Friday, March 1, 2013

Where The Exceptional Woman Falls Short

A lot of Urban Fantasy has a purported strong female character as a protagonist - though we’ve said before how much that “strength” is often little more than being a weapon. But we have these strong women, they kick arse, they take names, they are as powerful and strong as any of the people around them - in fact, they’re usually better with skills, powers and possess a will that eclipses everyone else. They are super special, immensely powerful and the supreme masters of their own life. They resist all authority, they are in charge, they are dangerous and they are strong.

But are these really showing strong women? We have several doubts about whether a strong woman as protagonist means a book is showing female strength or women as strong.

Firstly, there’s the fact that so many of these women are strong because of their special powers or Chosen One status. One example of the change that having superpower brings can be found in the Anna Strong series by Jeanne C Stein. Anna becomes a vampire through a forced act but then ascends to the “Chosen One,” because we certainly cannot have a female protagonist, who isn’t a super special snowflake. Chosen One status is absolutely necessary to be declared an exceptional woman. It all began with Buffy who was the one slayer in each generation and it has only proceeded to get worse. Whether it’s Rachel Morgan from The Hollows, or Sookie Stackhouse and her very special fairy blood, or Chrysabelle and her glowing white skin and gold tattoos from Kristen Painter’s, House of Comarré series; to be considered an exceptional woman you don’t need to be driven, smart, intelligent, or pretty, you just need to have some sort of woo woo which will make you desirable to others.

When these women decide to accept these powers (yes, I said accept, because there’s always a process of denial for the sake of angst) they need to decide how to move forward. This is where most writers will not only throw the Bechdel test out of the window, they will then drive over it with a steam roller to make sure that it is well and truly dead. We all know that there are no two snowflakes which are ever identical, but just to ensure that there is no competition for the title of Queen of the Woo Woo, exceptional women typically abhor all other women. This means every other woman is either competition, or a villainous “bitch” in some way. It took Anna Strong seven books to find a woman whom she could tolerate, who was not a blood relative. Of course, all of the women she has problems with are in some form of relationship with her male friends - but it’s not jealousy honest. Anita Blake started off with a friend but alas, like all relationships engaged in by exceptional women, it was short lived. Chyrsabelle has female servants and one female acquaintance....I suppose that’s marginally better than being an enemy to all women. Jaye Wells proved it’s possible that an exceptional woman can have a friend in her Sabina Kane Series, but they had better be a demon who is thousands of years old and of course male.

It’s not merely a case of being the only woman with no other close female relationships - but we often see other women around them presented extremely negatively. We’ve mentioned and talked about Anita, but she’s hardly unique. Sookie Stackhouse has no close female friends and all of the women in her life she regards with blistering contempt. Even her closest friends, Arlene and Tara, failed Sookie and are judged in the harshest terms - only Pam, so far, has escaped Sookie’s spite. In the Night Huntress series, the only women Cat commonly deals with are regarded with contempt and hatred (usually for being interested in her man) up to and including her own mother. Kat Richards only deals with women who are either outright evil - or helpless, pitiable (and heavily judged) victims. Chicagoland Vampires’ Merit had female friends but they fail her desperately or are dastardly competition for her man (and, of course, evil.)

The women around these strong female characters - if they exist - are so often presented as weak, evil, or otherwise lesser. Yes, there are exceptions, but it’s a depressingly common trope.

Contrast that with the men around them - for a start there are a lot of them! Nearly every strong female protagonist in this genre has far more male friends than she has female friends. Usually several times over (or, in the case of Anita Blake, several, several, several, several times over): Jayné in Black Sun’s Daughter, Sookie, Kat Richards, Jane Yellowrock, Joanne Walker, The Mortal Instrument’s Clary, Night Huntress’s Cat, Victoria Nelson, Kitty Norville - and so many others! And these men are equal or near equal, they can be strong, they can be capable, they can match or nearly match the strong female protagonist in all her specialness. They don’t have to be evil, or competition or sniping or fighting.

Or, to put it another way - these men are her peers, her equals. Not women.

Another glaring pattern we see is a contempt for traditionally performed or stereotypical femininity - especially anything regarded as “girly”. Your strong female character will not use moisturizers or scented soaps, she washes with wire brushes! She’s a strong woman after all! Hair products? Not for a strong woman! She smears mud through her hair, probably with gun oil and engine grease because she’s this strong and tough! And if she’s dressing up for an evening, she will wear a hessian sack with a hole in it for the head - she’s a strong woman and strong women don’t have a clue about silly things like clothes!

It’s not so much the fact these women aren’t interested in these things - naturally there are many ways of being a woman and these interests are far from requirements. But there will usually be a point of emphasising just how alien these pursuits are to her, how completely strange they are and even include an element of derision for them. We’ve also reached a point where the Strong Female Character being taught how to dress by a man is becoming a trope (subtext - behold how not girly she is, even men know better)

We’ve seen this with Audrey in Haven, who chose clothes that should have had her arrested for assaulting everyone who saw them - until she was instructed by the Teagues. Rachel in The Hollows was taken in hand by Kisten before she showed up at a swanky casino grossly under-dressed. Gin Blanco in the Elemental Assassins series has to have her brother take her dress shopping since she’s so clueless - and follows it up by being completely indifferent that someone at the same party as her is wearing an identical exclusive, super-expensive dress (her brother is outraged on her behalf); Joanne Walker in the Walker Papers needs to be rescued by a friend when going on a date, so disinterested in clothes is she. Mercy Thompson and Jane Yellowrock join the ranks of the female protagonists who can’t be trusted to dress themselves. And Anita Blake has to be dragged to a clothing store almost at gun point and repeatedly tells us how she only smears goop through her hair and eschews all make up. Repeatedly. Over and over. And yet again.

Of course, all of these women are effortlessly beautiful and amazingly gorgeous despite their disdain for such silly girlishness (despite only using hair goop, Anita’s hair is so perfect she’s actually harassed on the street by a complete stranger demanding to know which salon she uses). They can achieve the pinnacles of beauty and constantly show up all other women in the room without a second’s thought, preparation or attention.

Again, it’s perfectly understandable that there are women who do not care for fashion, make up etc etc; but we see it above and beyond - there’s a derision for such interest, almost a contempt for the “girliness” and a desperate need to hammer home that this protagonist is not like those other, silly, women.

Ultimately we can’t escape the conclusion that these aren’t so much strong characters who happen to be female, so much as they are strong characters DESPITE being female. They are exceptional women, special women, women who have managed to transcend their femininity. They are women who are “one of the guys” (a very telling phrase that is so often repeated in these books), who have overcome femininity in order to become strong. If you are strong despite being a woman, this is not a positive representation of womanhood. It makes it all the more horrendous that these books are overwhelmingly written by women.  Sometimes it isn’t patriarchy directly holding us back but things we internalise and then naturalise.