Strong Women in Fiction

I'm probably going to beat a few dead horses here, but I feel like I need to repeat an oft forgotten sentiment that I'm rather staunchly standing by.

Strong women, by the standards of what makes men strong, are not that strong.

Often, we see authors trying to remove 'weakness'. Keep her away from the kitchen. Remove any sense of shame, kindness, submissiveness, or display of excessive emotion. If she's fat, she can't dislike her body. If she's muscular, she can take on any man in battle. If she's skinny, she's faster but God forbid she's ever manipulative or seductive or uses her looks. She's never illiterate and she never uses drugs. She can drink anyone under the table but she's not an alcoholic. She doesn't have kids, but if she does, she's not a nurturer. Tough love only. She can use sex to get her way, but is never used herself. She can't have been raped or otherwise traumatized because that would make her a damaged prop, a cheap piece of plot, rather than a fully-realized character.

See where I'm going? Contradictions abound as the list goes, somehow making a 'strong' woman into no woman who can ever relate to her. In trying to steer clear of the Stepford wife, we're left with another Barbie, more plastic than G.I. Joe. We're suddenly making the broken women who build their own lives up again, not giving the supposedly submissive-seeming character the room to reveal that she has the agency to wear a mask to build up her empire. The 'weak' woman is dismissed as flat before her layers are shown. She is no longer allowed to be mysterious because her perceived weakness will be consigned to satisfying the male gaze, to being nothing more than a punching bag, to not having her own mind or dreams.

Time and again, you see the nervous writer asking how to write a woman and you get the floods of defensive women looking to cut them down as sexist or misogynistic or shallow if the woman isn't some ideal that removes an feminine trait they consider weak. And I didn't gender the writer because, yes, they will even presume to infantilize a woman who isn't sure how to write female's of a certain level of socialized femininity. Maybe she was raised around men and just has no idea how women socialize or never uses make-up but her character does. The problem with their advice is that their increasing departure from socialized femininity begins to villainize any women who personify that role, as if to invalidate them as real women.

The trend is even to protect trans-women, gay women, women of color. Anything but the feminine aspect. In fact, the idea that we can't even define the feminine or masculine aspects because they might cause offense are what really end up causing the confusion. So instead, anyone who finds comfort in gendered roles becomes part of the problem and....

Ugggghhhh, no more. Really. 

People will continue battling this out, but as a writer, at some point I learned to just write. To look for the logic in a character's build and see if their actions, reactions and personality are plausible for themselves. To remember that I am misunderstood, that I am perceived as both weak and strong, that my stories will always display vulnerabilities and impassable walls, that those walls will crumble and when people feel safest with me, they'll sometimes hit invisible walls that confuse them as well.

If you want a strong woman, look at a characteristically weak one and ask what she might be protecting, what might be motivating her, what she is waiting for. Don't be so quick to dismiss her as weak or a victim. It's not always her failing that makes you uncomfortable but yours. Give her time to seem shallow, give her some time to be annoying and mysterious and able to change.

A strong character will not say all the right things, know all the right people, be confident in every room. They will also not be endearing in all their faults, be the pariah surrounded by peons, and suffer greatly just to prove a point. If they are any of those things, there's an organic way to get there without punching your reader in the face.

If your character is constantly signalling that they are kind but are actually stone cold assholes, then tell narration should at least be aware, making it comedic, creepy, or ironic. Otherwise, the reader just thinks you're ignorant of any device to drive the disparity.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, just be aware. At every stage of their actions, you as the writer should know what history or fears or delusion drives it. That is what keeps them from being flat. Don't try to be safe. Strive to deliver honesty at every dimension and you'll be all right. If you don't trust what you know of people, observe (but don't stalk) people who fit the bill. Don't always worry about being right. Sometimes the story is about your perspective or how others react to them in general. If you have a specific trait in mind, ask someone who has it rather than general forums that will confuse it with assumptions of their ideal.

Oh yeah, and have fun. Exercise your own strengths and enjoy the process.

Choice is Important

I have two topics in mind as I start this one, but they're closely related. To start, I'll go with why I don't actually put 'adult' on my books, despite listing them as such.

It's pretty clear that I'm not a child, everyone's parent or can make a universal decision on what is 'okay' for everyone to read. I've revealed before that my parents never censored what I could read. There were some media that they were more squeamish about, but the main reason I didn't give them cause for concern with books was because I clearly understood that, even if it was labeled non-fiction, I should take every bit of experience and fact with a grain of salt. Nothing is more true as a rule nowadays when the internet is ambiguous with freely shared information that is more likely to be used to collect traffic for a website than actually be informative.

