“She’s delicate. A rare rose, but not without thorns.”
With her storied charm, politesse, and grit,
she’s a staple of on-screen depictions of American life
below the Mason-Dixon Line.
She’s the Southern Woman.
“I’m from the South. Flirting is part of my heritage.”
She’s a figure that’s full of contradictions:
both the polished belle and the wild country girl;
spoiled yet scrappy --
and some find it hard to understand her.
“What is it about you Southern girls?”
But we can find a few threads that tie the Southern Woman together.
She often values traditional femininity:
playing the gracious hostess, being an attentive mother,
and putting her own lady-like spin
on the dirt and grime of real life.
“Travis, when a woman says ‘later,’ she really means ‘not ever.’”
Yet despite her impeccable manners, she’s anything but passive –
She knows how to speak up and assert herself.
“Enough!”
She’s deeply connected to her community, status, and heritage --
which isn’t always good.
Her on-screen portrayals don’t shy away from the racism,
snobbery, and gossip that’s designed to make others feel left out.
“In Wind Gap, every woman gets a nasty label if they don’t conform
to the rules of engagement.”
But on the positive side, the Southern Woman can be involved, supportive,
and fiercely loyal -- the portrait of a true lady.
“That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”
The Southern Woman is ultimately defined by effort.
She lives by certain expectations
and she’ll stop at nothing to get the job done.
“But how can I let up now when I’m so close?
I gotta make sure all daddy’s hard work means something.”
Juggling a complex legacy, she’s also more than a stereotype
and comes in many forms on-screen today.
Here’s our take on how the Southern Woman has grown from her roots,
and what she can teach us, no matter where we’re from.
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me.
I am Lemon Breeland, strong Southern belle.”
Hi everyone!
Exciting news: today we have a new episode of Take Two airing on Netflix
Film Club YouTube channel.
Today’s big question: Do rom-coms teach us how to love
or ruin us for love?
Check it out on the Netflix Film Club YouTube channel.
“Clothes are my passion.”
When we think of the Southern Woman,
what first comes to mind is probably the traditional Southern belle,
in all her feminine, frilly, hoop-skirt glory.
This poised, graceful, feminine ideal of the Antebellum period
may not have really existed for a long time,
but the Southern belle remains a template
with strong resonance for the Southern Woman.
The irony of the most iconic Southern belle types on screen, though,
is that they’re typically failing to live up to the belle ideal,
while mourning a world that no longer has space
for the kind of woman they were brought up to be.
Gone with the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara
with her picturesque gowns and countless suitors
may be the epitome of the belle in our cultural consciousness.
“I’ll tell you, Scarlett O’Hara,
if you’ll take that Southern belle simper off your face."
But even she doesn’t feel like she’s really living up to that label.
It’s her selfless, do-gooding mother and passive, sweet Melanie
who embody the persona of the “lady”
Scarlett can’t bring herself to act like.
“Another dance and my reputation will be lost forever!”
“With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.”
“Oh, you do talk scandalous!”
Scarlett’s true nature -- what’s actually interesting
about her and helps her survive the Civil War’s upheaval --
is her fierce vitality, impropriety, and her relentless drive,
none of which is very lady like at all.
“And you, Miss, are no lady.
But don’t think that I hold that against you.
Ladies have never held any charm for me.”
Likewise, Blanche DuBois of A Streetcar Named Desire
is a late 1940s version of the fallen Southern belle,
who’s trying to project that artificial image of grace and poise --
“After all, a woman’s charm is 50 percent illusion.”
after her once-picturesque world has (like Scarlett’s) fallen to pieces.
Thus, a central aspect of cinema’s Southern belles is really delusion.
“I don’t want realism, I want magic.”
Both would-be belles are fighting to preserve an ideal
of the past and of themselves, which no longer exists,
if it ever truly did --
nostalgically clinging to a lost world that others
can see is best left to history.
“The cause of living in the past is dying right in front of us.”
Scarlett’s soulmate is the equally scrappy and conniving opportunist
Rhett Butler, but she spends most of the story wrongly convinced
she loves Ashley Wilkes --
a human symbol of that supposedly genteel old South
that she’s pining for, even though it never fit her.
“I’ve loved something that doesn’t really exist.”
Meanwhile, Blanche’s inability to face the changing world
eventually contributes to landing her in a mental hospital.
The belle’s devotion to the past makes her especially fixated on
traditional femininity.
She’s invested in upholding a patriarchal culture
that prizes her mainly for being young and beautiful,
(the very meaning of the word “belle”),
and so disempowers her with every passing year.
“And look at yourself! Take a look at yourself here in a worn out
Mardi Gras outfit!”
As she ages and her looks fade, she faces a crisis of identity.
“In my youth I excited some admiration,
but look at me now. Would you think it’s
possible that I was once considered to be attractive?”
We might have some sense of sympathy
for this woman who’s essentially rendered obsolete
by both cultural changes and time itself,
but the belle can also invite our disgust and judgement
for how spoiled and out of touch she appears in a world
that’s progressing without her.
“War, war, war! This war talk’s spoiling all the fun
at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream!”
