Must all girls be Action Girl?

Forgive me if I sound like a fool, but recently it feels like every single female lead has been an Action Girl of some kind or another, outside of what they are making in Japan, because Japan is about 50 years behind the rest of the world culturally (and 50 years ahead technologically). I must ponder, is this really necessary? I like having a girl who actually does stuff in my stories, don't get me wrong, but must the stuff she do involve shooting guns, slapping the villain, and otherwise acting tough?

I guess you could rename this thread "Is the Distressed Damsel a Dead Horse Trope?", because that is basically what I am wondering and feeling. I happen to like stories like Conan The Barbarian and John Carter Of Mars, where the women aren't pushovers but also sometimes - just sometimes - need a little bit of help from the male lead. And when they don't need it, they are more likely to dance with grace at the ball than go hunting for food. Am I just past my expiration date here, and living in the past? Are my notions that a woman ought to actually act like a woman sometimes antiquated? I'd love to know!

This whole thread got started because I was rather taken by surprise at the hostile reactions to The Lydian Option when I posted a thread about it on the webcomics section. The webcomic features five human prisoners stuck in a prison full of space alien bastards trying to escape when a riot breaks out, and I thought that it had a rather strong female lead - even if she was a bit of eye-candy and needed saving once in awhile. Well, at least one person was obviously upset that the girl needed to be rescued the one time, which surprised me because otherwise she's pretty quick-witted and good with the one-liners.

Well, just had to get this out there, because I am curious about it, but do not have enough perspective on the subject myself.

My personal feelings here:

No. There's more to an Action Girl then simply "competent female character". Every female character in my comics is able to take care of themselves to some extent (although that holds true for more or less the entire cast), but I would only consider three of them to actually be Action Girls.

Yes (well, actually no, but it should be). Just like Action Girl is not just "competent female character", Distressed Damsel is not "female character who has to be rescued once". I have little respect for any characters, male or female, who are incapable of taking care of themselves and remain that way for the entire work (the last part is pretty important - I see no problems with starting a protagonist out as The Load if the work involves them growing into a more self-capable character). However, the fact that a character cannot solve everything by herself doesn't make her incapable of taking care of herself, which is one of the key traits I associate with the archetypal Distressed Damsel.

I'm not going to go into the whole Real Women Never Wear Dresses thing because that's just to controversial, but my feeling is that there is no direct correlation between how "feminine" a female character is and how much of a strong character she is.

However,

this I strongly object to (your notions, that is). I don't believe anyone of either gender ever "ought" to act any way other then how they personally feel comfortable acting, and I will take offense at anyone claiming that a woman should do this or a man should be like that.

edited 11th Nov '11 9:24:10 PM by nrjxll

I think it depens on this question: would she still need help or not fight if she were a man? It's not really an obvious thing to determine, but it's possible to find hints.

edited 11th Nov '11 9:29:20 PM by Novis

I see. I don't mean this to be offensive, but the idea that men and women should follow certain societal norms being a negative thing is a completely alien concept to me. When I grew up I was made to understand that girls play with dolls and boys with green army men, you know, but I suppose that nowadays that is seen as an artifact from a bygone age. I guess I am over the hill - and I was probably born just one decade before you were. Things are changing pretty rapidly, huh?

Yes!! One point for you.

I did'nt mean it quite like that. I think nrjxll said it beter than I could.

There are a number of things wrong with this sentence:

It uses the word "ought". Women do not "ought" to behave like women, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, they merely have the choice to do so.

It also makes the implication that using physical force to solve a problem is "unwomanly". If it is unwomanly, it should be unmanly as well.

edited 11th Nov '11 9:36:51 PM by annebeeche

OP: Can you name all of these works which supposedly contain lead female action girls?

edited 11th Nov '11 9:38:10 PM by Leradny

Precisely. There's nothing wrong with the idea of there being distinct gender roles in society, but the same can't be said for feeling that these gender roles are in some way mandatory instead of being up to someone's personal preference.

Sure, I'll list a few (maybe I'm not getting what is meant by Action Girl, so I'll list some examples and you can tell me if I'm using the right trope or not):

• Harry Potter: Hermione Granger is better at attack spells than just about anybody else, and after Harry is definitely the best physical fighter to boot (I recall her breaking Draco's teeth or something at one point). She does dress up sometimes, but its usually a Cleans Up Good moment instead of something like having natural grace and charm.
• Avatar The Last Airbender: I'm putting this one here because they have one of the few examples of a girl who is balanced - Katara has both motherly affection and awesome kung-fu, but she doesn't have to give up her femininity despite doing violence. I wish more girls were like Katara in recent fiction.

But then there's the rest of the female cast, who are mostly Action Girl types who are basically amazons.

• Every girl in the Avatar movie was the "we are warriors first, women last" variety.
• The recent Three Musketeers movie, of all things.

