girl, you'll be a woman soon

[hkath]

I swear this started out as a legit contribution to the greater discussion going on in fandom at the moment about female characters (and that legit contribution is still on the way) but this one subject got quite specific and quite long-winded, so I'm going to give it a post of its own.

Comments

[emiliglia]

It's some weird learned behaviour, just like how we learn as kids to ask for the girl toy or the boy toy with our Happy Meals (this is the thing that makes me angriest in the WORLD, btw)

I always asked for the boy toy - LOL. Fuck Barbie, I want a Hot Wheels!

I'm trying to think if I ever used that but the only time I can maybe think of it would be SPN with Dean to Sam. And the context wouldn't have been schmoopy so much as:

Sam: Eeee! Clowns!
Dean: Don't be such a girl.

Which makes me wonder if that's worse, associating girls with wimps instead of being sappily (totally a word) romantic.

Then again when one of my girl friends goes on rambling about how much she loves her boyfriend and gets all disgusting about it, I get all, "Ew. Why are you such a girl?"

I think this is because I have a hard time associating with most of my own gender. The girly girls. The girls who would go to their 7 AM college classes dressed up in heels and full makeup when it's a huge campus and OMG that's not worth the foot pain at all. The 20 year old interns at the aquarium who wear makeup even though they're going to be getting splashed and cleaning up poop and cutting fish all day.

I'm getting uselessly rambling. Needless to say you gave me something to think about.

[hkath]

I liked both the cars and the Barbies, but I would always hold out for those cheaper non-name brand toys they always had in the back that were like flying tops. Just add a rubber band and you're good to go!

I think when it feels legit to the character, it doesn't really bother me. That example is spot-on Dean and it's easy to understand what's being said. And it's funny, because Sam being afraid of clowns will never not be funny ;) Plus, it reminds of that classic Scully line from the X-Files, where she asks Mulder if he's sure that his scream wasn't a girly scream. If I can sense parody, I guess it dosen't freak me out as much as if the whole thing feels subliminal somehow.

Heh, I used to see those girls at my school, too, although we balanced it out with girls who'd show up for 8am classes in their pajamas and go change during break when they'd woken up a bit more. It's funny, I know plenty of people who act that way, but I don't necessarily consider them girly so much as, well, shallow. Judgmental bear judges. *shame*

Why do you think you feel excluded from girliness? Girliness is a right, not a privilege! ;)

[zekejojo]

This is ignoring the fact that Sam and Dean (and Bobby) DO talk like this, so it's totally in character for them. In fact, it would be more out of character for them NOT to make a remark like that. These characters spend all their time protecting people and killing things while also relying only on each other and in close quarters, so their language of distancing themselves from too much emotional expression says a lot about their character.

[hkath]

I do agree, especially for SPN which is such a manly men being men show, that they would use this kind of terminology and also much worse. They swear a ton in fic, and in the Ghostfacers episode, so obviously the "true" uncensored version of the boys that isn't cleaned up for TV is way less PC than the version we see every week.

I know this gets into a subjective area, but when a piece of dialogue feels true to the character, it rarely bothers me. The times when it pings my attention are when it actually feels (to me) like an artificial, knee-jerk author reaction to "correct" a male character's behaviour by having it pointed out in some way that he's acting like a girl.

I am probably reading *way* too much into what I read every day.

[impertinence]

I don't disagree that it's in character for them to talk like that - but I do think, however, that the lines fandom draw in terms of realism/sounding true to character are odd at best.

For example, in bandom it's also 100% in character for some of them to say someone is acting like a girl. But I still bristle when people write it like that, because people handwave so much else when writing fic. Like, the tour buses seem to drive themselves since no one ever mentions the existence of a bus driver, the guys' relationships are what we prefer them to be in fanon (bands knowing each other and not having any other friends, for example), and so on. But then people drop in gender-related pejoratives for the sake of dialogue realism, and it's just...it's not that I think it's unrealistic as much as I think there are a hundred other ways to make your story seem real, ways that don't involve denigrating women. If that makes sense.

And I imagine the same holds true for Supernatural fandom. I mean, all fandoms have their handwave points, their blanks spots, like the buses that drive themselves. So again - it just rubs me the wrong way when the realism people choose to insert is a misogynistic slur. Because that's so very far from the only way to convey realistic dialogue.

[jalendavi_lady]

I always wanted Hot Wheels.

Rarely managed to get it, unless we used the Drive-Through.

(When the mother says 'Hot Wheels' and the daughter confirms 'Hot Wheels', give the kid a Hot Wheels toy, dangit!)

[emiliglia]

About the Hot Wheels thing, I have a story that warmed my heart. I was talking to my 4 year old male cousin about what superheroes he could be for Halloween. So I listed off the usual Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Captain America, etc. While I was thinking of some more he chimed in with "Wonderwoman". I said "Wonderwoman is a woman" and he replied with "Yeah, and she's so awesome!" I felt so happy that he said that because when I was a kid I was always forced to be a Princess instead of a genie and my mom always bought me Barbies which I loved but I also wanted some cars to play with too. Parents are so worried about what effect this will have on their children but as bratty as my cousin is he has never labelled a toy as "too girly" or ever told me that Marvel/DC are only for boys compared to a different cousin of the same age who criticizes me to no end for it and refuses to let guys play with her "girl toys".