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Screw Writing 'Strong' Women

Published: Feb 28, 2014

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Haha, finally, I start from the beginning of the quote, XD.

It took me forever to choose who would go here. I mean, this quote is all about writing women as people and not just one character trait, and I take the time to give my female characters diverse personalities, so it was really difficult. I finally settled on Regina Rožulauka (Baltic Group's mentor) from '2072'.

Why did I choose her? Well, she has all the traits of the 'strong female character'. She's tough as nails (she killed someone to win her WPC, after all), sharp-tongued, witty, beautiful, patriotic (towards Latvia, her home country) and has a good work ethic.

HOWEVER (and this is a big 'however'), she is one of the most unlikable characters throughout this entire story (at least in my opinion). And it's because her outward strength is all she has going for her.

First of all, her treatment of Baltic Group could be considered harsh at best, and abusive at worst. She exploits Triinu Sepp's reserved personality and social anxiety to isolate her from the others and mold her into the 'perfect, emotionless contestant'. (Which doesn't work, because Triinu is deeply loyal to her new friends.) She knows about the abuse Mihails Jaunums suffers through back in Riga (she is friends with his father), yet she condones it. She even threatens to make sure it gets worse if Mihails doesn't score better in the events. Not to mention she practically tortures the poor boy by making him run for hours without water. Finally, she insults Niele's intelligence time and time again because she thinks that just because Niele Paulauskaitė is pretty, feminine, and soft-spoken, she must be weak and useless to the team.

And that's just her attitude towards her own team. She refers to the Asian contestants as 'squinty-eyed snakes', verbally abuses Risto Suomalainen and Freya Svensson of Nordic Group because the former is not 'masculine enough to be Finnish', while the latter is 'ugly and should have been a man', and refuses to interact with Lorand Lantos of Central Europe Group because he designs dresses as a hobby, and occasionally wears them to model how they look.

Just because Regina is a strong, capable woman who shattered gender roles in her WPC does not automatically make her a good character. In fact, it is quite the opposite. She scoffs at any woman who doesn't meet her standards of 'strength' (ex: Niele and Paulette), and belittles men who have feminine tendencies (ex: Risto and Lorand). However, to her, women can't have too many masculine tendencies or else they become 'ugly' (ex: Freya).

In fact, I make the argument that, even though Regina did what no women in her time did, there are plenty of other female characters who are better role models for readers. (And guess what! They happen to be the very characters Regina looks down upon!)

So, yeah, Regina Rožulauka, the 'strong female character' of 2072...

*Regina Rožulauka belongs to me.*

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Comments14

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Obiwanlives4ever

Mar 2, 2014

Okay, I just love this so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you. While I do have a few ass-kicking females among my favorites (Hungary and Katniss come to mind), more often than not, the characters I like the best - both male and female - tend to be on the physically weaker, psychologically more introverted side, just because those are the ones I can relate to more. It irks me when people automatically assume that being a strong female inherently makes a character likeable. For example, I've seen Bellatrix Lestrange, of all people, heralded as a role model for the sole reason that she's a tough female. Okay, sure, she's an interesting character, and there's nothing wrong with liking her, but calling her a wonderful person and an unsung hero like lots of these fans are? She tortures and kills innocents, but this is excused because she's female and "she must have suffered a lot of sexism in her life." Just ... no.

So yeah, I really appreciate what you've done here. I think Regina would be the kind of character I would absolutely despise - but at the same time, I'd also love her, because I know you created her precisely to be the sort of horrible character lots of fans wrongly praise. (And, again, there's nothing wrong with liking a character like this, goodness knows I like a few villains, but acting like either their strength or their gender excuses their actions is just all sorts of no.) This also reminds me of a character I've written in my Hunger Games FanFiction; she's Wiress' mentor who won thanks to her cunning and cutthroat actions, is dark and cynical in behavior, and values strength to the point of refusing to mentor either Wiress or her districtmate because she views them as weak. I'm going to have her become a bit closer to Wiress after she wins (although certain events, like the fact that Wiress manages to win without killing except in self-defence whereas this woman killed many people in cold blood, make her hate Wiress somewhat ... it's a complicated relationship) but I still intended her in the same way that you intended Regina, as a sort of backlash against all the "I'm a ~strong woman~ and that excuses my acting like a jerk" characters that are out there.