I might think BNHA it's given a little too much credit than it is, but I admit I like the female characters portrayed there.
But please take your time to appreciate her:
She might not be the most attractive character according to our beauty standard that prefers slim women. She might not be a powerful and badass lady in the world where people have cool superpowers, and her life is not perfect as where the hell is her husband so she needs to raise her son alone. She might have made mistakes and even gave up in his son's dream. She is very caring and supporting his son in every way she can nevertheless, even making a special hero suit for him.
Sometimes a side female character from another franchise is more well-written than those "badass" main female characters.
I think what women need is not a protagonist that kicks ass and saves the day, but someone with actual problem and personality they can connect to and learn that strength can be found everywhere including their feminity. I want female lead that can be vulnerable, can make mistake, can lose, can be rendered helpless too; only for them to find a way to grow out of it and be a better person.
YES! As a woman myself, I personally hate being pandered to and being treated like some kind of child who needs to be empowered. Even if there weren't great female characters before this recent, silly trend (which there totally were), there's no reason why a woman can't look up to a cool or interesting male character.
That being said, here are two female characters that come to mind off the top of my head!
Scarlett O'Hara!
Scarlett is so wonderful because she's still incredibly likable despite being thoroughly unpleasant and flawed a lot of the time. She fights tooth and nail to keep her family afloat, and even though she was horribly jealous of Miss Melanie, she dragged her and her baby across the country through rain and sunshine!
And Xelha from the obscure, but amazing videogame, Baten Kaitos!
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Like in most JRPGs, the female protagonist is just as important as the male one, and the romance in this game is like, super cute and well done I really don't wanna spoil the game, but she goes on this massive and crazy quest to save the world (she's really the one who pushes the reluctant main character to help her) but she also has a more secretive goal of wanting to like, save the main character's soul which is incredibly romantic. Not to mention the main character is down for the count for a long bit of the game and she literally gets to take over. It's just great!
It's because it generates discussion about the product. Good or bad discussion is still discussion, it keeps your product relevant and keeps it on people's minds. it's the same reason corporations are now tweeting like depressed teenagers and getting into fake drama with other corporations. it's all just for revenue, they could care less whether or not the product is ACTUALLY groundbreaking.
Yessss queen I love to share this beauty with people.
Shes from a comic called Empowered you can read for free here or buy recent volumes on dark horse http://www.empoweredcomic.com/comic/volume-1-page-11
I love this girl, lots of deep conversations with confidence issues in this story! (some convos that are very inspiring for my own writing) Also the world building and writing is spot on for a superhero world.
Oh WHOOPS I missed the bit in the opening post about movies being marketed in such a way.
I was more focused on the consumers themselves fanatically bolstering or dragging down a 'feminist' movie despite how average or slightly above average the movie is and are only valuing/devaluing said movie for the female lead and its 'empowerment agenda'.
Yes, I agree, with this so much! They are so afraid of making women vulnerable that they have to make them awesome from the beginning and it seems so inauthentic.
I think the sexualization is a very interesting topic too. I don't think that just because the girl gets naked it is instantly fan-service or sexual. For example, Sailor Moon gets naked A LOT, but is a way to show purity and how she fights with her whole body and soul.
Also, I'm not bothered by skimpy clothes, women had to fight their right to wear swimsuits and miniskirts in public because we own our body and our sexuality. A sexy costume can also be empowering. I'm not saying that there are not outfits that are clearly disrespectful and nonsensical for the sake of having a "hot chick" in the team, but I don't think sexy costumes are all bad.
I love what you wrote I think that everyday women get overlooked a lot because we give them for granted. So often I see a lot of people (and even women) looking down on housewives or women that don't have a professional career but at the end of the day rising human beings is the toughest job in the world.
Sorry, I guess I worded that wrong I do need to think about the costume designer perspective and all of that. Admittedly I do the same with my own female characters in both my series, I just enjoy making my characters sexy or cute when I can.
Reread what I wrote before, I feel like Tommy Lee Jones in that stupid Cheer leader movie now XD
I don't think theirs anything wrong with that, just like theirs tomboys that wanna dress rugged to look tough theirs plenty of women who feel powerful when they look sexy/cute. Just like some guys wanna wear makeup to look good Although I don't personally like make up I'd never say a lady shouldn't wear it if she damn well pleases.
I’m assuming you’re talking about the new Female Lead movie by Marvel. What did we all expect? After all, Marvel has brought us GROUNDBREAKING female characters like:
Hawkeye’s partner,
chick with a Russian accent,
and Asian girl with purple streak in her hair.
And it’s not even that the movie was terrible . The most frustrating part is that they were 100% using the female lead as a marketing gimmick. And you KNOW it’s gonna be bad when THAT happens. What’s frustrating is that now, more often than not, movies with female characters are being marketed for having girl characters. And their gender is being used as a crutch to write terrible stories. Does she have tits? Ok thats good enough. Tits are a character flaw, right?
Over and over again, we’re given female characters that are written out of spite. It’s always
“Tired of seeing women in the kitchen? Tired of seeing the damsel in distress? Tired of seeing overly sexualized women in media? Now presenting... a smart female! A powerful female! A fat female! Take THAT!”
We don’t need any of that!!! We need female characters that fit into the story and help drive the plot along, and female characters that people can identify with. And for people to identify with a character, they need to be written well.
People are getting so torn over “oh no will my female character fall into the stereotypes of females” that they forgot to tell a story. In fact, having a story being so preachy over this takes the audience out of the experience. If you’re constantly having “this character is strong and NOT the stereotypical female” shoved in your face, it usually backfires and actually reminds you that irl, women are not treated like Jesus.
Sorry for the rant. I had coffee today.
Naw you're right, I really should have worded that better XD for some reason when I see a film in which a male director is in charge I just picture them going "this scene would be more interesti- IMEAN MORE IMPACTFUL if she were naked" mindset. As the least fashionable person in the world I have no right to dictate what people should wear XD
(my head always goes right to the worst mindset)
On the revealing clothes issue, I don't think the problem is the clothes in themselves. To me, the problem is the fact that they are generally restricted to female characters. When all females wear skimpy outfits but the males don't even think it's weather for mid-length shorts and wear thick pants, how am I suppose to not consider the female outfit as at least somewhat disrespecful?
You know what's a weird thing? Most of the Ga-Matoran from Bionicle were pretty good female characters as well. Granted, due to literally just being 1/6th of the general robo-hobbit population, they kind of gotten shoved to the sidelines. But the few that were there were well written, capable, and feminine without falling into negative stereotypes on either end of the board in that regard.
That's probably one of the reasons I'm so chill and open for (Well written) female characters in general was due to that. That, and they were blue, which is my favorite color and water is my favorite classical element (because it's blue-ish.)
1(Also yes, Selena Stormbringer from DRGN was partially based off of Gali, why'd you ask?)