Sharks and other things

solo-forever:

gingerhaze:

feminspire:

alyssakorea:

Tumbling over the past year and a half has made me see the problems of gender roles that exist in media, but sometimes it gets to the point where I over analyze every single piece of television or film that I come across. (However this in no way means that I think feminist media criticism is wrong, or should be avoided!) Mostly I just over think everything.

I’ve thought about this a lot and I think the answer is MORE, and MORE DIVERSE female characters.

We’re used to having one or two female characters in a cast of mostly men, and hold them to a higher standard because of that. So all of feminism is resting on the shoulders of one female character - and that DOESN’T WORK. Because there isn’t one right way to be a woman.

If casts had more diversity of gender, we could have warrior women and non-warrior women, sexual women and non-sexual women, feminine and non-feminine, and mixtures of all of the above…all are completely legitimate ways to be a woman.

We’re used to seeing a lot of hypersexualized, scantily clad, one-dimensional stereotypes of women without stories or motives of their own. We respond by asking for characters that AREN’T THAT, but we may end up pushing too far in the opposite direction, and demonize traits like sexuality, conventional attractiveness, and traditional femininity as “sexist.” That’s why the most popular female characters are the ones that are most similar to male heroes - the Arya Starks - emotionally distant, unattached, solve their problems with violence, not remotely sexual. That’s fine too of course. I love Arya. It’s just not…the only way to be.

Game of Thrones and Avatar:The Last Airbender are the best examples of AMAZING shows that do female characters AMAZING. There are so many female characters running around that, instead of feelings like troupes or rolls, all of the female characters just FEEL LIKE CHARACTERS.

Both series have characters who are feminine and sexy but also have a healthy amount of warrior women. They have mothers and teachers, they have (the most terrifying) female villains, they have female heroes. Their characters have flaws and they are well rounded just like the male characters.

As Ginger says, when you have a show that only has one or two characters that are female—things become suspicious and suddenly you’re left scrutinizing these female characters who seem to be the only girls in their world. 

If you’re a writer and you want to write a story and you don’t want to include women in it, stop and think about why you don’t want to include women. There can be some really heavily sexist implications behind whatever your “reason.”

(via swingsetindecember)