As I’ve been doing this blog and quickly writing my own books, I’ve been paying attention to how other people portray their characters in media. In particular, I’ve been paying attention to how authors and writers portray their female characters in media, which more often than not nowadays is not in a very postive light. The female characters are often made into badass, femme-fatal girlbosses who are just great at everything they do, including (most notably) Mary Sue-iciding entire IPs. That’s why today’s post is dedicated to my thoughts on the subject of how female characters should be protrayed in media.
Now, I feel like I’m probably going to get some readers in comments protesting about how I want female characters to just stay in the kitchen and be degraded or something, I’m just going to say right now that that’s not what I want. I have nothing against strong female characters in movies and books. In my own books and short stories, many of the female characters are warriors and leaders. My problem with most “strong” female characters is the fact that they have seemingly been writen to erase any femine traits that would make them awesome. Today’s “strong” women in media act like volatile men while the men act like cowering puppies in the corner. While the women have very few facial expressions at all and are allowed to do things that a man would be sued for, the men are overly emotional and cowtow to every whim of the female character. In today’s media, if a woman manages to single handedly take down a group of 10 6’5 males to save (for example) a male love interest, it is cheered on and praised, but if a guy does that for a girl, it’s toxic masculinity.
In my opinion, if you’re going to write a female character who’s a warrior, there’s nothing wrong with showing the audience that she is physically weaker than her male opponents and will occasionally need help. There’s also nothing wrong with making her feminine, even when she is fighting, but you need to make it make sense. One problem with the strong-women warriors of today (other than their general dislikeability) is the fact that they often seem to seek fights as a hobby. They fight for ill-defined or unrealistic reasons that only serve to drive the plot forward. When writing a female warrior, you need to give her a better reason than, “I’m just not like the other girls!” Perhaps she’s going to war to help her people, maybe her kingdom is desperate and is enlisting whoever they can, or she has a lover on the battlefield that she cannot bear to live without. Even better is when the motives that originally led her to war trigger a series of personality changes within her that make her stronger.
An example of a well written female warrior is Eowyn, from The Lord of the Rings. She’s a female warrior who wishes to join her father and brother in war because she wished to help her people, something that is admirable, but in some parts selfish as if she was the last one of her line to remain alive and was killed her people would be screwed. However, throughout the book, she is still an example of feminine virtue, and during her fight with the Witch-King of Angmar, it’s clear that she’s overpowered and needs help, which is where Merry comes in. Finally at the end of The Return of the King, her attitude towards war changes, she marries Faramir, and eventually becomes a healer. That’s a storyline that you rarely ever see in the media today.
However, I will say this about writing female characters: if she’s going to be a warrior and you have a magic system, maybe consider giving her some sort of magic power to help even the odds in a fight. I utilize this all the time in my writings and it definitely helps when characters are in a pinch. It especially works well if your character already isn’t human.
I also want to talk about fantasy books where there are kingdoms that seem to soley be ruled by women. While this can work depending on the context and the rules of the world you’ve created, I don’t think it’s the greatest idea to have a fantasy world run by a matriarchy. This isn’t to say it can’t be done or women shouldn’t be leaders, but looking at historical context, men are the ones who are traditionally supposed to be the leaders. They’re the ones who have to go out to war with their armies when they’re under attack while the queen stays home and makes sure the kingdom doesn’t burn down while the king’s gone. While there have been exceptions to the rule, it just makes more sense if there is a sort-of matriarchy going on because all the men are gone fighting in a foriegn war, the queen is the only one to rule because her husband is dead, or something along those lines.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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