We Need to Ditch the "Strong Female Character"

This post originally appeared on this blog in 2017 , and again on the Bitch Shelf column in 2018.

From Reddit

Most of us have at least heard of the term "strong female character." Whenever the director of the latest action flick says their token girl is a "strong female character," or the author of a thriller swears up and down that his work isn't sexist because he's got a lot of "strong female characters" in it, it sets most of the audience at ease. We picture an attractive woman, probably in some sort of tight-fitted outfit, armed to the teeth with gadgets and weapons suitable to whatever setting she's in.

But there's a problem with the strong female character.

Okay, a lot of problems. We're going to go into them in detail.

​The biggest issue is that they're a cookie-cutter token that's usually sexualized and designed for the cis male audience rather than the women she supposedly represents.

What is the "Strong Female Character"?

Strong female characters--or SFCs--were originally designed to be the polar opposite of the damsel in distress archetype. By which I mean she's a female character who's very good at traditionally masculine skills: combat, computers, motor vehicles, etc.

Some stories do this very well. Google "strong female character" and the images that pop up are Princess Leia, Ellen Ripley, and Hermione Granger, all of them well-written, three-dimensional characters that are now culture icons.

But most stories flop.

The SFC has become a cinema cliche, a diversity item to cross off of a writer's list so they can claim their work is inclusive. But the SFC runs into a host of problems in most stories she appears in that undermines the writer's--often genuine--efforts to create an inspiring female character.

The Problems with the "Strong Female Character"
​#1: What Does it Even Mean?

What the hell does "strong" mean?

This is a serious question. What does the "strong" in "strong female character" actually mean?

It can't be "physically strong/muscled," because that would exclude Hermione Granger and Nyota Uhura. They rely on their brains and other skills to achieve their goals.

It can't be "trained in martial arts" or "good with a gun," because again: Granger and Uhura, plus Shuri who--while amazing--is pretty useless without her technology.

Those of you who are authors might think the "strong" stands for "strength of character" or "great narrative arc," except as we'll see, our SFCs usually fail that test, too, either shunted off as tokens or winding up as damsels in distress anyway.

So right out the gate we have problems with our definition, and that's not even touching on the word "female." What if your character is assigned male at birth but identifies as a woman? Or is genderfluid? Or agender? Or is anywhere else on the trans/non-binary spectrum? Or the opposite: if a gun-toting, leather-clad hero identifies as a man but was assigned female at birth, do they still make the list?

We all know what a "strong female character" looks like. She's a trim (never "fat"), usually white, sixteen-to-thirty-five-year-old cisgender woman who is, on top of everything else, conventionally pretty.

This is the character in all the movies that make all the lists of "best women characters" or "best female characters." And it's shockingly exclusive. Despite how weirdly vague the term itself is, there's only one kind of "strong female character" anyone ever thinks about or sees.

#2: No Character to Speak Of

When an SFC is done right, she has character. Depth. Personal issues and turmoils that she has to overcome. Think Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sure, it's fun to watch her fight monsters, but what makes her an icon is her struggle to balance a personal life with her responsibilities as Slayer.

Not so with most SFCs. Half of the time they're tokens, being the only woman or femme character in the entire cast while the majority of the movie follows the male lead. When they do get screen time, we don't get to see a whole lot of... character .

I'd say the Avengers franchise is particularly guilty of this. Outside of Captain Marvel , whose arc is contained to one movie, the vast majority of the characters are (white) men. Despite Wanda and Natasha coming from interesting backgrounds and moral dilemmas, their characterization revolves mostly around their relationship with men. As soon as Natasha and Bruce Banner ultimately decide that it's not going to work between them in Endgame , she gets killed off. Because of that, I'm genuinely worried about how they're going to handle her in the upcoming Black Widow movie.

That brings me to the next point...

#3: Love Interests Only

My most hated foe.

So many women characters have had their potential squandered by getting roped into a half-baked love interest that has no business being there in the first place.

The greatest offender in recent memory is Tauriel from The Hobbit. Our first impression of her is an incredible fighter who doesn't like (or at least, doesn't trust) dwarves. She's the only woman in the elven boy band of fighters in a patriarchal society, so how did that happen? She's implied to be of a lower class of elves, which is why the elf king doesn't want her hanging around Legolas, so how did she become such a high military rank depsite all of her social handicaps?

There's so much potential for her. Maybe, when she hears about the dragon hoard in the mountain, she tries to claim it for her kingdom. Or perhaps she ends up befriending one or more of the dwarves like Legolas did with Gimli and goes through her own arc of growth and acceptance of other races. Or maybe she still has to prove herself to her people because of her class and/or gender, and decides going out to fight a dragon or a bunch of orcs is the best way to do that, kind of like Eowyn.

What did the writers decide to do? Stick her in a love triangle with Legolas and Kili. That's the only way we see any part of her characterization, and it ultimately proves futile because Kili dies, Legolas goes looking for Aragorn, and Tauriel herself...well, we have no idea what happened to her after she was done crying over the dead dwarf. When the romantic subplot ended, so did her importance to the story.

#4: Still Damseled

Probably the worst offense of the strong female character is that, nine times out of ten, it fails in its original purpose. The SFC was designed as a counter balance to the damsel in distress. A femme character whose background, skills, and/or personality would make it theoretically impossible for her to become kidnapped and stuck in a tower to await rescue.

And yet most SFCs end up the damsel in distress anyway! Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy (twice in one movie), Valka from How to Train Your Dragon 2 , Lucy in Despicable Me 2 , most of the Doctor's companions in Doctor Who , and several more.

So...what's the point? Why have a "strong female character" if she needs to be rescued anyway?

How to Fix the "Strong Female Character"

Ideally, we'd live in the world where we could just focus on strong characters, and that they'd be fairly representative of men, women, and LGBTQ+ populations without question.

Unfortunately we don't live in that world just yet. We have to put serious effort into creating and finding minority characters in media, which is why people still use the term "strong female character" when they're trying to tell people that they have a strong character who's female.

If you're writing a story--a book, a movie, whatever--and want to include an SFC, change the term, first. We'll keep "strong," simply because that's the only way we can differentiate between good and weak characters right now. But use "femme" instead; that's a far more encompassing term that typically includes anyone who identifies as a woman in some way.

You're writing a strong femme character. Good. I'll direct you to my previous blog post on writing women characters to help with the character creation.

The process is shockingly similar to writing cis male characters. Treat your femme characters with the respect you give your masc characters. If you damsel a woman, damsel the man. Give her a character and an arc outside of her love life, something Black Panther did very well.

And when in doubt, ask as many women you can to read your story and tell you when you're doing something wrong. They'll help.

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What's an SFC you've seen done right?
What have you seen done wrong?
​Comment below!

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