real life. But we're okay with movies not being realistic when they're about superheroes or monsters or wizards. Why is it suddenly a travesty to show people who actually exist in perhaps a slightly higher concentration of "diversity" than we can swallow?

TV and movies don't purport to be representations of real life. And who would want them to be? We can suspend disbelief in order to watch a man become a spider, or a giant lizard destroy Tokyo. So why is it "trying too hard" to include women and PoC and LBTG people in lead roles in the same movie? It's almost like it's okay to have your token non-white-cishet-male in a lead role, but anymore than that, eyebrows get raised: what are they trying to prove?

Even if the level of diversification is unrealistic, it's still important. One day, it probably won't seem so odd. One day, it will probably be negligible. But fiction should always be a few steps ahead of society. Fiction can be a factor in progress -- never doubt it lacks the power. Not only is it important to see people who are unlike you in lead roles, but it's also important to see people who are like you.

I don't think this applies to just me, but as a woman I find it far easier to have female role models. Not that I don't aspire to be the next Vince Gilligan, but for some reason, it's easier to imagine myself as Gennifer Hutchison or Moira Walley-Beckett, two of the fantastic female writers of Breaking Bad. (This is a side note, but I swear, these women wrote all the best parts. *cough* Ozymandias *cough* I am the one who knocks. Ahem.)

The real world doesn't give everyone role-models who look like them. (We're only had cishet-male presidents, for god's sake, and we've just recently been able to erase "white.") It might take a kid looking up to a fictional character, and aspiring to be like that character, in order to break a glass ceiling in the real world once they grow up.

So let's give those kids the kick-ass characters they deserve.

Why are we all so worried about the national debt?

It seems like a bad thing for our government to be in debt, doesn't it? Yeah, it certainly seems bad. But is it really?

Thinking rationally and economically, it's not a problem at all to be running up debts in the trillions. Think about it. What's wrong with having debt? Well, having to pay it back. What's special about the debt the United States government holds? They're never going to pay it back. And no one actually wants them to. Most of our debt (two-thirds) is owed to ourselves -- to Americans. For the rest, let's just say China. A lot of people are worried about China knocking on our door, saying 'pay-day.' But will they ever do this?

Of course not.

They're not dumb. They don't want their money back; they want a healthy economy. The U.S. government is the most reliable debtor in the world. It always pays interest on time.

If we were to try to pay our debt back for some inconceivable reason, let's think through what would happen. First of all, we'd have to cut government spending down to next to nothing and raise taxes. So our economy's in a major recession. We pay off our debts in a few years, but the world economy is in the toilet. Especially China's economy. While we were in that huge recession, we were no longer able to be their number one customer.

There's no way to pay off these debts without implementing a contractionary fiscal policy that would be detrimental to our own economy -- and to the economies of those we're in debt to.

So tell me again why China's going to make us pay up?

Oh, yeah. They're not.

So what's bad about debt that you never have to pay off?

Oh. I know. It wounds our precious American egos. If we're in debt to China, we're lesser than them. We're beneath them. We owe them something. And we can't be beneath China, for god's sake, we're America.

Well, well, well. Look, America, it's time to have an honest talk with ourselves. We're not number one anymore. No one's number one anymore. We're all just competing and cooperating, and there's no grand prize. And if we're going to let our egos influence us into cutting government spending that helps improve lives, even save lives... I'm all for making decisions emotionally, I'm an INFJ after all, but this is one area where we have to be rational.

There's no real problem with the United States government having a huge national debt. It's all in our heads.

10 best Welcome to Night Vale openers

Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast series that's really awesome and you should download it and listen to it right now. Every episode begins with a great line or two, before the obligatory "Welcome to Night Vale" greeting and theme music. So this is basically another cold opens list.

Here's my countdown of the top ten best Welcome to Night Vale openers.

#10. Episode 46: Parade Day

Act natural. Act like all of nature. Act like the entire cycle of life and death and change and rebirth. Welcome to Night Vale.
One thing that these openers do often is take a familiar saying and add a twist. This one's a delightful example of that.

#9. Episode 31: "A Blinking Light"
Our god is an awesome god. Much better than that ridiculous god that Desert Bluffs has... Welcome to Night Vale.
A play upon a familiar saying and a stab at Night Vale's rival town. And it raises a lot of questions, namely: who exactly is Night Vale's god?

#8. Episode 37: "The Auction"

Velvet darkness. Silken light. The rough burlap of evening. The frayed cotton of daybreak. Welcome to Night Vale.
The writers of Night Vale are fantastic writers, and this quote demonstrates that fact well.

#7. Episode 38: "Orange Grove"

You take the good. You take the bad. You take them both, and there you have spiders crawling out of a red velvet cupcake. Welcome to Night Vale.
I just can't get this quote out of my head. It might trigger a laugh upon first hearing it, but then the mental image is quite difficult to shake.

#6. Episode 43: "Visitor"

Listen to your heart. You can hear it deep under the earth, creaking and heaving with roots snapping and birds flapping quickly away. Welcome to Night Vale.
Did I mention that the writers are fantastic? I love the feelings evoked by this quote: an ancient sort of fear and power.

#5. Episode 39: "The Woman from Italy"

Flying is actually the safest mode of transportation. The second safest is dreaming. The third safest is decomposing into rich earth and drifting away with the wind and rain. Welcome to Night Vale.
Do you laugh or do you cry? Or do you curl up into a ball and rock back and forth?  Depends on the day.

#4. Episode 40: "The Deaf Bowman"

The riddle says he walks on four legs in the morning, he walks on two legs at midday, and at night he slithers from dream to dream effortlessly, like the air we breathe. And we love him. Welcome to Night Vale.
I just... I don't even quite know how to describe what this makes me think and feel, but I'll assume that you think and feel the same.

#3. Episode 36: "Missing"

Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky at night, the sailors are howling and laughing. The sailors begin to surround us, and the night sky is so very red. Welcome to Night Vale.
As we've seen previously in this list, openers will often put a new twist on well known sayings. This one does it best of all.

#2. Episode 1: "Pilot"

A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale.
This is the line that has hooked everyone who started listening from the beginning with its description of Night Vale and its residents.

#1. Episode 24: "The Mayor"

The sun has risen. You are awake. This symmetry is not without meaning. Welcome to Night Vale.
This is the best opener of them all. It captures the wonder and philosophy of the program in a concise, simple way, and it just gives me chills. It's perfectly worded. I stand in awe. I would literally get this as a tattoo.

These openers are great stand-alone quotes to represent the tone and feel of the show, get you to laugh, and to think. And maybe have a few existential crises. But you need to hear these in Cecil's voice, so...

Go listen to Welcome to Night Vale.

Like, now.