When it comes to the legacy of a movie like Gone with the Wind,
there’s a disconnect between audiences’ love for Scarlett
and the racism that the film is guilty of --
and it helps highlight a pretty persistent problem with how
the Southern Woman is depicted.
While the South is actually diverse, This trope is far wider than reality.
Even when white women aren’t the only ones present,
they’re still the center of the stories being told.
“I’d like to write something from the point of view of the help.”
Writing the belle off merely as an antiquated product of her time,
doesn’t do her justice, though.
With a better understanding of the powers and dangers
that come with her position,
the modern belle can take the flair, independence, and copious bows and
adapt the historical belle’s better qualities
into something that works today.
Heart of Dixie’s Lemon Breeland cares deeply about the belle’s legacy,
which means she can sometimes get caught up
in its less inclusive elements like excluding outsiders.
“Bluebell isn’t an animal shelter, and we don’t have to accept
every little stray that comes our way.”
But as she learns that it’s not all or nothing --
that she can take the good and leave the bad
without being disloyal to her past --
she become a great example of how to update her values
without compromising her connection to history.
“It is 2014, and women are allowed to have relations
with whomever they want.”
Another modern application of the belle’s ideals of femininity
comes in the Southern housewife character,
who can find herself underappreciated.
“Don’t look so worried.”
“It’s my job.”
“No, it’s not. You’re a housewife.”
Walking Dead viewers and in-universe characters alike
at first considered Lori Grimes useless for not automatically taking to
the protective physical tasks we prioritize when society collapses,
but her contributions are important in their own way.
“Oh, there’s plenty of work to go around.”
She demonstrates how emotional labor keeps everything running smoothly.
It’s the housewife’s chosen jobs like making a home that separates living
from staying alive.
“We are providing stability. We are trying to create a life worth living.”
Still, she shows us potential limitations.
Lori can’t seem to see beyond where she is --
it irritates her when other women buck this responsibility --
“I help keep this place safe.”
“The men can handle this on their own. They don’t need your help.”
-- and oftentimes, she seems exhausted
by the powerlessness of playing a solely reactive role
while men call the shots.
“Men have to do certain things, you know that,
and they’re either gonna blame the little woman
as the reason they do ‘em or the reason they don’t.”
In Sharp Objects, Southern matriarch Adora Crellin embodies just how much
evil can hide under the guise of hospitality and motherhood.
“If she was guilty, they argued,
it was only of a very female sort of rage.
Overcare. Killing through kindness.”
With the Southern Woman, we ultimately get a better look
at how performing traditional femininity can be used for bad --
“Women around here, they don’t kill with their hands.
They tallk you’re dead.”
-- or good.
“I’m askin’ for the chance to prove I could be brave and strong
and unselfish.”
“He is so sophisticated and charming and rich and handsome! He fairly
screams Blanche! At least, he will before I’m through with him.”
Not far beneath her ladylike surface,
the Southern Woman has a natural boldness that shines through.
“Child you’re out of your mind!
You know you can’t wear red to the Olympus Ball.”
“Can’t I? I’m going to.”
She’s far too dignified to let anyone disrespect her,
and any conflict brings out her inner fire.
“Oh, if I just wasn’t a lady, what wouldn’t I tell that varmint?”
Reese Witherspoon, a real life Southern Woman,
summarizes it well in her book Whiskey in a Teacup:
What Growing Up in the South Taught Me About Life, Love,
and Baking Biscuits:
“We may be delicate and ornamental on the outside,
but inside we’re strong and fiery.”
“Nobody talks to my mama like that!”
“Praise the Lord, the South has risen again!”
And not every Southern Woman even cares about being seen as dainty and demure.
Some versions of this trope are more focused on speaking their mind
than minding their manners.
“Well, she said it was a gag gift.”
“Well, it made me gag.”
In some stories, counter to our assumptions, the Southern Woman’s
role as a wife gives her the space to be assertive.
The culture she grew up in embraces the Southern matriarch in charge;
a woman who makes the important decisions,
even when the men in her family are the primary breadwinners.
Tami Taylor of Friday Night Lights may be known as the wife
of her Texas town’s celebrated football coach,
but Tami’s a tough talker with her own career
and authority in their community.
“That it’s part of my job to make sure that you don’t grow up stupid.
It’s bad for the world.”
And nothing gets done in the Taylor household
without going through her first.
“I’m right 100 percent of the time. You can ask my husband.”
Her no-nonsense persona echoes a lot of Southern Women who do even more
to buck tradition.
Independence, beyond personality,
like real freedom in their work and love lives
became especially common in the 80s and 90s.
Designing Women’s classy, opinionated Julia Sugarbaker
proved that the Southern Woman could be a feminist figure.
“It has been the men who have done the law making and the money making
and most of the mischief making.”
And like any good feminist, she defended a woman’s choice
to align with more traditional achievements too --
like her sister Suzanne’s beauty pageant success.
“She didn’t twirl just a baton. That baton was on fire.”
Feminist organizer Natasha Murphy explains how many underestimate
the Southern Woman, quote:
“We get the rap for being demure and dewy-faced in the big poofy dress
and the big hair.
