"Call me young lady again, and I’m gonna put my foot
in a place it’s not supposed to be.”
Whether she’s saving the day with her smarts or her physical strength,
she’s not like the rest of the girls.
“Aren’t most girls interested in the pretty maidens from the songs?”
“Most girls are idiots.”
She’s the Strong Female Character -- the fierce, independent answer
to the damsel in distress that to some is a symbol of empowerment,
but to others a reductive cliche.
You can usually recognize the Strong Female Character by her:
heroic role in the story.
“If no one else will defend the world from Ares, then I must.”
She’s brave, with a take-charge attitude.
"Someone has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, fly boy.”
She’s blessed with exceptional smarts.
“Honestly, don’t you two read?”
She also possesses an unbreakable will that refuses to be tamed.
"Well, God hasn’t met my will yet. What Jo wills shall be done.”
Above all, she demonstrates qualities that are underrepresented
in most female characters, who have been coded
as more stereotypically feminine.
"Out here, everything hurts. You wanna get through this?
Do as I say."
The Strong Female Character has become one of our most controversial
and endlessly debated tropes.
Although she may seem like a welcome feminist corrective,
some regard her as too simplistic, little more than a marketing tool.
“Hollywood is learning that that makes money, that that’s popular;
this is a show led by a woman and it’s doing well.”
So what actually makes a female character strong --
and are the many beautiful badasses we’ve seen over the years
giving us a full picture of female strength,
or just something that looks good on a poster?
Here’s our Take on who the Strong Female Character really is,
her powers and her pitfalls, and whether she can evolve.
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The Strong Female Character arguably has its roots in Greek mythology,
where goddesses like Artemis and Athena held powerful sway
over the mortal world.
“My mother is goddess of wisdom and battle strategy.
Do you know what that means? I always win.”
And while they didn’t have divine powers,
the heroines in stories by Jane Austen or Louisa May Alcott
had the willful, determined personalities
that would come to define the archetype.
"I am determined that nothing but the very deepest love
will induce me into matrimony."
But it took a while before the Strong Female Character
was so well represented on screen.
For decades, most movies favored the damsel in distress,
who existed solely to be rescued.
“She was saved from the very grasp of Kong by her future husband."
Women characters began to gain more agency through the femme fatales
of the 1940s and ‘50s, who oozed confidence
and challenged expectations of how a lady should behave.
“Give me a cigarette. I’m learning to smoke now.”
And on TV, career women like The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s
Mary Richards had smarts and independence,
while 1970s shows like Police Woman and Charlie’s Angels
gave us take-charge women who didn’t need anyone to protect them.
Some of these women were actual superheroes.
“Women are the wave of the future, and sisterhood is stronger
than anything.”
And as blockbuster franchises like Alien, Terminator, and Jurassic Park
pitted women against unstoppable monsters --
and saw them triumph --
"Get away from her, you bitch!"
an archetype of the modern Strong Female Character emerged.
She was one who embodied all those traits:
She was willful and resourceful, bold and brazen,
and underestimated at your peril.
"We can discuss sexism in survival situations when I get back."
These days, the women we call
Strong Female Characters can be broken down into several types.
The first and most obvious of these is The Hot Heroine.
“Her strength is dance fighting.”
Her powers are mostly physical -- and usually self-evident.
Whether she has full-on superpowers, or she’s simply exceptionally skilled
in combat, she’s an imposing threat to anything
standing in her way.
“Any more subordinates for me to kill?”
She’s usually strong enough to save not just herself, but the world.
She’s also almost uniformly beautiful, her immense strength bottled up
in an undeniably attractive package/
“Wow.”
The Brains Behind It All is strong because of her
extraordinary intelligence, which she uses to do
extraordinary things -- either for others
“It’s handled.”
or just for herself.
“You know what, my vag is stuffed with diplomas.
Soon it’s going to be stuffed with job offers, and glowing profiles,
and commendations from the governor.”
She’s cunning and quick on her feet, and she often knows how
to manipulate people to her will.
She’s also headstrong, and she doesn’t allow anyone
to mess with what she’s accomplished.
“Make me out to be the villain if it helps you sleep at night,
but don’t you ever screw with my cases.”
When a Strong Female Character triumphs in a male-dominated field,
she becomes The Only One in the Room.
“I have a job. I have my own office
with my name on the door. And I have a secretary.”
We often see this subtype in period pieces,
where women fight and claw relentlessly to succeed in a space
designed to exclude them.
“So, yes, they let women do some things at NASA Mr. Johnson,
and it’s not because we wear skirts. It’s because we wear glasses.”
In these portrayals, the Strong Female Character
faces sexism at every turn, so that her personal triumph
becomes a symbolic victory for all women.
When a Strong Female Character manages to surpass her male counterparts
and take the top rung of the ladder, she becomes
the Queen with the Iron Fist.
“This is what ruling is. Lying on a bed of weeds
ripping them out by the root one by one before they strangle you in your sleep.”
