Strong Feminine Female Characters
mood: 
contemplative
contemplativeSo I'm gonna talk about other strong, and female, characters.
Actually, about strong, FEMININE characters.
They MUST abhor pink.
If they have feminine traits, these are their weak and soft sides. The sides that makes them damsels-in-distress.
It is considered ridiculous by many (anti-femininity)feminists when Daphne manages to use her mirror to solve a case, Shuurei wears make up as war paint for political battles, and Elle uses her extensive knowledge of haircare to punch holes in an alibi. But at least in their canon, they are considered great at what they do, even if in some cases it's a parody.
But then there's fandom. Velma is superior to Daphne because she's a nerd that doesn't wear pink and purple. Sora is superior to Mimi because she's a tomboy and not a girly girl. Aerith is weaksauce compared to Tifa, who is a real girl who uses her fists to fight. Zhalia is considered more badass than Sophie.
Do you want to make a badass female character? Give her an ax that's twice the size of her own body. Cut her hair. Make her insist that she isn't like other girls. Make her hate shopping, loathe skirts, make up, jewelery and spa treatments, while making her love mechanics, wrestling and comic books.
Actually, if you're like me, you have a woman who does nail-art, cracks computer systems with the best of them and adopts a Rottie from the local shelter. You have a woman who giggles with her friends at the monster-truck rally because she loves the trucks, before going home to a facial and romcom night. You have a woman who isn't afraid of being feminine, in fact, loving being feminine, while at the same time, don't feel forced to contain herself to one things, hence it doesn't matter if it's feminine, masculine or Martian, she just does what she likes to do.
She visits plane graveyards in skirts and boots. She herself custom paints her own car with purple glitter. She writes Sci Fi novels on her spa holidays. She owns a giant handbag collection containing her gun collection. She practices karate with a pink belt (and competes with a green belt). She match-makes friends and plans attacks for the air force.
So really, I don't care about your fancy charts, or your disagreements with the fancy charts. All I care about is if the character is well-rounded and doesn't feel like a two-dimensional "this is how a strong female character should be", that puts down femininity in every sentence.
EDIT: Seems like I wasn't clear enough (my bad!). I don't dislike it when women/girls/females in general show masculine traits, or are tomboys. My problem is if they are put above feminine girls as better role models, not because they are more ambitious or powerful, but simply because they show masculine traits (also, I have a problem if they are weakened by showing feminine traits, as in, a tomboy gets her hair done and suddenly spends an entire soccer game, in which she's a player, trying to avoid getting her hair messed instead of going for the ball.). I also don't condone of female characters who refuses to climb down a fire ladder because they'll break their nails.
It's all about balance, and as it is, a lot of media doesn't have this balance (in which we get weak, exclusively feminine characters and strong, exclusively masculine characters).
EDIT2 (hopefully the last one): I worded the original post poorly, and somehow wrote something that wasn't my intention.
My intention was to advocate strong, feminine (as society sees them), characters. Instead of designating the token feminine character as the weakest character (as Digimon often does), or making tomboys become weak if the admits to liking something feminine (as Shugo Chara did), or, in the case of a love confession, making a female character weaker and a male character stronger just so that he can protect the new (because she was a fighter before!) damsel in distress (Bleach did this, Naruto did this, probably quite a few others as well).
Unfortunately, I worded things clumsily and made a point I didn't intend to make.
She wears pink, and it's a color that she claims makes her happy. (http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/8800000/-Good-Morning-dr-gillian-foster-8895159-310-166.jpg)
She has a sweet tooth, and loves orange slushies. (http://pics.livejournal.com/feiselia/pic/000027w3/s320x240)
Gillian is a little silly, a little girly, and yeah, a bit straightlaced. She reads romance novels, likes frilly clothes and high heels, isn't great at physical confrontations (though she did once clock an intruder with her frying pan), and never once does the show tell us that isn't okay.
This spells out why I was uncomfortable with some of the reaction to Kara Thrace from BSG. She was a great character but I hated that she was held up as the ideal for female characters. All I saw was a messed up women who had toxic relationships with the people she loved.
I admired Athena who was a pilot, soldier, a wife and a mother. Fitting into traditional roles didn't make Athena weak, but exactly the opposite.
(Anonymous)
So agreed on the Athena love. Kara always seemed a bit unstable. Awesome, but unstable. But Athena had the same job, did the same duties, and dealt with her dual nature, and raised a family. I mean, geeze.
