I'm a big fan of action movies—especially ones where the hero displays desperate and selfless courage to save the day/save the world. There’s just something so beautiful and gripping about those characters who overcome basic human self-interest, beat all the odds through sheer determination, and inspire everyone around them to rise up and defeat the enemy.
The problem? Those characters have always been men. I'm not a man. The supporting actress is the character I, or rather my little girl self, was always meant to aspire to. Women don’t lead charges into battle, and they don’t get to walk calmly away in slo-mo while buildings explode behind them.
Instead, women fight emotional battles, maybe political battles if she has enough of a low-pitched voice. Or, she finds a ne’er-do-well con-man and converts him into her own personal knight in shining armour through the sheer beauty of her joyful, innocent approach to life.
Go ahead! be dangerously naïve and weak; once you’ve suffered long enough, if you’ve kept a positive outlook, a man will eventually come along to save and protect you. That’s pretty realistic…right? Good life lesson.
That’s why I was so excited to see Wonder Woman. Finally, a character who isn’t just beautiful, alluring, and innocent.
She has the strength and skills to protect herself, to forge her own path, and fight according to her own agenda. No more is the ideal female embodied by a doe-eyed, free-spirited teenager with more body to her hair than there is in her clothes. Thank God for that, because we need our little tweenagers to be strong in this world. This is not a Disney princess friendly place.
I could go on for eons about female role models in the popular narratives of Western civilization. The important thing is: our books and movies need to stop limiting female roles. We need more nuance. A woman can be a serious, strong individual, AND an emotionally-literate innocent. We need to see this in our stories. Our little girls need to see this. More importantly, they need to know that they can BE this.
And this isn't even touching on breaking the molds male role models! Little boys need better too. A man is still a man, even if he can't catch a fish with his bare hand.
Disclaimer: I actually adore Disney movies, Tangled and Mulan in particular, but I've also been dealing with the disillusionment that I will never be Belle for way longer than I should have had to. Thus the recriminations with pinch of resentment.