"I'm just a wild woman."
Dancing to the beat of her own drum,
the Wild Woman is an admirable symbol of freedom.
But onscreen, she's often marginalized and painted as
a basket case you should stay away from.
"Poor thing! She's like a lonely tornado!"
"What's up with her?" "She's embarrassing herself, right?"
So how do you spot a wild woman onscreen?
She's a free spirit who can't be tied down.
"I'm a Golden Starfish!"
She's mysterious, and a little aloof,
hiding much of herself from public view.
"You like to talk about your life. I don't like to talk about mine."
But if you do get a glimpse of her feelings,
you see she's intense, even ferocious,
"If anything happened to him,
I would kill everyone in this room and then myself."
Self-reliant and carving her own path, she's often alone, but not lonely.
"Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free."
Frequently with no boyfriend in sight,
"I shall die a bachelor!"
she might have a lot of good friends… who are girls.
"I love you, Xena." "I love you too, Gabrielle."
She could be the "cool aunt" and all this might be code
for being queer,
"And I'm so sick of people saying that love is just
all a woman is fit for."
Rarely the protagonist, she tends to be a side character
having kick-ass adventures on her own just off screen.
Or this too-independent woman might come across
to other characters as a cautionary tale,
showcasing our shared anxieties about a truly free lifestyle.
But at her core, the Wild Woman represents individuation,
and our primal desire to live fully and freely as our authentic selves.
Here's our take on the Wild Woman
and what happens when she takes center stage,
bringing us along on a journey of radical self-discovery.
"How wild it was... to let it be."
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This character type is a natural woman.
The original Wild Woman was Artemis,
virgin goddess of nature and the hunt.
Artemis, known as Diana to the Romans,
was the twin sister of Apollo, the god of civilized things
like the sun, art, and math.
But his sister ruled over a more feral domain.
"She made her home in the forest."
Artemis is most famous for two things: never marrying,
and killing the one man who ever saw her naked.
"He hid and watched her bathe.
Diana turned him into a stag and his own hounds tore him apart."
A Wild Woman's independence is core to her sense of self,
and she is very protective of it.
"I don't believe I will ever marry. I'm happy as I am."
Modern day Dianas are fierce, attuned to nature,
stand up for the vulnerable,
and don't worry about seeming un-feminine.
A Wild Woman also retains Diana's anger issues.
"Then I rip off his arm and shove it
where the sun don't shine.
Then I reach down his throat... and shake his hand."
When you're beloved by a Wild Woman, you are really truly loved,
but her affections can flip on a dime,
and you do not want to get on her bad side.
Katniss Everdeen starts the Hunger Games series as a prototypical Artemis,
preferring to hide out in the woods and hunt to survive.
We see this character's protective side when her sister is threatened,
which leads to Katniss' volunteering as a tribute.
"I volunteer as tribute!"
Eventually her wild refusal to bow down
results in her leading the revolution,
but not without a lot of resistance to that role.
"This revolution is about everyone. And we need a voice.
Then you should've saved Peeta."
Incidentally, Jennifer Lawrence's breakout role, Winter's Bone,
also is an Artemis type, who's comfortable in nature
and driven by looking out for her more vulnerable loved ones.
"I got a little brother and a little sister, 12 and 6."
"Well, who's taking care of them right now?"
"I am."
You might say the Wild Woman's big moment in 20th century culture
was as the Flapper.
This new woman who rose to prominence in the 1920s
was known for her boyish physique, her wild dancing,
and her independent streak.
"I'm gonna rouge my knees and roll my stockings down."
She broke with her foremothers via her androgynous look,
through abandoning corsets and cutting off her hair.
And the look was linked to political empowerment,
since it came into vogue right as women were gaining the right to vote.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that Joan Crawford was
"the best example of the flapper,
dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal,
young things with a talent for living."
Well into her middle age,
Crawford's star persona was defined by her independence,
and the fact that men were intimidated by her strength.
"Lie to me. Tell me all these years you've waited. Tell me."
"All these years I've waited."
Katherine Hepburn, on the other hand,
was a Wild Woman who did find her equal.
The Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn pairing lasted decades on screen
casting Tracy as the only man not intimidated
by Hepburn's Wild Woman nature.