I'd also include Brenda Leigh Johnson of The Closer on this list. She's not afraid to wear pink (http://i.cdn.turner.com/v5cache/TNT/Images/i1/closer_brenda_fu_2.jpg), and she'll show up a crime scene in a lovely dress and big ol' hat (http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tvsquad.com/media/2010/07/the-closer6015kyra-sedgwick-tony-denison-michael-paul-chan-phillip-keeneph-karen-neal-550x375.jpg), but if you're guilty she will do whatever it takes to catch you, and if you mess with her case or her team she will absolutely end you.
(Anonymous)
Here from metafandom
I'm debating if Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada would count? She runs a fashion magazine and is very into high fashion, but she also has stereotypically masculine traits such as being a "ball buster" and almost always wearing all black (too look chic, of course!). No matter if she fits with this or not, she is still an amazing character (at least in the movie)!
-hanachan01 at LiveJournal
(Anonymous)
I don't think unfeminine women are any less "real" women than feminine women, or any more or less a strong character. It depends on how each individual character is written.
(Anonymous)
There's this idea going around that if a woman in fiction doesn't fit at least a few of these gender roles, it's erasing her femaleness, or turning her into fanservice for the men, and I disagree. Some girls and women (cis or trans) are tomboys, and not in the sense that they play sports and giggle over make-up with equal joy, but in the sense that they have no interest in things like make-up and shopping and spas, and do not feel comfortable or happy trying to pretend that they do. This isn't about wanting to be one of the guys. It's about being one of the girls, and having people not acknowledge that because you don't fit their definition of what a girl should be.
That doesn't mean that I think the kick-ass warrior woman who hates cooking and pretty dresses should be the only model for women in fiction. But for those who feel a lot of pressure to be someone more "feminine" than they are/want to be, especially in childhood/adolescence, an the presence of an alternative model in fiction can be both important and very comforting.
Aeris was awesome, but so was Tifa. And it's important not to forget that Zelda was also Sheik. :)
Feminism should be about girls and women being allowed to do whatever they want, no matter if the patriarchy labels it feminine or masculine.
Having a female character decry feminine things is as bad as decrying masculine things, because it reinforces the status quo on what one gender is supposed to do.
(Anonymous)
As for stereotypical butch girls I mostly see them in either romantic comedies (as the ball-busting boss, for examples, who even if she wears a skirt recites the macho man's "emotions are weaknesses" before the male lead makes her show emotions and suddenly she's joked about instead of feared), and some sports/sci fi/military-based stories (though this was about 10-15 years ago, so maybe they've changed).
I can't seem to get my point across, but what I'm saying is that I don't want feminine to be seen as weak, and I don't want masculine characters to be seen as more awesome than feminine characters without any reason except "girl cooties, ew!".
For example, I think all the main girls in Jewel Pet - Tinkle are on the same level of awesome, just in different ways (one happens to be an alchemist, in contrast to the pure magic of the other two). I consider Sailor Jupiter and Sailor Uranus to be awesome as well (even if no one can replace my number one Sailor V, but that's nostalgia talking), but I get annoyed when people go "they're the best sailor senshi because they're not as girly as the others".
My gripe on masculine/feminine isn't that the other exists, but how they're handled.
It's when an otherwise strong, masculine character is shown as weak the first moment they do something even remotely feminine (tsundere characters have this problem, as they're first confrontational and aggressive, tsuntsun, and then sweet, deredere. Their deredere phase often makes them accept damsels-in-distress roles, whereas they never would have done so in their tsuntsun phase).
It's when feminine characters are consistently shown as weak, both in mind and body.
It's when a girl proudly declares that they don't have any girlfriends and only hangs with boys because "girls sucks".
Er, do you get what I mean or should I shut up now? It's not that I hate masculine, female characters. It's when being "feminine" is synonymous with "weak".
I seem to have had a hard time getting my point across without putting my foot in the mouth, I'm sorry about that.
(Anonymous)
You're kind of eliding two different things: the media itself, and fannish response to that media. It's not like the two aren't interconnected, but it does make your point a little bit confused. Other fans aren't responsible for a character in a show being shown as weak when she does something feminine (or, imo, for reacting to that characterization)--if a character in a show repeatedly does things that are shown as weak because feminine, like wearing high heels on a mission and slowing everybody down, I'm not sure that fans can be blamed for reacting to that characterization). Similarly, if a show portrays a feminine character as effective and active and the fans reject her because she's too girly, that's not the show's fault. Those are two different lines of criticism that your post and subsequent comments kind of blur into one. I don't (necessarily) have a lot of problems with your engagement of fangirl anti-femininity, although I think it isn't as cut-and-dried as you portray it, but I don't necessarily agree with your engagement with media.
