Do Boys Really Have Trouble Relating To A Feminine Lead?

I hope that doesn't happen with my series...my female leads—well, I always have a male lead and a female lead in my works—usually are Action Girls, but I've heard that AG's aren't liked very much...

"Who wants to hear about good stuff when the bottom of the abyss of human failure that you know doesn't exist is so much greater?"-Wraith

Well, on the bright side, now that you talked about it, it will never get published!

—ahem—

Characters will be hated by some small fraction regardless.

Being an Action Girl is just a fancy title, it doesn't really make a female lead, well, a good character that is female.

edited 14th Jan '11 12:08:42 PM by MrAHR

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Well I always play female characters in games but my reasoning is pretty much Author Appeal, I for one would rather look at sexy female ass all day while gaming than not. However as far as it goes with the gender of the lead of a story, I don't think people have trouble relating, I think they have trouble being allowed to relate.

And that is probably why some females prefer male characters.

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If a female character could easily be replaced by an animatronic blow-up doll... yeeeah, not really going to have a lot of like for them.

Set piece characters in general annoy me.

edited 14th Jan '11 12:13:44 PM by Bur

i. hear. a. sound.

I don't have any trouble relating to female characters, but I don't like romances with either gender.

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Well, I never write female characters just to be sexy. They all have their own personalities and goals and backstories.

They're all manga-styled anyway, so Generic Cuteness ensures they are nice to look at without me making them cute.

"Who wants to hear about good stuff when the bottom of the abyss of human failure that you know doesn't exist is so much greater?"-Wraith

My experience is that this applies most to The Chick and the Shallow Love Interest—i.e. the female characters that are there just so there would be a female character "for girls to relate to." Since such characters usually have no defining traits beyond being "the girl," female viewers can't relate to them, and in fact find them annoying and distracting from the real characters, i.e. the guys. Not to mention, girls aren't immune to the appeal of imagining themselves romantically in relation to the opposite-sex lead character, in which case the Shallow Love Interest becomes functionally a rival. And there are few things more frustrating than seeing the person you have a crush on get together with some vapid non-entity.

Female characters who are actual characters, who have personality and screen charisma and a role to play in the story beyond their relationship to a more central character, tend to be more popular with female fans. And with male fans. Fancy that.

I read an article on Overthinking It.com not too long ago which addressed the typical claim that action movies with female stars inevitably fail at the box office. But they don't, not really. (*cough*Alien*cough*) The article examines a handful of female-led action films (a handful, sadly, are all that exist) in terms of their success vs. how said leads were portrayed visually, and proposes that what kills the stinkers like Catwoman and Aeon Flux is that the heroines are too sexy. When a woman tears her way through a horde of zombies or whatever and still has perfect hair and makeup and has sustained no damage save to her clothing (in such a way that emphasizes her cleavage, of course), it's distracting and hurts willing suspension of disbelief. Ellen Ripley gets realistically mussed and scuffed during her adventure, which encourages the audience to empathize with her rather than just gawking at her sexitude.

Well, even A:TLA got a lot of Mai hate, even though she was a standard emo.

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@AHR. Women getting penalised for displaying aggression and Women being plenty aggressive when under the cloak of anonymity.

Alas, the second one is under a cash firewall, but if you're at university your library will probably have access to it.

Hm, this does help support my viewpoint that if society were made solely of women, it'd look pretty much the same as today because they aren't much different.

I always get the sense that society tends to push people into certain realms for each gender and then point to statistics that people in each gender act the way they were pushed to act therefore "proving" that each gender naturally acts that way. For instance, people who state that women are physically weaker or slower at mathematics, in a global society that has almost universally followed European and East Asian state-society view that they are weaker and stupider. Well they're sorta taught at a young age to be weaker and stupider, why would you expect them to be anything but that?

Lead role models have largely been shaped by a society where we can't relate to any but male ones because nobody really makes lead female models without specifically trying to do so. We've good male leads because we've good writers who never gave a second thought about writing anything but a good character, rather than the defining feature being female.

It's a shame, really, that many good writers seem to default to male leads out of habit than anything else.

♥♥II'GSJQGDvhhMKOmXunSrogZliLHGKVMhGVmNhBzGUPiXLYki'GRQhBITqQrrOIJKNWiXKO♥♥

Well, if Most Writers Are Male, and you don't feel comfortable with writing a female lead, then your path is fairly obvious.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

@breadloaf. Agreed. That's kinda the conclusion that Y The Last Man came to in the end. That although society had been very male dominated throughout much of its history, women suddenly being in charge did not feel any compelling need to radically change things because they were operating under fundamentally similar incentives to men.

There's a reason why gender isn't a big topic in game theory.

I don't have any problem relating to female characters yet as most of the people on this said, I am afraid to say them out loud and I find myself falling into the same misogyny as the guys do. I wish I had read Handmaid's Tale.

It's never too late!

I'd like to see some relatively butch female leads. We've had plenty of

-Rugged males

-Pretty males

-Pretty females

but not too many rugged females in the mix. I guess they tend to be more popular as supporting characters, where they inevitably fall prey to VasquezAlwaysDies.

edited 14th Jan '11 7:46:01 PM by UnabashedFornicator

Which sucks as I found Vasquez to be fine as hell.

Part of this may come down to the fact that as young children, boys doing "girly" things are penalised more for it than girls doing boyish things - because when a girl acts like a boy, well, she's a tomboy, but if a guy acts like a girl he must be shudder gay.

And, yeah, the Most Writers Are Male thing. And a agree with Karalora on the token female thing; female characters that have a character beyond being female tend to be much more popular.

As for me personally - while I find Kamina highly entertaining, I didn't really identify with him (I liked Simon much more, for one). And I couldn't really take all his THIS IS WHAT A MAN DOES stuff seriously. It was endearing idiocy.

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shudder?

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?

Sarcasm, sweetie.

But that's the attitude I've; any sign of femininity in a young boy might somehow make him gay, so the parents/carers (if they are of the old-fashioned type) are determined to avoid them at all costs.

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I'd be more worried about how other kids might react to him.

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?

@118: That was my experience in elementary school. There's nothing quite as weird as getting called gay for being willing to talk to or play with the girls.

edited 15th Jan '11 5:40:41 AM by BlueNinja0

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

It's "cognitive" BTW.

But... what if you are KidAnova?

edited 15th Jan '11 4:20:42 AM by RawPower

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?

Whether male or female, a well-rounded character has a variety of characteristics and finds themselves in a variety of situations, some more relatable than others. I don't need to relate to the inescapably female aspects of a character in order to relate to the rest.

I also think that part of the problem is that boys don't need to try hard in relating to a female lead when they are plenty of male leads to look up to in fiction. Its something similar to a male author having no pressure to make female leads when a male lead is usually more appealing to the general public than female leads.

Until there is a pressure that would make female leads profitable, the issue will remain. In other words, I don't think the problem is that boys don't relate to female leads, but that boys and even authors don't have to look at them outside the heavily sexualized ones.

Horseman of War: "War never changes? F*** you! You don't know me!"