She’s highly successful, capable, and commanding.
She’s also feared.
"She’s on her way. Tell everyone!"
It’s clear that she’s willing to do anything to hold onto the power
that she’s attained -- no matter who it might hurt.
And often she’s seen as possessing not just an iron fist but a stony heart:
She’s learned to hide or even erase all traces of vulnerability,
allowing no opening for anyone to challenge her rule.
But our final type has learned to channel that vulnerability
and turn it into a strength, offering an Emotionally Resilient
spin on the Strong Female Character.
“They say that the best blaze burns the brightest when circumstances
are at their worst.”
Trauma, heartbreak, loss -- the Emotionally Resilient woman
has been through it all, and still she rises,
her power stemming from her indomitable free spirit.
“We have to dance to show God that we are grateful to be alive.”
She leads with her heart, her strength coming from
an innate perseverance and resolve.
All of these subtypes are meant to be a celebration
of a woman’s best qualities -- to acknowledge the power she possesses
to control her own destiny.
So why do some see this trope not as liberating, but limiting?
The Strong Female Character has certainly played an important role
when it comes to representing women on screen.
“My daughter’s a huge fan too, she’s adorable,
she does the fighting like the little Wonder Woman in the movie,
so it’s awesome to see your little girl do that, not just be Ariel.”
Yet that representation has also been seen as largely symbolic:
The Strong Female Character has often been criticized as mere pandering,
resulting in characters that have been made so powerful --
and so scrubbed of imperfections -- that they lack any depth or development.
“Well, we can do it my way, or we can all come back in time
for the next alignment and you're welcome to try
and kill me then. In, oh, say another 5,000 years?"
Often the Strong Female Character’s strength is her only defining quality.
And it tends to overshadow all the other things
that go into making a fully realized character --
particularly weakness.
“What makes an audience care about a character really comes down
to only two things. The weakness,
the fundamental weakness of that character,
and the character’s goal in the story."
This flaw is most evident in the Hot Heroines.
Inspiring as she may be, Captain Marvel’s Carol Danvers
is largely limited to fight scenes and one-liners,
“Higher, further, faster baby.”
with our understanding of who she really is limited
to the fragmented flashbacks of her past.
"I do not remember my past."
As New Yorker critic Richard Brody noted,
the “recovery of identity in Captain Marvel is realized
with little curiosity or interest ... Her ability to overcome
her own failures and men’s derision ... is all that’s known of her,
and, more significantly, all that she needs to know
in order to know herself.”
The film attempts to engage with these larger criticisms
by showing how she’s forced to suppress her feelings.
“There is nothing more dangerous to a warrior than emotion.”
When she’s able to stop, we see how she channels those feelings
to become even more powerful.
“I’ve been fighting with one arm tied behind my back,
but what happens when I’m finally set free?”
But ultimately, it’s still all in service
of developing her physical strength, rather than her character --
and it perpetuates the notion that her strength is all
that’s interesting or useful about her.
“She's one of the most powerful characters in the comics
and will be the most powerful character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe."
Still, at least Carol Danvers gets to be the star of her own story.
Other Strong Female characters often fall victim
to what critic Tasha Robinson described as the Trinity Syndrome.
“The answer is out there, Neo, and it’s looking for you."
Named for Carrie-Anne Moss’s character in The Matrix,
the Trinity Syndrome describes the tendency to introduce a strong,
capable woman with genuine potential as a character,
only to fail her by giving her nothing to do --
and usually, by reducing her to a trophy
for a stronger man to claim as his reward.
“You hear me? I love you. Now get up."
Robinson attributes the Trinity Syndrome to the evolution
of the Strong Female Character into a selling point,
one that allows filmmakers to “point at her on the poster
and say ‘See? This film totally
respects strong women!’” --
even when she only exists to serve a male character’s journey.
Even when they’re not giving themselves to stronger men,
the Strong Female Character trope often celebrates women
only when they’re displaying characteristically male traits.
When we first meet Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones,
she’s decidedly feminine and meek.
"He'll be the bravest king who ever was, a Golden Lion,
and I'll give him sons with beautiful blonde hair!"
In order for Sansa to be crowned Queen in the North,
she has to become hardened and cold -- a transformation that takes place
over a series of traumatic events visited upon her by a series of men.
"Without Littlefinger and Ramsey and the rest,
I’d have stayed a ‘little bird’ all my life."
In addition to glorifying Sansa’s own abuse,
this only reinforces the idea that femininity and strength
are mutually exclusive.
“A little lady shouldn’t play with swords.”
As actress and screenwriter Brit Marling wrote in a New York Times op-ed,
the Strong Female Lead has a narrow range of strengths
that are defined by how manly they are: “physical prowess, linear ambition,
focused rationality. Masculine modalities of power.”
“I just thought, uh ... you were a guy."
“Most guys do.”