I'm guessing our different relationships to femininity are leading to different interpretations of media, which means that I don't necessarily see your examples as supporting the point you want to make. Or, possibly, we're just engaging with different types of media. For example, “the ball-busting boss, for examples, who even if she wears a skirt recites the macho man's "emotions are weaknesses" before the male lead makes her show emotions and suddenly she's joked about instead of feared”.
The romantic comedy trope I'm more familiar with is the ball-busting boss (who, imo, is not actually butch but rather inappropriately masculine—her masculine qualities aren't valued as strength or leadership, but rather derided because they come from a woman. Thus “ball-busting” rather than a more admirable adjective) who according to the value system of the movie must become more feminine, softer, more accepting, more open. These feminine qualities aren't judged as laughable, but rather admirable and appropriate for a woman. (There are, of course, many examples of female characters whose femininity is shown as weakness, but again—in the media itself, this isn't seen as bad, but rather as natural for a woman. The weak damsel is seen as great, and the ball-busting boss is seen as, well, a ball-buster.)
Furthermore, as one of the commenters below points out, it's rare to find a female character, even a tomboy character, who doesn't have some conspiciously feminine trait—she loves makeovers, she loves children, she really wants to be the prom queen. And these traits are not shown to weaken the character, but rather to keep her from being (again, inappropriately) masculine or hard. Ripley has to rescue Newt, Zoe has to wear a pretty dress for Wash, the new female action star Salt uses bras and tampons to deal with surveillance cameras (and the movie had to be rewritten so as not to show her husband in a damsel-in-distress role). In the majority of media that I've seen, female characters who are actually butch, and whose masculine qualities are viewed as admirable instead of inappropriate, are few and far between, and even characters whose traits are primarily masculine are obligated to balance those traits out with feminine ones.
Not being very familiar with anime, again, it's perfectly possible that we're just looking at very different forms of media, but you seem to be applying your point across several different types of media, and I'm just not seeing it.
I have yet to see a butch female character in which the butchness wasn't used as an insult or a parody. A reminder of how "women need to stay in their place", i.e. being the only way of a "real woman" by being feminine.
Anime/manga is often put into four different boxes, those for Girls (in which the feminine is gender-neutral), those for Boys (in which the masculine is gender-neutral), and those for Men and Women (which are the most balanced).
Now, in manga for girls, there's a sub-genre called Magical Girls, which contains stuff like Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew and Wedding Peach to name a few. One of them is called Shugo Chara, which is a recently finished manga that was very popular during it's run.
Now, I initially liked it because I could identify with the main character (difference, I was actually made fun of when doing feminine stuff because I wasn't attractive enough to be a girl!), Amu, who projected a tomboy (or "cool and spicy" as everyone around her put it) persona, while hiding her love for feminine and cute things. The entire manga was about her coming to terms with her hyper-feminine dreams (chef, cheerleader, artist, singer).
So then the ultimate battle happens, she transforms into her ultimate dream, which is a bride (at which I went, er... because she did this by combining all her dreams, and I didn't know you got matrimony from that, anyway), while uttering this little gem: "I thought calling myself the hero was a little off... Because I can't be strong like a boy." And then "If boys fight for pride, then girls fight for.." (And she hugs one of her love interests, and they transform). The boys promptly defeat the monster (while declaring that they'll protect her), and then she purifies it while saying "something a girl like me can do, true love!".
This is after we've seen her fight many, many battles, and not in a masculine way (unless pompoms, cake batter and paint brushes are masculine). It's like she became more feminine, but in the course of becoming more feminine, she also became the princess to be protected, only dealing the last blow.
Then there's Mimi from Digimon, whose Perfect-level Digimon, Lilymon, is the weakest Perfect-level Digimon amongst the heroes.
But I guess my vision is colored by my own experiences. Please note that I'm not saying that there should be fewer feminine or masculine characters (in fact, I want there to be an equal number of both, and both groups should be well-rounded and 3D-feeling, and not stereotypes), I just don't want femininity to be seen as a weakness; something that a masculine character reveals only to weaken them (see also: Many, many, many manga/anime for boys. The girls in boys' manga are especially prone on not getting it, "why do boys fight?" they question after having their home invaded and been fighting in the middle of a war themselves, and this is seen as a part of them being feminine), or just making the feminine characters weak.
Er, did I clear anything up? Or should I get off the internet until my fever goes down?
As a child I constantly wanted to see butch or masculine leaning women more. It seemed to me an awful lot of female characters were not actually butch at all, or butch enough. Even if they were "tomboyish", they had to actually tone it down in order to be seen as acceptable women. They had to stop butching it up so much.
This happens over and over and over and over again.
