Last weekend was the #WomansMarch2017 to support women rights and protest incoming legislation that harms the progress we have made in women's and LGBTQ rights. In honor of this, I thought I would write a little about women in storytelling, because man these girls suffer just like real women.
I want to talk about one of my favorite TV shows, the CW’s Supergirl. The writers have crafted one of the most feminist shows I have ever seen. It's not too in-your-face either. They simply present girls as diverse and complex as we are.
Supergirl follows Kara, Superman’s cousin who followed him to Earth when their planet exploded. She was able to grow up with a human family, and now resides in National City with her sister, Alex. She works for a media mogul as an assistant, while being her city’s savior as Supergirl and working with the top secret government organization, the DEO, fighting evil aliens.
It seems like an ordinary superhero show, until you look at the female characters.
They do it all. The show is loaded with strong women. The hero of our show is Supergirl, one of the first female superheroes I’ve ever seen who isn’t over-sexualized. She is strong, smart, and brave. Her superhero outfit is beautiful, but it is also practical for a crime-fighting hero. She is idolized by the people of National City and by fans of the show for being a badass superhero, not for being hot.
Supergirl is a hero based off of a male hero: Superman. But the funny thing is, even though she does get support from her cousin via texts, he only has a short, two-episode appearance in the second season. That’s it. He saves her once in the first season, but we don’t even see him. He may be Superman, but he isn’t the important one in this story. Kara is. This is her story. She’s not “superman’s cousin”, she’s Supergirl.
Then there’s all the other strong women surrounding her, showing a diverse look at women and our roles in society. Kara is raised with her sister by their single mother. Her sister Alex is a badass DEO agent with an equally badass cop girlfriend. Cat Grant is Kara’s boss at work, and even though she may be mean sometimes, she has built herself a media empire and acts as a mentor to Kara. Lena Luthor takes over Luthercorp after her brother, Lex, went psycho and was sent to jail. Lucy Lane, Lois’s sister, makes an appearance as well. Lucy is dating James Olsen, a new coworker that Kara has a crush on, but even so, Kara and Lucy become friends. And not the keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer kind of friends. Like actual friends. Because girls have got to stick together.
And then we have the villains.
The vast majority of villains on this show are women. Some are evil, and some are misguided. Some are motivated by their career or revenge or by politics and xenophobia. But they are all complex characters who aren’t over-sexualized, and who aren’t exclusively motivated by their relationship to men. All too often we have women who become villains because they have been slighted by men or because they want to protect their children. But sometimes girls can just be plain evil. It happens. I would know.
Female characters are what this show gets right. Because it doesn’t present them as “female characters” it just presents them as characters. Complex, with flaws and strengths that have nothing and everything to do with their femininity. Your characters should be like this.
Here’s a simple test: change the gender of your characters. All of them, do a full swap. Does the story seem ridiculous like that? If so, maybe your female characters and even your male characters are underdeveloped. Your characters are way more than their gender. And girls, especially transgender girls, have been enslaved by their gender norms for far too long.
Peace out, Grace
Comments