Redefining the ‘Strong Female Character’

In a scene meant to be light and humorous in the film “Captain America,” Peggy Carter, the movie’s main female character, grabs a gun and fires several shots towards her sidekick, the eponymous hero. Luckily, he was able to protect himself on time with his famous shield. The reason for this attempted murder? A fit of jealousy. More importantly, the act is a demonstration of the “strength” of her character.

Last November, the New York Film Academy published a study on sexism in the movie industry. In the 500 highest-grossing full-length feature films released between 2007 and 2012, female characters had only 31 percent of speaking roles, and only 11 percent of the films in question had “balanced” casting. Behind the camera, the situation has become even worse for women: Female producers, screenwriters, editors, etc. accounted for 16 percent of the participants in the 250 most profitable productions of 2013 — a drop of one percent since 1998.

The under-representation of women in film has led a good number of (male) decision-makers to remedy this problem by creating the strong female character, a rather clumsy response to the passive damsel in distress. Since the major studios are not ready to accept the notion of equality within their halls, they promote it as aggressively as possible in blockbusters. But more than anything, the studios’ so-called good intentions have been a disservice to women’s advancement on the big screen. Along the way, a serious semantic misunderstanding seems to have occurred.

This is exactly what fantasy author Shana Mlawski observed in a spirited post stuffed with funny memes published on Overthinking It in 2008:

“I think the major problem here is that women were clamoring for ‘strong female characters’ and male writers misunderstood. They thought the feminists meant [strong female] characters. The feminists meant [strong characters], female.

So the feminists shouldn’t have said ‘We want more strong female characters.’ They should have said ‘We want more WEAK female characters.’ Not weak meaning ‘damsel in distress’. Weak meaning flawed.

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.”

A belief shared by freelance journalist Carina Chocano in an essay published online in The New York Times in 2011:

“Maybe what people mean when they say ‘strong female characters’ is female characters who are ‘strong,’ i.e., interesting or complex or well written — ‘strong’ in the sense that they figure predominantly in the story, rather than recede decoratively into the background. But I get the feeling that what most people mean or hear when they say or hear ‘strong female character’ is female characters who are tough, cold, terse, taciturn and prone to scowling and not saying goodbye when they hang up the phone.

“[…] Characters like these […] reinforce the unspoken idea that in order for a female character to be worth identifying with, she should really try to rein in the gross girly stuff.

“[…] ’Strength,’ in the parlance, is the 21st-century equivalent of ‘virtue.’ And what we think of as ‘virtuous,’ or culturally sanctioned, socially acceptable behavior now, in women as in men, is the ability to play down qualities that have been traditionally considered feminine and play up the qualities that have traditionally been considered masculine. ‘Strong female characters,’ in other words, are often just female characters with the gendered behavior taken out. This makes me think that the problem is not that there aren’t enough ‘strong’ female characters in the movies — it’s that there aren’t enough realistically weak ones.”

For Sophie McDougall, a young, British author of alternative history novels, the representation of women on the big screen has only changed superficially. The stereotypes may have been revamped, but they have not been rejected. She made a heartfelt appeal in a long essay published last August in the New Statesman with a title that leaves little to the imagination: “I Hate Strong Female Characters.” She writes that:

“Nowadays the princesses all know kung fu, and yet they’re still the same princesses. They’re still love interests, still the one girl in a team of five boys, and they’re all kind of the same. They march on screen, punch someone to show how they don’t take no shit, throw around a couple of one-liners or forcibly kiss someone because getting consent is for wimps, and then with ladylike discretion, they back out of the narrative’s way.”

At the end of her essay, McDougall wrote a wish list aimed at screenwriters and their bosses — a checklist that they should genuinely consider:

“I want her to be free to express herself

I want her to have meaningful, emotional relationships with other women

I want her to be weak sometimes

I want her to be strong in a way that isn’t about physical dominance or power

I want her to cry if she feels like crying

I want her to ask for help

I want her to be who she is

Write a Strong Female Character?

No.”

To return to the example I used at the beginning — and there are so many more within the genre — I am well-aware that, more often than not, movies are a product of the imagination, especially those from the Marvel factory. But I ask in all honesty: What target audience — to borrow a term dear to the industry — are we catering to with the heroine’s violent, absurd gesture? Please help me, because frankly, I cannot tell whom.

However, what I do believe is that the day this kind of tiresome “ba-dum-tish” scene is universally accepted, but with reversed roles — an ultrabeefy superhero battling beside his sexy female partner with a machine gun in hand — we will finally have achieved male-female equality. But would this be a wise way to celebrate the birth of the 50-50 utopia? Allow me to “strongly” disagree …