Capes, wedding dresses, and Steven Moffat.

[sophiamcdougall]

"There’s this issue you’re not allowed to discuss: that women are needy. Men can go for longer, more happily, without women. That’s the truth. We don’t, as little boys, play at being married - we try to avoid it for as long as possible. Meanwhile women are out there hunting for husbands. ... Well, the world is vastly counted in favour of men at

Comments

[anneth]

OH my god, Sophia, this thingI could go on about how my experiences mirror yours, both personally and anecdotally; I wasn't obsessed with (or at all interested in) weddings or wedding dresses or anything of the sort as a kid, and my friends who were focused, as you note, on the event - not the groom or the, uh, post-wedding lifestyle

[sophiamcdougall]

(I finished a chapter last night, so I'm now doing replies. Heroine #1 is not so much being awesome just now, as she is trapped in a classroom with a robot fish, but that is so Heroine #2 can rescue her

[dolorosa_12]

THANK YOU!

I've already written a link-post and response to this, but the gist of it is that I agree, totally. It made me think about the kind of games that I played as a child, and the kinds of stories that inspired them, and I guess because I didn't watch many movies or much TV, all of my inspirations were books, mainly books with all-female casts. And the kind of stories these books told was never about girls saving the world, but rather about small groups of girls and women saving themselves. And so I grew up thinking that these kinds of girls and women - people who used bargaining and compromise and played the system and when they couldn't just endured - were heroic, and that they were the sort of people I should be emulating.

Cape-swishing didn't come into it at all. Neither did men. They just didn't capture my imagination.

[sophiamcdougall]

Thank you for the link post. I'm really touched at how this piece seems to have resonated with people. I love your account of the things you played --- particularly the boarding school for oppressed vegetarian dinosaurs! That's amazing.

(I loved dinosaurs, too. I had a patchwork quilt -- a partly pink patchwork quilt, when I was three. It was a security blanket and also a pterodactyl. I used to whirl it round my head so it could fly.)

You made me remember some of my own games that I'd forgotten -- orphans with an Evil Governess was definitely one, I think inspired by The Wolves of Willoughby ChaseYou make an interesting point about how male and female heroes often start from a place of victimisation or trauma, but whereas the male heroes' path goes "Overcome the victimisation. Use the strength and insight this gives me to go and Right Wrongs in the wider world" the female ones are often stuck at "Overcome the victimisation." That pinpoints what's so disappointing about Lisbeth Salander's regression -- she starts out along the

[dolorosa_12]

You make an interesting point about how male and female heroes often start from a place of victimisation or trauma, but whereas the male heroes' path goes "Overcome the victimisation. Use the strength and insight this gives me to go and Right Wrongs in the wider world" the female ones are often stuck at "Overcome the victimisation." That pinpoints what's so disappointing about Lisbeth Salander's regression -- she starts out along the former pattern, then shrinks back to the latter.

You did the opposite with Una, though! [Not wanting to say anything more in case of spoilers.]

No, in all seriousness, I agree with you and you're making a very good point there. I think there are more stories aimed at children nowadays where female characters are allowed to move from their own personal trauma on to saving the world (commenters on my post mentioned, for example, Avatar: The Last Airbender) and I think that's a good thing

[annelyle]

Brilliant post, Sophia!

I never played at "girls' stuff" when I was little. I wanted to be Robin Hood, or maybe I wanted to be Maid Marian rescuing Robin Hood - it was a bit blurry in my head, perhaps because of that lack of awesome female role models that you mention. Although, having been exposed at a young age to the wonderfully gender-bending phenomenon that is the English pantomime, I grew up with the idea that girls could dress as boys* and be the hero :)

Funnily enough, the cover of my forthcoming book shows my male protagonist in a swirly cloak. I'd really like his female sidekick to appear on the cover of Book Two, but I guess we'll have to see...

* Albeit rather camp boys in thigh-length boots - but no camper than the average lycra-clad superhero, to be fair

[sophiamcdougall]

Oh, I did like Maid Marian -- I was lucky that my first exposure to the Robin Hood stories was one of the versions in which she's a cross-dressing action-heroine rather than stuck moping in the castle waiting for rescue.

Pantomime principal boys confused (and still confuse me). There's still that message that though the boy is played by a woman, he's still actually a boy within the story: You can play at being fantastic, but you can't actually be it.

Still, women singing love songs at each other when I was little -- a good, if peculiar thing.

[ext_705546]

I don't think I ever played at getting married... although it's hard to say, what with the pink-tinted mists of time, and all that. I do, however, distinctly remember playing being Asterix at one point. I ran round the garden hitting Romans (for which read: plant pots balanced on bamboo canes) with a plastic sword.

Maybe I was an odd child - in fact, I'm fairly sure I was - but I know my younger self much preferred playing with bows and arrows, or pretending to be your archetypal fantasy thief-figure to being a princess.

And my wedding dress, when I *did* get married? Bright green, and very, very swishy.

[sophiamcdougall]

Bamboo canes also make excellent wizards' staffs. *nods* My friend and I had one whole one and a broken one and so I had this whole thing about how My Staff Was Broken and part of my quest was to get to the Wizard City where it would be made whole.

As I was saying above, I wonder if the reason I was conflicted about male heroes and desperate for female ones even when I was very little, was that I had a brother who was close to me in age and we were engaged in gender wars from the ages of two and four.

And my wedding dress, when I *did* get married? Bright green, and very, very swishy.

Excellent!

[astudyinchuck]

you are a HEROINE

[sophiamcdougall]

Aww! Bless you! Thanks for reading.