Heroines--Oh How They've Changed

It's been a while since we've seen a heroine like Elizabeth Bennet--strong-willed but gentle, respectful but with a mind of her own. Instead, quite a few fantasy and science fiction novels today portray their heroines as Xena--an in-your-face woman who don't take no crap from nobody. Though Xena may have been strong physically, she lacked the one thing that gives every woman her true strength--femininity. Instead, Xena was just a man with boobs.

And that's the trend I've noticed with a lot of books in general, but with speculative fiction especially. Instead of portraying real women and highlighting their real strengths, writers tend to describe these badass girls in tight war gear, kicking the toosh out of every man that challenges them. And that get's boring. And quite frankly, it's not realistic.

I've mentioned a few times on this blog that I served in the military. Well, I learned a few things during my service. One of them may or may not seem pretty obvious: the average man is physically superior to the average woman. It's true. The U.S. military accepts this fact and has taken it into consideration when designing the PT tests. The female's test requires less push-ups and a slower run time than the male's. However, women are better sharpshooters and are better able to handle the mental strain of war.

Face it ladies, if you were to go up against a man of equal or greater body size and expertise in fighting, you would probably lose. A man's body is designed for physical combat; a woman's is not.

But don't get me wrong. I am by no means saying that a woman, and your heroine, is or should be weak. Quite the contrary. There's nothing unrealistic about a woman being trained for combat and excelling at it, but author intrusion rears its ugly little head when the heroine is up against a group of baddies that she has to battle all by herself, all of them just as well-trained as she is and she beats them without breaking a nail. This isn't real and you've run the risk of losing the reader.

Enter Ultraviolet. This movie was about one thing and one thing only: a gorgeous unstoppable woman, the picture of perfection. And it was stupid. I mean, come on. If you clicked the link, you would have seen this woman just dodge the unceasing rounds of about 6 gunmen who are three feet from her. And yet for all this physical beauty and superpowers, she lacked femininity. If you replaced her with a gorgeous man, the character would have been exactly the same.

You want a real heroine that real women can connect with and wish to be like? Give her real strengths and weaknesses. Make her a superhero, but don't make her unstoppable. One thing that women all over the world have in common is that probably more than anything else, we want to make an emotional connection with someone else (it doesn't have to be a romantic one, either). It is our greatest strength and weakness. A real woman isn't like Xena--a cold, unfeeling person who thinks nothing of killing dozens of men at a time. We feel, we form attachments, and we make stupid decisions because of them.

Terry Goodkind is probably my favorite modern author because of this. All of his female characters are amazingly strong, but they all are the picture of femininity. The Mother Confessor, the most powerful woman in the Midlands, able to subdue even the most powerful wizard with a touch, is described as graceful and regal. She wears a flowing white dress and keeps her hair long. The Mord Sith, women trained from childhood to torture prisoners and able to withstand pain that could kill any other person, are motherly towards Richard, the MC.

This is what we writers must do when forming our characters. We can make them strong, the strongest person to ever live, but we must make them real.

~Emily White