So I have a post on Feminism itself coming at some point.
Before I post that, though, I wanted to write about this.
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I grew up on Star Wars. Those movies, to me, feel like home. My brain deeply associates Star Wars with my family and my childhood. Watching the movies with my cousins, my sibling and I standing on our staircase in India and singing the theme as loudly as possible, playing in the basement and backyard with lightsabers and Jedi cloaks.
Princess Leia was (and honestly still is) so important to me. She was gorgeous, and brilliant, and so smart and sassy and badass. She was undeniably feminine, she was a princess, and she was also a rebel leader, and ambassador, a general, a Skywalker. She kept up with Luke and Han and was not afraid to put them in their place when they were stupid. And she paved the way for every other woman in Star Wars, who are each unique and important in different ways.
I think the books I read and the movies I watched as a kid had an undeniable impact on how I see women, and feminism, and myself.
I read a lot as a kid. There was this one picture book called A is for Abigail. It went through the alphabet and had women who were leaders/world-changers for every letter. Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Marie Curie, Annie Oakley, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, to name a few. I had forgotten about the book until I found it in the library about a year ago. Little kid me really liked that book. I liked the pictures, first of all, but I also liked reading about all those women and all the possibilities they carved out for themselves and every little girl who came after them. They were stay-at-home moms, scientists, fashion designers, singers, teachers, pilots, civil rights activists, chefs, mathematicians. It was glorious.
Seeing that book again made me really think about the characters that I let influence me as a kid.
It started with American Girl books -- historical fiction from the viewpoint of nine-, ten-, eleven-year-old girls. History from the perspective of little girls, by nature, makes you want to start fighting for equality. I also read almost every Nancy Drew book, about the wonderful, super cool female detective, and her best friends. The Chronicles of Narnia helped shape my view of women -- women as adventurers, leaders, warriors, queens. Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, Percy Jackson and Jane Austen's books. I think we can attribute a ridiculous amount of my personality to Jo March and Anne Shirley. I wanted ink stains on my fingers and an attic hangout to eat apples and write in because of Jo. I dyed my hair red because of Anne. They were ridiculously impactful. Jo, who makes her own decisions no matter what anyone thinks. Anne, who is imaginative, flawed and funny, stubborn and lovely and unabashedly herself. Any character that loved books was one of my favorites. Annabeth Chase: self-sufficient, badass, genius, goals in every way. Elizabeth Bennet, the clever, independent, hard-headed heroine of Jane Austen's most famous novel. They have all been with me for years, proving to me that women can do anything.
Representation is important, especially if you think about it in the context of children. When kids watch movies and read books, they are fueling their imagination with both how the world is and how the world could be. They need to see characters they relate to. Characters who show them what is possible. Characters that tell them -- even subconsciously -- they can be successful and powerful and inspirational and loved.
And not only do they shape how we see ourselves, fiction and media are some of the first ways we perceive people who are unlike us, who are outside our little circle of the world. This is another reason diversity is essential in fiction -- it creates empathy and builds connecting points where they might not otherwise exist.
Once I hit middle school, it was Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, the Lord of the Rings. Characters like Hermione Granger, Professor McGonagall, Molly and Ginny Weasley, Katniss Everdeen, and Eowyn were the people I was looking up to. I think J.K. Rowling did one of the best jobs with her female characters of any author I have ever read. Every woman is fully her own character with her own personality and her own strengths. (Side note: I asked a BUNCH of my friends about their favorite fictional women and Hermione was the #1 answer, with Mulan, Rey, Leia, and Annabeth also being very high on the list.)
In high school, I started watching/following TV shows for the first time. A whole new world of women as surgeons, superheroes, space travelers, and secret agents opened its world to me. This was also probably about the time I started thinking critically about the kinds of fictional characters I wanted.
I'm not asking for every woman to be physically strong, or to be totally independent, or to never cry. I am asking for women who are three-dimensional, who have their own character arc, who are complete without the men in the movie/book/series/whatever. They can be romantic, they can be emotional, they can be aggressive and mean. I want lovers and fighters and artists and scientists. I want black women and Asian women and Muslim women and everyone else. I want straight women and gay women and trans women. I want diversity, I want representation, I want backstory, I want them to be people on their own, first and foremost.
I find it curious that so many feminist fictional icons come from science fiction and fantasy. At first, I wondered if it was just me because I consume so much science fiction and fantasy. When the Women's March rolled around, however, I realized it wasn't just me. Princess Leia, Hermione, Wonder Woman, and others popped up on posters all over New York City and Washington D.C. and the rest of the world.
I have a theory on why this is. Science fiction/fantasy allows a different version of reality. Setting something in the distant future or another world can alter gender roles, expectations, conventions. This distance allows women to be in different positions than we usually see in reality. Women have a different level of freedom in deep space or the distant future or in the wizard world. We rarely see them being questioned and challenged on screen in science fiction. These women live in a world where they are simply allowed to lead lives -- ordinary or extraordinary, without having to justify every move they make.
This is not the world we live in.
