User:MTTorres/sandbox

Article evaluation: Strong female character

This article is more of a starting point than it is a stand-alone article. The creator admittedly made it out of necessity for a link target for another article (as evidenced in the talk page). I found it indirectly when I was searching through the feminism wikiproject. I was looking through suggested topics that did not have a page yet, and found "portrayal of women in film". I was shocked there was no page for this, and convinced it was just a matter of specific wording. After looking up phrases like "female representation in film," female representation in media," "portrayal of women in literature," I realized that none of these had pages or even somewhere to redirect to. I did, however, find this page. Yet, it was not exactly satisfying for all the content that the lack of these other pages leave out. It wasn't really satisfying as a stub page.

It defines "strong female character" as a stock character. However, the page for stock characters define them as characters who are flat, archetypal, and used so that the reader already knows what to expect from them. I felt uncomfortable with this categorization, as to me a strong female character is the opposite - unique by definition. I realize this was more of an opinion without justification, so I started some basic research. I found that I was more or less correct - that phrase is typically meant to refer to a character who is well-rounded. There is controversy around this, but I think if I choose to edit this for my project, I could do a great job of remaining neutral. I would probably try to find sources that had the viewpoint of a strong female character being literally strong, intelligent, a hero. And then I would also provide sources that discuss it in terms of offering an array of qualities, not all good or bad, in order to give a more realistic picture of a woman.

I find the organization of the article strange, and probably worth restructuring. The author did offer the controversy of definition in a section labeled "criticism". However, I think I could reorganize this to give each opposing view point a section. I also found it wanting of historical relevance. When was the phrase "strong female character" first used? Did the idea exist before the term? Where did the term come from? What is its time line in relation to the feminist movement?

I also think the "examples" so to speak that fall under "See also" are random and obscure. It might be a good idea to keep some of those examples, but maybe supplement them with more major characters that most people would be familiar with.

This article currently falls under three Wikiprojects - Gender Studies, Feminism, and Literature. It is labeled as High Importance for Gender Studies and Medium Importance for the other two. All currently rate it as stub-class. However, from looking at its information page, I found that it has gotten over a thousand hits in the past thirty days - and that's without any of the other phraseology I listed above redirecting here. I think if I could create a strong article here, I could create different redirections, since its a fairly general phrase.

Representation of Women in Western Media

The Western canon has been historically dominated by male-centric stories and points of view. Because of this, various female character archetypes have prevailed based on a male point of view and largely influenced by Christianity. These traditions continue to pervade literature, music, film, and all types of mass media, and act as reinforcement for female stereotypes. With the rise of feminist movements, the canon has been increasingly criticized for its lack of realistic female characters.

possible references:

http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/mediaWorkingPapers/MScDissertationSeries/2013/msc/112-Dutt.pdf

https://www.nyu.edu/classes/jackson/causes.of.gender.inequality/Readings/Wood%20-%20Gendered%20Media%20-%2094.pdf

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0003/000370/037077eo.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2993884/

History

The Middle Ages

women in the Middle Ages

Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (book that could be used as a source)

1960s

Feminist film theory (gives possible sources)

"Strong female character"

References:

https://search.proquest.com/docview/1081400121/fulltext/E90A5A0D40754D46PQ/1?accountid=11411

https://search.proquest.com/docview/270156790?OpenUrlRefId=info:xri/sid:wcdiscovery&accountid=11411

https://search.proquest.com/docview/282129123?OpenUrlRefId=info:xri/sid:wcdiscovery&accountid=11411

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/highpoint-ebooks/reader.action?docID=3421136&ppg=52

http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/NewsDetailsPage/NewsDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&displayGroupName=News&currPage=&scanId=&query=&docIndex=&source=&prodId=OVIC&search_within_results=&productShortName=OVIC&mode=view&catId=&u=hpu_main&limiter=&display-query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&documentId=GALE%7CA397238037&windowstate=normal&activityType=&failOverType=&commentary=

Below is copied from Strong female character

Strong female character is a term for a class of stock character. It is the opposite of the damsel in distress stock character. While such characters could be used by authors to question implicit assumptions about male privilege and patriarchy in the first half of the 20th century, the rise of mainstream feminism and the increased use of the concept in the later 20th century have reduced the concept to a standard item of pop culture fiction.

Contemporary pop culture franchises tend to optimise their female stock characters to appeal to both male and female audiences (Lara Croft). The "strong female character" is not necessarily physically strong or an "action heroine" but can reveal "strong" character with relevance to the plot (as heroine or villainess), often taking the role of a sexually attractive femme fatale.

Criticism

Despite the archetype arising largely through feminism, it has not been universally well received by those supportive of women's rights. Sophia McDougall of the New Statesman has criticized the high prevalence of strong female characters for creating a cliché that represents women as unrealistically strong; she argues that the simplicity of this archetype does little to present women in media in a realistic, complex way. Carina Chocano from The New York Times has offered similar criticism for the "shorthand meme" of strong female characters; while she sees them as a "gateway drug" to realistic representation, she takes offense at the implication that female characters are "not interesting or worth identifying with" if they are not cold, flawless, and masculine. In contrast, Alison Willmore of BuzzFeed takes issue with popular interpretation of the word "strong" rather than with the archetype itself; she prefers strong female characters in the sense of well-developed ones given a legitimate point of view over "badass" ones. Kelly Faircloth of the feminist blog Jezebel believes that strong female characters are not enough or required, but that women must have integral roles in the plot apart from helping men realize theirs (rather than, "seamlessly replace[able] with a floor lamp").

See also

• Women as theological figures

Lists

• List of female detective characters

• List of female action heroes
• List of superheroines
• Women warriors in literature and culture

References

http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/NewsDetailsPage/NewsDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&displayGroupName=News&currPage=&scanId=&query=&docIndex=&source=&prodId=OVIC&search_within_results=&p=OVIC%3AGIC&mode=view&catId=&u=hpu_main&limiter=&display-query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&documentId=GALE%7CA397238037&windowstate=normal&activityType=&failOverType=&commentary=