Smurfette Principle issues

In one of my WIP I have a group of characters - three men and one woman. Instant failure of the Bechdel Test right there, though I'd hope that the clearly egalitarian themes throughout the story would make up for that.

I had thought earlier to make the group an even split but realised quickly that it would not work well with the premise of the story, which leaves me running into the Smurfette Principle wherein there is only one woman in the group.

The woman is self-assured, assertive and capable (though not necessarily in all the skills relevant to the story, and in many ways more so than one of the male characters), is not The Heart or Love Interest, averts/avoids Never a Self-Made Woman and I hope to convey adequately in story that the disparate mix of the sexes is justified in the context of the story.

Any other suggestions on avoiding Smurfetteness and Unfortunate Implications?

so what exactly prevented you from making it an even split?

because that seems to me the only way to get rid of smurfetteness. you could make her a fully three dimensional character and everything but for the Smurfette Principle specifically, the only way for it to go away is to have more than 1 female character

edited 4th Aug '13 8:45:34 PM by Jetyl

Averting the Smurfette Principle makes me feel a little happier and a little less sexist. ...not that it's really a meaningful achievement...

Basically one of the characters that was originally intended to be the second female would've wound up with a lot of Unfortunate Implications and not a little Reality Is Unrealistic so it got gender-flipped and gender-flipping either of the other two characters to compensate was not possible as one would make for an extremely unrealistic character and the other would distort the balance of the characters and the sexes in a way that would also have Unfortunate Implications.

So I chose having only one female as the least of four possible evils.

The character is indeed three-dimensional who stands on her own merits and has agency. I'm avoiding making her The Heart or any of the other stereotypical roles female characters fill in most media.

Her main "weakness" is that she's very much a fish out of water in the situation they find themselves in, being an urbanite in a mostly rural/sylvanian setting and thus lacks a lot of the survival skills, conditioning and knowledge that would be helpful in the situation (so to put it in disparaging Kiwi vernacular, "she's a bloody townie, mate") however, she's no weakling, willing to learn, not given to complaining and not bloody stupid so she strives to adapt to the situation (or "not bad for a townie").

For comparison, one of the men is even more of a "bloody townie", nowhere near as skilled and is not one to "suffer in silence" (in other words, he's a "whinger", which is a hanging offence, whereas being a "townie" is merely a fault of one's up-bringing and is potentially curable) and lacks the critical facilities to recognise when he's out of his depth.

edited 4th Aug '13 10:47:52 PM by Wolf1066

If Smurfette Principle is ever an issue, I'd say it should be to a wider group or if there is a similar pattern to the wider cast. I don't think you can blame someone for a three to one ratio in a four person group, there can only be so many combinations. Though there seems to be a double standard that three girls and one guy is more acceptable.

Anyway, with the three guys and a girl group, there are only three guy to guy relationships on the flip side. Not many relationships overall. Can't be too big of an issue can it?

so what exactly is "unrealistic" about either of the other 3 characters being female?

the "townie" guy you mentioned I don't see a real problem switching him from what you mentioned. he seems incompetent and a bit whiny, which if that were the only female character would probably have some Unfortunate Implications, but with another female, I don't see much of a problem, again assuming their both 3 dimensional characters with different strengths and weaknesses

The "townie" male is very much a product of his culture and holds very strong ideas on the roles and "appropriate" behaviour of men and women and, while many women have genuinely held those ideas, the ramifications of those ideals would make the character even more ineffectual - we'd wind up with a female character that not only thinks that all women should STFU and do what the men say but is completely fucking useless and a whinger to boot.

While such a character would be realistic for the culture, it would lack agency and I really don't want to have a woman running around saying "you ought to be more ladylike" to the other.

That is actually the very character that was originally female and got gender-flipped - incidentally making the character less useful so far as basic survival skills go (a woman of that culture would be able to cook for herself, while he cannot - "that's women's work".)

Of the other two characters, one is a typical male of his culture and holds egalitarian ideals and the other holds more egalitarian ideals than is typical of his own culture due to his life experiences giving him a far more cosmopolitan and understanding outlook on many things.

The latter cannot be gender-flipped without making the character wholly implausible - a female from that society would not be able to have that character's background so would need a complete rewrite and, while empowered, enlightened and capable, would be a major case (due to the male-dominated society) of Never a Self-Made Woman - a trope I'm studiously aiming to avoid.

i.e. I'm fine with a male character of that culture whose experiences have taught him to be rather more understanding but not with a woman who is both capable and "emancipated" beyond the norm of her culture due to a number of men "allowing" and maybe even encouraging her to be.