"I love you." "Even when I'm sober?"
"Even when you're brilliant."
The Hepburn-Tracy duo echoes Artemis' relationship with Orion,
the only man in the ancient world who could handle the Wild Goddess --
though it's unclear whether Orion and Artemis
were lovers or just hunting buddies,
just as the true nature of Hepburn and Tracy's relationship
is still a matter of considerable debate.
"Maybe they were bisexual.
Maybe they were gay on Tuesday and straight on Wednesday."
"They had to make up a story, a cover story, in order to survive."
Meanwhile, Marlene Dietrich made androgyny both normal and a glamorous,
movie-star look,
notably in her iconic tuxedo scene in 1930's Morocco.
"She was doing it to turn on both the woman and the man."
The Wild Woman came to TV sitcoms in the 70s and 80s,
as tomboys were finally given space on the small screen.
Jo drove her motorcycle into the Facts of Life in 1980
and clashed with girly girl Blair,
"Uh, Is this where I'm supposed to be?"
"Uh, Delivery boys usually use the rear entrance."
"Delivery boy?!"
or flirted, depending on your perspective.
"I know a phony when I see one."
"You should, you spend enough time looking in the mirror."
On Happy Days, rock star Suzi Quatro played cool chick Leather Tuscadero,
known for her tomboyish personality and appearance.
"Leather, this is Ralph Mouth."
"Pow." "Charmed."
Leather formed an all-girl band on the show.
"we formed a band: Leather and the Suedes."
And Quatro was a major inspiration for real life Wild Woman
Joan Jett to learn guitar and co-found the Runaways.
"I'm the f-[BLEEP]ing Glycerine Queen."
"Suzi Quatro."
"I'm the f-[BLEEP]ing Wild One!"
Crawford, Hepburn, Dietrich, Jo, and Leather all fit certain
non-traditional female stereotypes society has about queer women,
"You're not extending enough on your follow through."
which play into another common aspect of the wild woman:
queercoding.
"Hey girlfriend."
The original wild woman Diana – with her independent nature,
her pack of gal pals, and her refusal to marry a man--
is often considered a symbol of lesbian liberation.
"If power lesbians represented Manhattan's chicest new social hive...
Charlotte was about to meet their queen bee."
"Diana the Huntress. I got her on sale."
Because queerness is usually something that can only be hinted at
in American pop culture,
sneaking LGBTQIA+ references into an otherwise straight work
is known as queercoding.
"I want to show you something. May I?"
And so watching stories about wild women can sometimes invite reading
between the lines.
In the 90's, Xena and Gabrielle were two Wild Women
who were written as a couple:
they raise a child together, they literally die for each other
on multiple occasions,
and generally wander ancient Greece in a cloud of sexual tension.
"Come on, Gabrielle, let's get wet! Come on, Gabrielle!
Get your gear off!"
But this great romance happened wholly in code.
"Are you sitting on the soap?" "I was wondering what that was."
as co-creator Rob Tapert told Entertainment Weekly,
"The studio was so concerned that
it would be perceived as a lesbian show
that they would not allow us to have Xena and Gabrielle
in the same frame of the opening titles."
Studios are still gun-shy about featuring explicitly queer characters
in blockbuster movies.
Valkyrie, a Wild Woman who has relationships with men and women
in the comic books,
had the one scene confirming her sexual orientation
cut from Thor: Ragnarok.
"There are 9 characters in the- in the comic books that are queer or bi,
so Valkyrie is one of them."
"Something that you wouldn't necessarily get in this movie."
The queercoded wild woman often gets shunted into roles
of the gay coded best friend or the cautionary tale Wild Woman.
The 1996 film Foxfire centers on a girl gang
that coalesces around Wild Woman Legs,
played by Angelina Jolie.
"That's kidnapping!"
"It's just a word, Maddy, don't let it scare you."
"You're what's scaring me."
Viewpoint character Maddy eventually goes back to her boyfriend
and her college plans,
and Legs represents a dangerous road-not-taken
in Maddy's more conventional story:
that time she had a crush on a girl and almost killed a guy.
"I'll never forget you!" "You're in my heart Maddy!"
On the flipside, the idealized version of the Wild Woman side character
is the Cool Role Model the protagonist wants to be like.
