Heroines - Tumblr Posts

Sketches of female characters I love <3

“To be a woman, perhaps, is always to be a foreigner.”

— Kate Zambreno, from Heroines (via cubaypuertoricoson)

I think the original point is good, and I know that they specifically mean a character that is like weirdly passive as well as being painted as a perfect girl boss. On the other hand, I will say sometimes it is realistic to have female characters who are tirelessly and endlessly patient—and it’s because they’ve got poor boundaries and low self-worth due to years of how society expects them to behave so they became neurotic people pleasers. They look like the mom friend, but inside they are dying. I know this because she is me. I would like to see more stories about what people see as this sweet, flawless girl, but inside she just feels like she’s going to lose her mind. Disney Princess, but she’s having to take sedatives to cope with her day. Mary Sue, but she is crying herself to sleep every night and knows one day her carefully crafted mask is going to fall off.

I want more of those characters because I honestly think there’s been soooo many women like this throughout history. Dutiful women who were dying inside. I care less about the girl boss, more about the nice woman who knows her husband is cheating on her and it kills her inside, but she just won’t mention it and will try to manage the household, and every night she weeps.

This is probably why I’m drawn to gothic literature. So many of those stories are about women trying so hard and snapping.

Sometimes sweet girls aren’t flat. They are tempests hiding in pretty floral teapots, only their angst isn’t a minor issue. It could become an entire devastating hurricane.

That thing people do with female characters where they like, in their attempts to compensate for the unfairly negative way that female characters are often treated by fandoms they end up overshooting and just making them Too Good and flawless and endlessly caring and loving and patient and incapable of doing or being wrong and just removing everything that’s distinctive about the character, making her completely flat & forgettable & uninteresting, because they don’t want to say anything about her or depict her doing anything that might possibly be interpreted negatively.

A collected recap of my most ferocious heroines from #30-1 (plus honorable mentions).