Free to be not a role model

[isaacsapphire]

Discororoboros (@discoroboros) recently made a post about how nobody wrings their hands about if Harry Potter or Iron Man are Good Role Models for boys, but every last female character has to be empowered, tough, and never a victim to get the stamp of approval.

And honestly, this is a lot of what bores me about "strong female characters", or really, just female characters period these days. The man can make mistakes, be wrong, be victimized, have a breakdown, choose to prioritize family over career and still be the lead, still be a person who's story is worth telling.

But Female Characters? Female Characters must be Strong. They can't have flaws, can't make mistakes, can't be weak. And because female characters can't be wrong, can't be weak, female characters can't grow; a Strong Female Character is a static character.

A male character can model enduring suffering, or learning from his errors, or growing up. A Strong Female Character can't.

Comments

[gattsuru]

There's been a few advances in recent years, thankfully. Nearly everyone in My Little Pony was, infamously, more than a little crazy, and it worked pretty well, up to and including women winning against (and sometimes relapsing to) their demons. Star Vs. The Forces of Evil and Steven Universe are both pretty heavily about women characters developing over their own limitations and faults, albeit sometimes at the cost of treating masculinity qua masculinity as toxic.

But the children's cartoons get away with it by being children's cartoons. It's pretty easy to see yourself in Rarity, or Star, or even Amethyst, both aspirationally and as things that you share the desire to overcome.

In most other situations, they have to sacrifice being role models. Brooklyn 99's Diaz or The Good Place's Eleanor aren't bad characters and do develop over their series, but they're still really heavily restricted in other ways.

[isaacsapphire]

You bring up a really good point with MLP:FIM and SU; large female ensemble casts in children's media, where the characters are kinda expected to not be bad examples anyway, permit individual characters to have flaws and so growth. This really highlights that the flaws of the Strong Female Character largely flow from her being the Only female character.