It would also smack terribly of the overused trope whereby every female character - regardless of the culture, era, planet, species etc - holds 21st Century Western ideals of equality, truth, justice and the "purfuit of happinefs".

I want all the characters to be plausible self-made products of their cultures and experiences.

The former if gender-flipped would have the Unfortunate Implications of an Us vs Them situation where both the females are from cultures in which women are equal to men (i.e. more like present day NZ, Britain, USA, Australia etc) while both the males are from cultures that traditionally suppress women (albeit with one of them challenging those views).

I specifically wanted to have a male character from a culture where the idea of sexual, racial, class etc equality was not a "radical idea" so gender-flipping that character would defeat that purpose.

I want both a man and a woman saying "no, it's normal for the sexes to be equal". The other egalitarian male being more of a radical thinker questioning the "wisdom" of his culture's beliefs.

So we wind up with:

An outdoorsy, self-reliant, man whose culture says that women are inferior but whose life experiences have shown him that this is not the case so he rejects the premise.

An urban man whose culture says that women are inferior and wholeheartedly believes it (and his wife, were she still alive, would agree with his sentiment because that's the way she was raised) and is reliant on others to meet his basic needs for survival (this situation will change as the character develops).

An outdoorsy, self-reliant, man whose culture holds women as equals.

An urban, self-reliant (in an urban setting, anyway), self-made woman whose culture also holds women as equal.

Shoe-horning in a female fifth character to address the gender balance a little would be glaringly obvious to the reader that her only function is to bring up the female numbers as the cast are each representatives of four different cultures and bringing in an extra person would over-represent one of those cultures.

Adding an opposite-sex character from each of those cultures to balance things out would make the number of characters too high.

edited 5th Aug '13 4:23:38 PM by Wolf1066

Personally, I don't think having only one of your four main characters as female is a particularly terrible or even remotely unrealistic scenario; mostly due to it being such a small sample population. What you could do is simply populate the setting with female side and/or satellite characters.

For most of the story, they are the only people around, there are no secondary or tertiary characters.

I've been giving a lot of thought on whether it'd be possible to fit in another character without it unbalancing anything else or creating an inconsistency in the plot and ensuring that the fifth character would have agency and be a useful member of the team.

I've got to be very careful to ensure that such a character would not enable things that hurt the plot.

At the moment, the mix is such that two characters (the outdoorsy ones) would be inclined to want to take the initiative, charge into the unknown and find out just what the fuck is going on here while the other two (the "townies") would be just as happy to stay put where it's relatively safe (if rather puzzling) rather than "go off adventuring in the wild". After all, they both lack the survival skills and physical conditioning of the outdoorsy types.

However, having the two "adventurous" ones head off and leave the two townies behind is not an option as the male townie is not self-sufficient even in an urban situation (he can't cook for himself as that's "women's work" - he's never learned and actively resists the idea of learning) and the female townie, quite understandably, has no desire to be "housekeeper" for aome idiot who can't look after himself and would just sit on his arse and expect her to do all the domestic duties.

So, if the outdoorsy blokes are insistent enough about leaving to explore, the woman is going to opt to go with them, despite her lack of skills and reservations (as mentioned, she's strong-willed enough to endure that) which would then mean that the male townie will very reluctantly agree to join them as the only other option is to remain alone, in a strange place, while the only three people capable of cooking all bugger off.

Any fifth person, especially a female (due to the townie male's take on the roles of women) would have to be such that she does not enable either of the townies to say "screw it, you two head off and play Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett while we stay here."

Therefore, any hypothetical fifth character would have to have her own unique reasons for joining the guys exploring ("I ain't your fucking kitchen bitch" has already been taken) without her being basically a gender-flipped version of either of the outdoorsy males or an outdoorsy variant of the other female - which would unbalance the cultures in favour of one.

I have two outdoorsy types, two urbanites; two from egalitarian cultures, two from non-egalitarian cultures (skewed slightly in that one rejects many (but not all) preconceptions of his culture).

Obviously, the egalitarian male and female will be characters the average modern "Western" reader will find it easiest to relate to, hence one of each sex.

In terms of primary cultural differences, any fifth person's original culture would be either egalitarian or not (upsetting the balance either way) and she would be either rural/outdoorsy or urban, either skewing the balance in favour of the outdoorsy people or enabling the three townies to stay behind while the two outdoors types go adventurin'.

And on top of that, what agency does she bring, what new and useful skills/outlooks in the context of their situation? She'd have to be a major character or it'd be obvious that she's just there to increase the ranks of females and pass the Bechdel Test.

Given that there's already four major characters with a good mix of skills, knowledge and outlooks, I've pretty much got all bases covered including Home.