Now, before I get chewed out, I acknowledge that several of the examples I listed feature said girls in scenes where they wear traditional female outfits or sport makeup or the like, but there attitudes just don't strike me as anything outside of the "all business" personalities you see with what I consider to be action girls. There's no tenderness, and they lack the emotional subtlety that I normally associate with women. If they have a crush, they will pursue and conquer said crush; if they want to dress up they put on high heels then immediately trip over the shoes. They are basically men except that they have girl parts under the combat shorts.

Not necessarily. Well, if you have small cast of girls and your setting is a World of Badass, then why not.

You seriously need to degenderize the way you look at the world.

People are people first before they are "men" or "women".

Dressing stylish is not a woman thing. It is a people thing. Otherwise there would be no such thing as fashion sense for men.

War is not a man thing. It is a people thing. Even in days when war was fought entirely by men women had their own socially expected ways of waging war.

Just because someone shakes your specific and rigid concept of what a woman is does not make her any less of a woman.
Likewise, just because someone shakes your specific and rigid concept of what a man is does not make him any less of a man.

*applauds*

Furthermore, the belief that an unconventional man is less of a man (and likewise for women) has led to harm and death in the past (Scandinavia and niþing comes to mind), and still so in the present.

In some parts of the world it is believed that a gay man is not a real man, and that gay women are not real women. These people are sometimes raped to "cure" them of their homosexuality, and they are executed for being different from other men or women.

edited 11th Nov '11 10:21:26 PM by annebeeche

There's that, Anne, yes, but I think there's still the thing where people are sick of the character type of a girl that shuns girly things and only does manly things. It is not so much that this isn't a possible character, it's just that it's been done so much to make a female character a "strong woman."

If that makes any sense.

This is not so much an issue of gender typing as it is an issue of tiring clichés.

edited 11th Nov '11 10:24:10 PM by ohsointocats

It is really just the same problem painted with contrasting colors.

Bad traditional story: A woman who wears wifebeaters is a poor excuse for a woman!
Bad hyper-feminist story: A woman who wears dresses is a poor excuse for a woman!

edited 11th Nov '11 10:27:06 PM by annebeeche

The fact that it's a trope worth commenting on means that it is not even close to becoming the default. You don't see a trope on Action Guy, do you? No, because people expect men to take a dominant, leading, tough-guy role. Women, on the other hand, have been historically expected to be submissive, pure, virginal etc, which are traits that obviously don't lend themselves well to driving the action of the story forward. Action Girl is a subversion of the usual expectation, so obviously, it has not become the usual expectation, since the fact that we need to talk about it at all means that it is not an Omnipresent Trope.

Of course, what I've noticed is that, while Action Girls are common, it's rare to see an Action Girl that actually takes a completely self-sufficient, protective role; usually, there is a male somewhere above her that serves to guide, empower, and/or protect her. That, in my opinion, is a topic far more ripe for discussion.

edited 11th Nov '11 10:51:22 PM by tropetown

My feeling is that there should not be a "usual expectation".

For the record, I agree with you that Action Girl is not anyway near as common a trope as the OP seems to think.

It's not bad if the woman wears wifebeaters or dresses. It's bad if the woman looks down upon other women who wear wifebeaters or dresses.

See the difference?

Probably shouldn't be, but the fact remains that cultural conditioning means that there is. It's really a shame, in my opinion, but I don't think most people are fully immune to that belief, either.

That's the way it should be.

what

I'm gonna assume that "ought" is simply a reflection of your personal preferences in fictional traits (as in, "I like girly characters"), not a prescriptive statement. Otherwise, annebeeche and nrjxll already covered what I have to say.

I have to ask where you're getting the idea that all women are action girls, because I'm not seeing it. Unless you're strictly talking about action-oriented fiction, in which case I do agree that they're becoming more common.

I also think that people often confuse "Strong Female Character" with "woman who uses physical force often", and they need to stop doing that.

edited 11th Nov '11 10:33:20 PM by Merlo

In too many action girl characters there seems to be looking down on "women's work". No. "Women's work" is important. Women get shit done. A total incompetence in "women's work" is not the mark of a person who can handle themselves.

Exactly. I didn't mean it like if a girl acts all tomboyish she is doing something morally wrong, more like I don't think its wrong for a girl to get dressed up and do traditionally "girl" activities and actually enjoy doing said activities. I mean, it makes me kind of sad and nostalgic looking around campus these days and not seeing a single skirt or fancy blouse - blue jeans and t-shirts all around. Can't girls see that it is okay to act "like a girl" if you are one? That's what is bothering me about some of the latest shows, really - girls aren't allowed to embrace feminine qualities, or at least this doesn't seem to be the case for a lot of the more recent works of fiction. There are certainly exceptions, mind, but lately it is almost like people are surprised when a girl on television admits to enjoying a conventionally targeted-towards-girls activity, like sewing, and that is weird to me.

Maybe I should just shut up, I'm probably just digging myself a deeper hole here.

I do think we need more female Guile Heroes. (I've seen a few, but they tend to be confined to sci-fi and fantasy literature.)