What makes a strong female character?
Some might say that it’s entirely about physical strength and that a woman who can kick ass is a strong female character. Like Eowyn from The Lord of the Rings or Tauriel from The Hobbit movies.
But I’d argue that “strong” has more to do with how they’re written. A strongly written female character is one with depth, one who is three-dimensional and fully fleshed-out: She contributes to the plot, she has internal struggles, she has positive and negative traits, and she’s complex – as people usually are.
Unfortunately, I think even when writers have good intentions, they can create weakly-written female characters who they believe are strong.
Our obsession with physical strength allows us to ignore other aspects of what makes a female character whole.
Writers will point to the moment where she fights someone and wins as evidence that she is a “strong” character. But now she’s just a flat, two-dimensional character who can also fight.
Quality characters aren’t defined by their physical strength. Men in movies, books, and TV shows are allowed to be physically strong or weak – because they’re allowed to be varied and complicated.
The “Strong Female Character” has basically become a trope in itself, where there’s a token female character in a film who’s meant to represent all women. She’s probably hardened and reserved, but eventually develops a soft side for the main character.
She’s strong and capable, but ultimately takes a background role to the male main character – this is actually really closely related to the “Mediocre Dude Saves the World” trope that my friend Marina has talked about, and I’ll link to her video below.
But anyway, having strength also doesn’t mean being perfect. I think in an effort to represent women positively, writers often fail to give them flaws. The thing is, women are humans, and humans are flawed. A well-written character isn’t perfect. She can make mistakes, she can have problems, and she can even be weak and vulnerable.
And she should definitely have desires outside of being a love interest. Every character – even a minor, side character – is propelled by something. For more major characters or love interests, they should have an even more developed story. If she only exists to get kidnapped, she’s a plot device and not a character.
For positive examples, look at any of the amazing characters in Orange Is the New Black. The show delves into their backstories and gives them complex, realistic lives. I also like Katniss from the Hunger Games books. She suffers from PTSD, grows a lot as a character throughout the trilogy, and is generally allowed to be both powerful and vulnerable.
But right now, these kinds of characters are more the exception than the rule.
But if we want there to be a wide variety of different kinds of strong female characters, we simply need more female characters.
I’ve talked before about how our media doesn’t accurately represent our racial makeup, but it’s the same story with gender.
In 2014, 12% of protagonists in blockbuster films were women according to San Diego State University. The same study found that women made up 29% of major characters and 30% of all speaking characters. A different study by the University of Southern California found that women made up only 33.5% of speaking characters in movies between 2007 and 2014.
With such a small percentage of women with speaking roles in movies, it’s no wonder that they’re represented poorly and forced into old stereotypes. A lack of women in general leads to a lack of genuinely well-written female characters. But it really doesn’t have to be that way.
One solution, I think, is that we need more female writers, editors, producers, and directors. Women are just more likely to tell stories about women and to do so in a complex and fully realized way.
Unfortunately, movie studios are dominated by men who want to hire more men, despite the fact that there are plenty of talented women vying for these jobs.
About 50% of film school graduates are women, but only 1.9% of big budget films are directed by women. The ACLU even asked the government to investigate the hiring practices of major films studios last year. One study by the Sundance Institute found tons of reasons why women can’t make the jump from indie films to big budget productions, including deep-rooted presumptions from the film industry about female filmmakers.
So if we can work on getting more women into the industry, we’ll automatically be improving the representation of women. But that’s not all we can do – we have to demand well-written and multidimensional characters right now. Movie studios, authors, editors – these people listen to the demands of customers. Let them know that we’re tired of women being represented poorly on our screens and in our books.
We need more female characters. We need better female characters. And we need more women behind the scenes creating those characters.
And we need more pizza. Not for any real reason, I just think we need more pizza.
This video is a part of a series I’m doing for Everyday Feminism, a website dedicated to helping you stand up to and break down everyday oppression. I’ll put a link down below so you can check out my previous videos in the series.
Don’t forget to subscribe if you liked this video, and you can even give it a thumbs up too if you’re so inclined. As always, I love you all, I hope you have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you next week. Bye!
