Eventually I gave up on the Mary Sue test, the Sexy Lamp test et al and invented a new one I like to call the “Fuck It” Test: can your female character be said to have had a positive effect on anyone, anywhere? If so, she’s a good female character, fuck it.
Wow look they’re still tripping on a bar so low it’s the fucking floor HOW IS THIS HARD? representation matters (x)
Alright, what’s your idea?
Representation does matter, obviously, but at the same time I don’t think trying to remove someone’s – anyone’s – favourite character under the guise of ‘she’s just a sexy lamp! Find a better role model!’ or whatnot is going to help. If a particular character has a good effect on someone, who am I, or anyone, to take that off them?
OKAY I’M BACK FROM GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY LEMME ELABORATE THE SHIT OUTTA THIS
Representation matters on an almost primal level. (Other people have explained that concept much better than I could ever do.) I don’t think there’s anyone here reading this who hasn’t got at least one fictional character who’s theirs. Everyone deserves to be able to look at a fictional character and say ‘that’s me’, and feel good about themselves, everyone, and writers aren’t providing that and it’s endlessly, endlessly frustrating.
But I don’t think discourse about female characters on the Internet is providing that either. Has anyone here not had their favourite (or even their least favourite) female characters written off as ‘not really a person’, or whatnot? Black Widow isn’t good enough, because she wears a form-fitting outfit. Tauriel from the Hobbit isn’t good enough, because she’s only there to have a relationship with a man. ‘Manly’ female characters aren’t good enough. Hell, Mako Mori (…viewed through a white feminist lens…) isn’t good enough. Who the hell is? (Gingerhaze actually put this far better than I did: her list of female characters who’ve been said to have been sexistly written is eye-opening to say the least. There’s a lot of them.)
I’m not saying male characters don’t get similar things every now and again, but there are endless tests and examinations before a female character is declared ‘good’, tests that male characters don’t have to undergo. I know that this is because these tests are supposed to be weighing up whether the (almost always) male writer can write women, but – if a male character fucks something up, or behaves weakly, or does something terrible etc, people are happy to apply motivations to him as if he were a real, living person. Female characters just don’t get that in the same way – people just say ‘X cannot write women; this is not a character’ and carry on. (Sometimes they also say ‘[character] deserved better’ which puzzles me. How could she have deserved better when there was never a her in the first place?)
I think the difference between white-straight-abled male characters and all the other characters in the world is this: those characters can represent everyone. But female characters, for example, have to represent all females. And they shouldn’t have to, which is the crux of this argument, really. I remember when the Doctor Who episode Doomsday aired: people were furious at Rose Tyler’s assertions that she was going to be with the Doctor forever, feeling that her character arc had been reduced to her pining over a man. I definitely remember one comment that’s stuck in my mind all this time – (paraphrased) “This selfish child, this is meant to be us?” And maybe Rose was meant to be us, and if so she definitely failed in that regard – as any character would: no character can represent everyone, no matter how well (or not, even) they’re written. But some people clearly did see themselves in that selfish child – Rose has a massive fan following to this day – and I don’t want to tell them their admiration isn’t valid. Because it is.
Ideally, I want people to recognise that just because they can’t see themselves in a character, the woman next to them might. Just because they think Amy Pond/Jane Foster/Abbie Mills/Brienne of Tarth/Joan Watson/whoever isn’t a character or a person, that doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t thank god for them every day. I don’t want there to have to be a bar at all, but until then – until everyone gets to look at a character and say ‘that’s me’ instead of (though the two aren’t mutally exclusive) ‘that’s us’…
…well, fuck it.