But! 1) Real inspirational women who overcome all expectations and stereotypes and obstacles exist all around us. Absolutely, without a doubt. I would start listing them off, but that is a job for another day. And 2) I think we can get to a better world. We can get to the world of the characters that inspired me, where women are just accepted as doing whatever they want and whatever they are good at. Even if it means we have to move to those new planets NASA found to get there.
Before I post that, though, I wanted to write about this.
*********************************************************************************
I grew up on Star Wars. Those movies, to me, feel like home. My brain deeply associates Star Wars with my family and my childhood. Watching the movies with my cousins, my sibling and I standing on our staircase in India and singing the theme as loudly as possible, playing in the basement and backyard with lightsabers and Jedi cloaks.
Princess Leia was (and honestly still is) so important to me. She was gorgeous, and brilliant, and so smart and sassy and badass. She was undeniably feminine, she was a princess, and she was also a rebel leader, and ambassador, a general, a Skywalker. She kept up with Luke and Han and was not afraid to put them in their place when they were stupid. And she paved the way for every other woman in Star Wars, who are each unique and important in different ways.
I think the books I read and the movies I watched as a kid had an undeniable impact on how I see women, and feminism, and myself.
I read a lot as a kid. There was this one picture book called A is for Abigail. It went through the alphabet and had women who were leaders/world-changers for every letter. Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Marie Curie, Annie Oakley, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, to name a few. I had forgotten about the book until I found it in the library about a year ago. Little kid me really liked that book. I liked the pictures, first of all, but I also liked reading about all those women and all the possibilities they carved out for themselves and every little girl who came after them. They were stay-at-home moms, scientists, fashion designers, singers, teachers, pilots, civil rights activists, chefs, mathematicians. It was glorious.
Seeing that book again made me really think about the characters that I let influence me as a kid.
It started with American Girl books -- historical fiction from the viewpoint of nine-, ten-, eleven-year-old girls. History from the perspective of little girls, by nature, makes you want to start fighting for equality. I also read almost every Nancy Drew book, about the wonderful, super cool female detective, and her best friends. The Chronicles of Narnia helped shape my view of women -- women as adventurers, leaders, warriors, queens. Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, Percy Jackson and Jane Austen's books. I think we can attribute a ridiculous amount of my personality to Jo March and Anne Shirley. I want
Representation is important, especially if you think about it in the context of children. When kids watch movies and read books, they are fueling their imagination with both how the world is and how the world could be. They need to see characters they relate to. Characters who show them what is possible. Characters that tell them -- even subconsciously -- they can be successful and powerful and inspirational and loved.
And not only do they shape how we see ourselves, fiction and media are some of the first ways we perceive people who are unlike us, who are outside our little circle of the world. This is another reason diversity is essential in fiction -- it creates empathy and builds connecting points where they might not otherwise exist.
Once I hit middle school, it was Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, the Lord of the Rings. Characters like Hermione Granger, Professor McGonagall, Molly and Ginny Weasley, Katniss Everdeen, and Eowyn were the people I was looking up to. I think J.K. Rowling did one of the best jobs with her female characters of any author I have ever read. Every woman is fully her own character with her own personality and her own strengths. (Side note: I asked a BUNCH of my friends about their favorite fictional women and Hermione was the #1 answer, with Mulan, Rey, Leia, and Annabeth also being very high on the list.)
In high school, I started watching/following TV shows for the first time. A whole new world of women as surgeons, superheroes, space travelers, and secret agents opened its world to me. This was also probably about the time I started thinking critically about the kinds of fictional characters I wanted.
I'm not asking for every woman to be physically strong, or to be totally independent, or to never cry. I am asking for women who are three-dimensional, who have their own character arc, who are complete without the men in the movie/book/series/whatever. They can be romantic, they can be emotional, they can be aggressive and mean. I want lovers and fighters and artists and scientists. I want black women and Asian women and Muslim women and everyone else. I want straight women and gay women and trans women. I want diversity, I want representation, I want backstory, I want them to be people on their own, first and foremost.
I find it curious that so many feminist fictional icons come from science fiction and fantasy. At first, I wondered if it was just me because I consume so much science fiction and fantasy. When the Women's March rolled around, however, I realized it wasn't just me. Princess Leia, Hermione, Wonder Woman, and others popped up on posters all over New York City and Washington D.C. and the rest of the world.
I have a theory on why this is. Science fiction/fantasy allows a different version of reality. Setting something in the distant future or another world can alter gender roles, expectations, conventions. This distance allows women to be in different positions than we usually see in reality. Women have a different level of freedom in deep space or the distant future or in the wizard world. We rarely see them being questioned and challenged on screen in science fiction. These women live in a world where they are simply allowed to lead lives -- ordinary or extraordinary, without having to justify every move they make.
This is not the world we live in.
But! 1) Real inspirational women who overcome all expectations and stereotypes and obstacles exist all around us. Absolutely, without a doubt. I would start listing them off, but that is a job for another day. And 2) I think we can get to a better world. We can get to the world of the characters that inspired me, where women are just accepted as doing whatever they want and whatever they are good at. Even if it means we have to move to those new planets NASA found to get there.
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