Your posts are long. I have no problem with having the main characters be two males and a female. It can pass the Bechdel Test if there's a side character who talk to the main woman. It could be a sister or love interest to one of the guys. I don't think there's anything wrong with having a woman who looks like she's just there to pass the test. Just make the conversation relevant to the plot and it's good.

I agree with lexicon that your posts are perhaps a little too lengthy; which makes it somewhat intimidating/tedious for people to go through in full.

Having skimmed through your character descriptions in a little more detail, it sounds like you have a number of wants that - at least, when combined - wind up being mutually exclusive from at least one of the others. In which case, you'll likely need to give up one of them.

Moreover, I am struck by how similar your two outdoorsy males are to one another. And for the one "whose culture says that women are inferior but whose life experiences have shown him that this is not the case so he rejects the premise", your setup hasn't given him much opportunity to be exposed to such experiences. If it's strictly in his back story, it feels like a wasted opportunity for character development and instead reeks of telling rather than showing.

My suggestion would be to replace one of the outdoorsy males with a female character.

edited 6th Aug '13 5:44:11 PM by peasant

Good points raised, Peasant.

The "outdoorsy" bloke's rejection of cultural stereotypes is indeed all in his backstory as I have plans for his character development in different areas throughout the course of the story. And as mentioned, he doesn't reject all the stereotypes/ideas of his culture.

But it does indeed make him similar in many ways to the other outdoorsy bloke.

Gender-flipping him would, due to his culture, involve invoking Sweet Polly Oliver, which is plausible enough and would make for a very interesting character in its own right, but would entail either completely reworking the backstory to get the same mix of skills as a self-made woman or would require having her do so with the blessing and assistance of her father to get the same background.

edited 6th Aug '13 6:14:03 PM by Wolf1066

Just to be clear, why are you concerned? If you're only worried because you've been told that failing The Bechdel Test is bad, I wouldn't sweat it. From what I can tell, she's a character. Not some hollow cut out thrown in to appeal to more demographics.

It's not like you need to prove that you think women are people or anything. Or, even if you do, including another girl won't make much of a difference.

What Rem said.

As I previously stated, you've pretty much written yourself into a corner.

You want two of your four characters to be female, of whom Character D already is. However, you have also determined that you want Character A (outdoor, egalitarian culture) to be male. AND Characters B and C can't be made female due to their backgrounds.

As you can see, you can't have your cake and eat it too. The simplest solution is for you to either give up on either your first or second requirement. Alternatively, you can add a fifth character who is female OR rework the backgrounds of Character B or C so that he can be made a she; though either of these options would require massive reworking of your plot and character dynamics.

Yeah, I was fairly certain that I was pretty much in a corner way back at the OP - and discussing it in thread has certainly reinforced that - hence the question "Any other suggestions on avoiding Smurfetteness and Unfortunate Implications?"

A vibe I'm getting from the replies is that the Smurfette Principle is not much of a biggie providing the character a) is a proper three-dimensional character with agency and b) isn't just there as a token (or to do all the domestic work like Dr Maureen Robinson)

Would that be a fair appraisal?

While a Sweet Polly Oliver would be interesting (to the point I'm going to have to write a story that has one at some stage), I'm pretty much lumbered with a cast of three men and a woman, so any more ideas for further mitigating the situation or at least avoiding major pitfalls?

edited 7th Aug '13 1:30:18 AM by Wolf1066

You got it. There are no Unfortunate Implications to a girl hanging out with three guys. If you described the girl as being good for nothing other than sandwich construction and dish cleansing, then obviously that would be a different story, but in your case it's merely a matter of chance.

Agreed. Moreover, the Smurfette Principle only really applies when you have Loads And Loads Of Characters.

edited 7th Aug '13 9:44:09 AM by peasant

and Many thanks.

I called it! :P

Yeah, I guess ya did.

Some suggestions: - Don't try to being politically correct too hard. This can lead to unfortunate implications or even bad writing. Also you can make an otherwise historically acurate story into a mess by adding a horde of action girls, which are very good in other settings, but maybe not in all. - Try to justify it. For example the guys are easier becoming friends with their own gender. In my more serious work 4 of the original 5 man band are male, but I try to get a 1:1 gender ratio at the rest of the cast, some of them are almost as important as the main characters. But I still can't imagine the protagonist's metal band with mixed gender. And while the female character isn't in his band (but they still fight together at the night), her band's musicians are mixed gender.

Cheers. I'm not a believer in having unrealistic characters of any type - and populating historical pieces with numerous characters that behave out of period (or failing to plausible provide in-period reasons for their behaviour) is one of my bugbears.