What your child can or should read is for you to decide and I don't scoff at those choices or offer my opinion on how strict or relaxed you might be. I may have a clear judgement, but it's none of my business. However, though I do believe it's important to classify books and possible audiences accurately, I don't think it's my business to plaster my covers. For digital books, the listings are clear and, as of yet, I haven't focused on physical bookstores and libraries. However, the digital listings would easily put these books in the correct locations.

What if potential customers or lax retailers put them somewhere else? Yes, that's bound to happen, but if you aren't prepared for a surprise, there is no shortage of ways to research before you buy. If content is something you are squeamish about, then there are plenty of ways to do so. I don't suppose everyone has smartphones or that they don't just turn their kids loose in a bookstore, but if you make a snap judgement on something you know nothing about or can't say no to your kids until you can research it, don't be the person that blames the bookstore or the author.

Why don't I just put 'adult' on there? Well, because I wasn't an adult and I'm not going to shame my potential audience. The adult rating is rarely used for just violence. It is almost always used for explicit sex and ambiguous or taboo themes. Even adults can be judged for this. Even the most free-spirited among us don't necessarily want to advertise that we're having adult toys or books or movies delivered to our homes and we don't want every nosy motherfucker passing judgement based on that word. I leave a wide trail of exactly what I'm writing. When I write for general audiences, that will be clear, but I'm sure as hell not going to bubble-wrap or pre-judge my audience. Even to cover my bases.

Books are the way we see how people think, not the way the world immovably is. Leading into my second topic, 'the way things are' is a phrase that we need to know is never a safety net for things staying that way.

As a teenager, nearly every girl I knew was suckered into the Girl Talk series. There was a popular board game as well. The entire package was loaded with questions geared only towards straight girls, how female bodies were supposed to be, and many dangerous ideals for what a girl was expected to experience to validate herself. I remember, as a 12 year old girl with a newly blooming body, nothing was more damning than the part of the book that told me that if I stood against the wall with my shoulders, heels and butt pressed against it, my back should touch as well. No matter how I tried to suck in or contort, it was impossible. I had a butt and couldn't do it so I was fat. Only I wasn't. I was always on the low side of a normal weight range and athletic.

The worst part of these books was that it was always worded as if the books were on our side, looking out for our best interests, but in truth, they were shaming us for being different. Not just our bodies, but our style, our hair, our interests and preferences. If we weren't all about make-up and boys, what the hell was wrong with us?

Even for the damage done, I'd quickly learned the dangers of blind belief. It wasn't the books' fault necessarily but the danger lay in the fact that there was a time when this was societally acceptable. If you want to know why women my age are so adamant about campaigns that tell people to stop talking about how women should view their bodies or reproductive systems, you can tell us things have gotten better, but we damn well know they could get worse. Men are still trying to tell women what they should do with their bodies, trying to pass laws even. Here's the thing: men do not get to have an opinion on women's bodies. Other women do not get to have an opinion on every woman's body either. Your husband, father, brother, king or president, male or female, do not get to have an opinion. Our bodies are our decision. Our health is our decision. Even now, the laws are more concerned with our reproductive capabilities than our overall health and this is a problem--one even claiming women's lives when they are ignored. So when we want to nitpick about our hair, weight, pimples, self-image, this is our personal struggle, not permission to weigh in. Whether it's petty or pivotal, the right to decide our personal fate should never be something anyone can bully us out of. 

Non-fiction books should absolutely be pulled when they can be dangerous to society, especially when targeting children. However, you can't apply this to all literature in all genres. The ultimate responsibility goes to the consumer. 

We can't and shouldn't child-proof the world and we can't and shouldn't penalize adults for responsible curiosity either. There will be times when we haven't prepared our children for everything they come into contact first, but we can't protect them from every lesson and sometimes pain has to be the teacher. I know what it's like, to want to protect children from pain, but it does them a disservice. It breaks my heart when my nephews learn the hard way, but those lessons are also the ones that stick, the ones they won't have to trip onto softly again and again because there are never consequences that deter them. They don't learn caution or wisdom without pain. While I never want them to hurt as I do, I also never want them to make them so dependent on me being that there that the world will crush them the minute they stray.

I try to be thorough with my arguments for and against my topics, but it's always possible I haven't considered something. If you disagree with me, why do you think 'adult' is a necessary label? Why do you think fiction-based media should be as responsible as non-fiction? I'm happy to defend my answer or change my mind.