We’re not really quiet. We’re not dumb.
We want to change our communities.”
While the belle may choose tradition in a modern world,
other nontraditional Sothern Women play an important role
in making new paths seem possible.
“I patterned my look after the town tramp.
I just thought she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.
And people said, ‘Oh, she ain’t nothin but trash.’
But in my mind I thought ‘that’s what I’m gonna be
when I grow up.’”
On screen, we see lots of ways that Southern Women reject convention
and accept that their lives don’t live up to some kind of
picture-perfect ideal.
“You know the kind of woman who could have been the next Faith Hill
but somewhere along the way discovered peach daiquiris,
put the diaphragm in wrong, and wound up smack dab
in the middle of trailer hell raising two kids?”
The rebellious daughter subtrope is the rejection of
the Southern Woman’s lifestyle altogether.
“I was 14 years old and I was awful to you more than anybody.
All I wanted to do was smoke and shoplift.”
The rebellious daughter renounces any assumption
that she’ll be a good girl by doing everything she can to act out.
“Just being polite. We do that in the big city too, you know.”
One version of the Southern Woman is the rural country girl.
Her comfort with dirt, grime, and hard work
might make her something of a tomboy.
“Hey Miss Dubose.”
“Don’t you say ‘hey’ to me, you ugly girl!”
Like Maggie Greene on the Walking Dead,
this type might be more concerned with getting to work on her daddy’s farm
than fitting into the belle’s shoes.
“People told me you killed walkers and a car… with a tractor?”
“I couldn’t sit by and watch.”
But that doesn’t take away from her own style of femininity.
Maggie’s not quite hard-pressed to find someone who sees her as a woman.
“Hello farmer’s daughter.”
In most people’s minds, ‘southern life’ usually equates to rural areas,
which means there are countless stereotypes about country living for
Southerners to reckon with.
On-screen examples of the South
sometimes portray these rural settings as pretty backwards.
In Sweet Home Alabama, Melanie is so ashamed of her upbringing
in Pigeon Creek, Alabama,
that she tries to forget it all when she moves to New York.
“You know, that accent of yours is a whole lot thicker
when you’re dreaming.”
“All right, how come y’all let me sleep?”
But as she comes to realize, the sophistication Melanie
feels as a city girl doesn’t justify the superiority complex
it gives her over the good people in her hometown --
“And then you insult my friends, actin’ like you’re better than ‘em!”
“I am better than them!”
-- she’d ultimately rather embrace both sides of herself.
“You can’t have roots and wings, Mel.”
“Maybe I could just fly south for the winter.”
Similarly, fish-out-of-water stories show the same benefits of country
life from an outsider’s perspective.
On Hart of Dixie, Zoe Hart demonstrates the culture shock
of adjusting to a small Southern town as a New Yorker.
“Let your New York flag fly.”
“They don’t like my New York flag. They don’t even like my shorts.”
But eventually, her appreciation makes her an honorary Southern Woman of sorts;
it’s just impossible to spend so much time in Bluebell
and not see the charm of a place where people look out for each other.
“Do you think all small towns are like this one?”
“I’d like to think so, but something tells me probably not.”
These stories do speak to important parts of Southern culture --
like the value of a close-knit community
and the pride Southerners take in their hometowns --
but they don’t tell the whole story.
For one thing, the allure of small town life isn’t uniquely Southern;
finding peace outside the daily grind of a bustling city
is the plot of countless rom-coms and Hallmark movies
that take place in rural hideaways all over the map.
“Ha, ha, ha! I’m in love!”
“God, I wish this town weren’t halfway between DC and New York.”
And the underling assumption that the South is all country
isn’t true either --
three out of every four Southerners reside in metropolitan areas.
As we get better about representation, the Southern Woman character onscreen
starts to better reflect the variation she has in real life.
Atlanta’s Van, a biracial, German-speaking, working mother,
proves it’s not the style or accent or white femininity
that defines the trope,
but a willingness to speak her mind.
“You roll your eyes at me and you call me crazy
anytime I try to tell you something.
I guess that’s just me, right? I’m crazy-ass Vanessa.”
Van works hard to take on the responsibilities of the people
who depend on her --
and that’s about as Southern as a woman can get.
“She works, she raises our child. She’s smarter than me, better than me.”
At first glance, the Southern Woman trope might seem like nothing
more than a bunch of one-dimensional subtropes;
we’ve seen more than enough exaggerated belles, country girls,
and matriarchs for this to seem true.
But her presence in film is actually as complicated as the person
she’s meant to represent:
a contradictory mix of sweet and sour.
As more people learn to stop romanticizing the larger picture
of her past,
the Southern Woman takes the best of her traditional values
and attitudes into the future,
where they make her extraordinarily strong.
“We all got jobs to do. That’s what daddy always says.
No matter what happens, we’ll deal with it.”
And her lesson isn’t just limited to the South;
we can all learn something from her self-assurance --
and she’d tell us so too.
“These country folk, our backward ways… I just want to remind you,
there’s good here too.”
Hi everyone, I’m Susannah.
I’m Debra, and we’re the creators of The Take.
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