Point out ONE tomboy, who doesn't have to slip into a dress, or give up something that is tomboyish to be "acceptable" and then maybe your argument will have traction with me. Until then, I just have to say: I see some of your points, but I think the way this post discusses gender and femininity, in terms of "feminine women can be strong" totally misses how butch and masculine women are totally ignored or have to be femmed up, constantly.
(Anonymous)
Here via Metafandom (won't let me log in on OpenID for some reason)
I agree that the 'masculinization' of female characters was in reaction to roles which were overwhelmingly weak, hysterical and passive. Butch became a kind of shorthand for strength, willpower, intellectual prowess, and it is superficial and dull and I want to see it stop.
But I hate to see another bunch of superficial, dull personifiers jump in to take their place.
What's wrong with having a soft-spoken, modest, thoughtful, faithful woman/mother/girl from the choir/master cinnamon bun baker also outsmart and overpower her adversaries? Nothing. Such characters can be as interesting and strong as the girls with the dragon tattoos. The truly interesting parts of their character evolve from qualities they've cultivated or realized inwardly.
We're all mixtures, we can like violet-painted nails and rowing in an eight and knitting and directing shows, none of which has anything to do with our 'strength'.
(here via Metafandom, btw)
pensnest
Although I love it, I blame the Compiliation for this one. The Aerith we see in Advent Children and in Crisis Core (also in Kingdom Hearts too) isn't the same strong character we see in the original game. In FFVII she isn't afraid to snark at Cloud for always telling her to stay out of danger, or hesitate to help out someone in a crisis, yet in the rest of the series she seemed to have become a 'weaker' character - one who is more content to take a backseat as it were.
On a discussion post a while back there were quite a few people who played FFVII for the first time and were surprised by her character as in contrast to the rest of the series. The rabid shippers on both sides of the love triangle between her, Cloud and Tifa probably don't help either.
Also, I did see an interesting post made in the FFXIII community about Lightning and her dual roles - Lightning the soldier who wasn't afraid to kick ass and take names, and Clair Farron who acts as a mother/sister figure to the other L'Cie. Lightning is one of my favourite FF characters because she is incredibly badass, but at the same time she has an awesome relationship with Hope as she tries to take care of him.
Also, love Lightning. Love love. My favourite element about her character has nothing to do with the supposed gender role though, so I'll leave it like that.
Yeah, I like Tifa better in AC as well, except for all the times they had to have her getting beaten up or put in danger just for someone else to save her.
And Lightning is total <3. I'm replaying FFXIII at the moment and I'm enjoying it even more this time around, all the characters are awesome. Lightning is still my favourite though.
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(Anonymous)
(Anonymous)
It's not particularly correct, I think, if we apply this to modern media. I have many different examples of feminine women who are also a kick-ass characters. Sarah from 'Chuck' is really good-looking blonde, who wears short skirts all the time. And she's CIA field agent. Same goes to Annie and her boss from ‘Covert Affairs’. They both are strong kick-ass women with very feminine appearance (especially Annie). Aeryn Sun from 'FarScape' is 'tomboy' but incredibly beautiful woman who knows it but don’t care about it al that much. Sam Carter from Stargate SG1, who’s beautiful, kick-ass and genius. Teyla from Stargate Atlantis who is beautiful, feminine, smart and badass. Dana Scully from ‘The X-Files’ is the most obvious example, because she’s feminine and strong woman at the same time. And she likes wear elegant clothes :).
(Anonymous)
Pro tip: Just because a woman is a "tom boy" or doesn't like girly stuff does not mean that she is being portrayed as "masculine."
What you are saying is very harmful, not the least of which because it cast judgement against the concept of being "butch," which for those of us who are queer, has been and continues to be a major issue.
tl;dr: You don't get to define what is "feminine" and "masculine" by what a woman wears. Doing so is sexist and offensive.
So really, I don't care about your fancy charts, or your disagreements with the fancy charts. All I care about is if the character is well-rounded and doesn't feel like a two-dimensional "this is how a strong female character should be", that puts down femininity in every sentence.
Yeah, your definition of "feminity" ? Fucking fails. A fucking dress does not define a woman's feminity, and if you think it does, then fuck you.
My intention was to advocate strong, feminine (as society sees them), characters. Instead of designating the token feminine character as the weakest character (as Digimon often does), or making tomboys become weak if the admits to liking something feminine (as Shugo Chara did), or, in the case of a love confession, making a female character weaker and a male character stronger just so that he can protect the new (because she was a fighter before!) damsel in distress (Bleach did this, and probably will in the future as well).
Unfortunately, I worded things clumsily and made a point I didn't intend to make.
Incidentally, this problem also affects feminine men, who are usually assumed to be pure fluff. If they turn out not to be, then they become a source for comedy.
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