Day 4: Again with the Peticoats

While writing a scene for one of my lead females today, I stumbled into an entertaining thought. I write Rei, giving her traditionally masculine characteristics - sparse dialog, cunning, rationale, strength. While tragedy forces her to grow up fast, her first act of adulthood is to cut her hair and prepare for war, both things that make her physically more masculine.

The question I found myself asking was this: Are female characters respected in fiction because they act like men?

Starbuck in the new BSG fights, flies, drinks and smokes as well as, if not better than, the boys and for this we love her. But when she gets emotional as anyone in her situation would and takes on a feminine appearence, she gets offed. Arya in A Song of Ice and Fire keeps her hair cut short, looks like a boy, fights like a boy, talks like a boy, and for all intents and purposes, becomes a boy. Eowyn, in The Lord of the Rings, hides her femininity to ride into the battle and instantly becomes a reader favorite. Ellen Ripley in Alien, definitely masculine in appearance and attitude, is pretty much the most awesome badass in the movie. She takes out alien scum while any other man or woman fails. Are these female characters admirable because they act like men? Or because they cast aside their femininity, as though it were a weakness?

To counter this, there are shows like Firefly where each female character maintains her authority and feminine characteristics without coming across as a complete contradiction. Buffy the Vampire Slayer follows in much this same vein. Other more extreme examples include Xena, Trinity, Catwoman, and Molly from Neuromancer. I would argue though, that when taken to this extreme, the attempt at creating a strong female character becomes more of an attempt to exploit the sex appeal of strong and decisive women.

Just a thought. And the word count is coming along just fine.

So say we all.
Bri

Petticoats & Parisols...or...Swords & Shields?

The past week was wonderfully productive. After writing out an outline for XIII's first book, I am pleased to announce that for the next month, I will plunge toward a disastrously high word count of 50,000 words. I realized late last night that if I did not give myself a cruel deadline, I would never put my story into descent prose, dooming XIII to remain in note-outline form for all eternity.

So...
After looking over my notes, I realized my protagonist's sister was interesting, but because of limited "screen time" came across as a trope character. As one of the few female leads, I wanted her to do more than just fill a slot in my protagonist's family. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted, but I knew I did want to stay away from stereotypes: Warrior Queen, Maiden in the Tower, Priestess-Healer, Crazy Feminist Man-Hater etc. She needed to be believable, not a joke of herself.

To remedy this, I decided to split the novel between brother and sister, giving them separate but intertwined plot lines. But the sister still seemed a stereotype. In a last desperate effort, I wrote her as a male character, in the first person. After two or three scenes, I surveyed my work, changing all pronouns and names to reflect feminine gender. And that was when I discovered to my amazement-horror that the sister was suddenly fascinating and complex. Traditional masculinity displayed through dominance, decisiveness, logic and rationale, mixed with her mild femininity and innocence, all turned the little sister into a driving force of the novel.

I'm not sure what this says about my sensibilities, but I can say that I am very pleased with the results. Thoughts?

So say we all.
Bri

p.s. Thanks to Jocelyn, Charlie, Martin and Pam for the great brainstorming sessions in the wee hours of the morning.