"She would say things like,
'Isn't every story a story of betrayal?'
I could only agree with her.
It was too much fun to agree with her."
She lives how she wants, and it's not ruining her life
like with the Cautionary Tale.
It's no accident that a common sub-trope of the Wild Woman
is the (often queer-coded) Cool Aunt.
An aunt is a mother-like figure just outside of the nuclear family
who represents a parallel universe --
a glimpse of what the future could be
if the child diverges from their actual mother's values.
In the Daria episode "I Don't" our favorite teen curmudgeon feels trapped
in her family's stifling, heteronormative melodrama.
"What a hideous twist of fate. Me, a bridesmaid."
until she's whisked away by her cool aunt Amy.
"Things are getting ugly.
I suggest we make a hasty but unobtrusive exit."
"Really?"
"Let's go find a place that sells cheese fries."
Amy's presence reassures Daria that she doesn't have to
become her mother when she grows up.
"I found myself all grown up with my own point of view,
and feeling no particular obligation to anyone else's BS."
"Prove- prove to me you can beat me withou— [big energy blast]"
"I have nothing to prove to you."
For centuries, the Wild Woman has existed on the edges of the narrative,
because the Wild Woman's care-free, independent lifestyle
sounds unrealistic and outside of what society tells us
is "normal behavior" for women.
So when a Wild Woman is the focal point,
the narrative is often a rebuke of the society that deems her wild.
Carol Danvers is too unruly for both humans and the Kree.
Her impetuousness and emotional volatility are her strengths,
but society has convinced her they're weaknesses.
"Can you keep your emotions in check
long enough to take me on?
Or will they get the better of you as always?"
Captain Marvel centers on Carol reconnecting with her emotions
and learning how to gain power from them.
"I've been fighting with one arm tied behind my back.
But what happens when I'm finally set free?"
It's a love story, because it's a woman
falling in love with her own resilience.
And if you ask some viewers,
it's also a love story between two women in the Air Force.
The Frozen series is another where the Wild Woman gets to lead.
Elsa is a Wild Woman who's taught
to rein in her emotion-based superpowers
because they scare the patriarchy, aka her dad, the King.
"Conceal it,"
"Don't feel it. Don't let it show."
While her sister longs for romance,
Elsa wants to feel accepted, and to feel alive.
"Who cares about danger when there's love?"
"Ew, Anna! Blech. Kissing won't save the forest."
But over her two movies, Elsa discovers
that she's not meant to lead over civilization;
she belongs to nature, like Artemis.
She's supposed to love herself, ride horses made of water,
and flirt with forest maidens.
"You know, you belong up here."
A Wild Woman's quest for freedom is a journey of finding identity.
"Something's, like, crossed over in me.
And I can't go back".
In the words of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés from her book
Women Who Run with the Wolves,
"Developing a relationship with the wildish nature
is an essential part of women's individuation.
In order to accomplish this, a woman must go into the dark
but at the same time she must not be irreparably trapped, captured,
or killed on her way there or back."
Hardship is often the catalyst for a Wild Woman's inner exploration –
whether it's the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship
or "being ground down by the patriarchy.
"I'm not a hobo.
And that's probably 'cause women can't walk out of their lives.
They've got kids to take care of,
they've got parents to look after."
"You sound like a feminist." "I am."
But the wild woman does not become feral.
She rediscovers her authentic self;
reflecting on her innate, primal instincts
and reassessing her core values in life.
"There's a sunrise and a sunset everyday,
and you can choose to be there for it."
And she's a mirror to help us dip our toes
in the water of self-discovery.
So, what can we learn from the Wild Women of pop culture?
Love your solitude and your freedom.
"I love my liberty too well to be in any hurry to give it up."
Don't worry about what the world thinks.
Own your inner ferocity and protectiveness --
and don't let anyone mess with you.
"Oh, please— you and what army?" "Now! Me and this army."
Embrace your inner cool aunt.
"By the way, your aunt's really cool."
"Yeah I know, she's a little unpredictable sometimes."
nd live unafraid. That's the Wild Woman motto.
"If a man came into your life, wouldn't you want to compromise?"
"[laughs] Stupid."
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