As Marling says, “What we really mean when we say
we want strong female leads is: ‘Give me a man but in the body
of a woman I still want to see naked.”
"Always a pleasure." "Now for a cold shower."
From suppressing her emotions to doling out violence,
the Strong Female Character shows that she can hold her own against men.
“I am the man who can.”
But as The New Statesman’s Sophia McDougall explains,
this need to prove herself is inherently sexist.
The Strong Female Character trope often shows us the
“underlying deficit of respect the character starts with,
which she’s then required to overcome by whatever desperate,
over-the-top, cartoonish means to hand” --
just to bring herself up to the man’s level.
“I'm telling you, if you want boys to respect you,
you have to show them you’re serious. Blow something up. Shoot someone!"
As McDougall points out, notably, there’s no such thing
as a Strong Male Character.
Our stories just assume that strength is innate in men,
just waiting for the chance to reveal itself.
More importantly, they suggest that strength
is uncommon in women.
When strength is given to female characters,
this is somehow considered special.
"Girls DO get it done."
For a female character to be truly strong,
perhaps we have to change our definition --
away from those narrow, and primarily masculine ideals.
A character like Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road
is clearly strong in a way we’ve become used to:
She’s physically fit and skilled in combat,
intelligent and resourceful.
“I’m gonna go down and do some repairs."
But perhaps her greatest strength is her empathy.
This is what drives her to turn against Immortan Joe and free his captive wives.
“You can get in.” “Not without them.”
Furiosa is tough but vulnerable: Her hardened exterior
hides an incredible inner pain -- and we see how
she draws her power from it.
Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games is similarly driven by empathy:
Her love for her sister spurs her to take her place
in a deadly battle royale.
"I volunteer as tribute!"
Katniss is a killer, but also compassionate --
and when she’s forced into the role of the Hot Heroine,
she eventually learns to use her femininity to her advantage,
and when to suppress it.
As the author Nicola Balkind writes, “Her masculine traits are not simply
active and violent, they are coping mechanisms,
instincts to protect and survive.”
"That's what you and I do. Keep each other alive."
Flaws don’t just make for a more interesting character --
occasionally it’s what makes these characters strong in the first place.
Chihiro from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away begins
as a spoiled 10-year-old girl who clings to her mother
and is generally scared of taking risks.
“I'm not going! It gives me the creeps!"
But after she’s catapulted into a strange new world,
she’s forced to confront those fears little by little,
and learns to assert herself.
“I’m not leaving until you give me a job!”
If she were already perfect, her journey
would have far less resonance.
As Miyazaki himself said, “It was necessary to have a heroine
who was an ordinary girl, not someone who could fly
or do something impossible ... I asked myself the question
whether my friend’s daughter or her friends would be capable
of doing it ... Because it’s through surmounting
these challenges that this little Japanese girl
becomes a capable person.”
“A new home and a new school? It is a bit scary.”
“I think I can handle it.”
The truly strong female character is someone who similarly surmounts
her own challenges -- not by being a superhero,
or by adopting masculine traits, but by simply rising to the occasion,
persevering, and growing, while also lifting up other women.
"We work at a police force full of dudes.
We got to have each other's backs, okay?"
We don’t often talk about characters like Cher in Clueless as “strong,”
even though she’s driven, unusually confident,
loyal to her friends, and gifted with the extraordinary power
of persuasion.
“And I know how you say ‘Never accept a first offer,’
so I figure these grades are just a jumping-off point
to start negotiations.”
Cher also takes agency over her own story --
she goes after what she wants, and she fixes the things about herself
that get in the way.
"Miss Geist?" "Yes, Cher?"
"I want to help."
On Sex Education, the young women run the gamut
from the more girly Aimee to the more outwardly tough Maeve.
“What is your thing then?” “Complex female characters.”
But importantly, neither is portrayed
as stronger than the other -- and when one needs support,
the others rally around her.
“What are you doing here?” “Getting the bus.
We’re all getting the bus.”
It’s a reminder that women don’t always have to be independent badasses
to be strong.
Instead, they can draw a collective strength from each other.
In a society dominated by men, the mere existence of women
is a feat of resilience.
“The world doesn’t just let girls decide what they’re going to be.”
But this means that female strength often manifests in forms
that don’t necessarily catch the eye like a beautiful Amazon in spandex.
A strong female is a woman who’s not just a Hot Heroine,
the Brains Behind It All, or a Queen with an Iron Fist.
She’s also a woman who’s secure in her femininity,
aware of her weaknesses, and dedicated to being her absolute best
for the people she loves.
"I decided I needed a complete makeover. Except this time,
I'd make over my soul."
Flawed as the trope may be, the Strong Female Character
has been a source of inspiration to women,
helping us to find those qualities within ourselves.
But hopefully the trope can expand to let us see the many other,
less obvious things that make her truly strong.
Maybe eventually, she can just be a female character.
"Women. They've got ambition and they've got talent
as well as just beauty."
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