Abby Lee is a sophomore at MU studying journalism and women’s and gender studies. She is an opinion columnist who writes about social issues.
Once upon a time, female characters were largely used as plot devices (a means to an end) and hardly characters in their own right. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty sleep through half of stories that are supposedly theirs. This problem persists.
Female characters often still are two-dimensional (See: almost all James Bond movies.) This isn’t every story, though. In the spirit of liberal feminism, a popular response to the emotionally leaden damsel trope is what I call the Fem-Bot Soldier — a character whose emotions are muted to the extreme. She serves two crowds: the liberal feminist (or those who are desperate for a “strong” woman, whatever that means) and those after a sexy character who masquerades having power and agency (typically men).
Her defining feature is strength — a strangely masculinized version of strength at that. It’s defined by a gaping hole where emotions should be, and the trauma plot often makes an appearance by explaining away her stoic behavior. Men are taught to be nothing like women as they are defined by their emotions. Men must feel nothing, and that’s how the Fem-Bot Soldier lives.
The purpose of this trope holds even more flaws. The use of the Fem-Bot Soldier in scripts and books doesn’t seek to challenge the problems the damsel trope causes. If anything, the newer trope doubles down on making two-dimensional female characters; they just happen to rely on surface-level feminism. She is strong because she is like a man, emotionally illiterate and repressed. She is written into stories in retaliation to the stereotype that women are hysterical, nonsensical in their uncontrollable sea of emotions.
This is just another example of people trying to achieve equality within a flawed system, rather than changing the system itself. In allowing the Fem-Bot-Soldier character to live on, creators and audiences alike unconsciously agree that everyone should want to be like men. It is everyone else who should want to conform, even if the ideal man is characterized by his shunning of emotions.
Siding with and recreating the Fem-Bot Soldier is saying that the ideal state is found in manhood. In reality, the patriarchal standards that define the ideal man and inspire the Fem-Bot Soldier hold creators back from creating more dynamic, human characters. They hold creators back from exploring deeper interpersonal problems involving facing complex emotions.
The stoic man trope hurts men and perpetuates the idea that men shouldn’t develop and feel their emotions. Creating the Fem-Bot Soldier and encouraging people to look up to her shames women for being emotional; it calls women hysterical because, “Look at Lara, she’s got it together. Why don’t you?”
That’s not even touching on the sexy aspect. The Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft deals with the trauma of her father’s death, but she still has a thigh gap. In The Hunger Games movies, Katniss Everdeen has to fight for her life and kill other children, but she wears makeup in the arena. Marvel’s Black Widow is brainwashed and abused, all in a skin-tight bodysuit.
Having these unrealistic “role models” in place strengthen the resolve of those who believe women to be hysterical; after all, the personalities of these female characters are made out to be attainable. The sheer existence and perpetuation of this archetype enables the harassment of women: “Why don’t you have your emotions in check? Why aren’t you stoic and sexy? You’re being so unreasonable.”
The problem is not that women in books and scripts aren’t strong enough. The way we have constructed strength as the antithesis of feeling makes it an unlivable standard. We shouldn’t shine an admirable light on this behavior. Rather, female characters in fiction should be given realistic, dynamic personalities that struggle with society’s expectations.
These “real” characters wouldn’t be an innovation — they’ve been around as long as stories themselves. In Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women, the March sisters are portrayed as diverse individuals, even though three (or possibly two) of the four sisters end up married. Jo March, who at one point claims she “can’t get over [her] disappointment in being a girl,” could have easily fallen into the Fem-Bot Soldier trope if her distaste for the dainty consumed her. Since she is a three-dimensional character, she has conflicting and competing desires that make her whole and relatable.
Like March, it’s possible for characters to share traits with the Fem-Bot Soldier trope, but it must end somewhere. A hypothetical character could mimic the Fem-Bot Soldier. She goes about her day and problems tight-lipped, untelling. However, there is an end. She goes home; she takes the mask off; the Fem-Bot Soldier persona is so heavy on her shoulders; and the audience can see what unrealistic, illogical norms are upheld by perpetuating these ideals.
The Fem-Bot Soldier is a tired, lazy trope that chastises women for feeling and puts men on a pedestal for ignoring their emotions. It allows for poorly written characters in crudely constructed plots to be passed off as feminist creations, when they really work for the patriarchal system many feminists are working to deconstruct.
Living, breathing, feeling characters should be every writer’s goal. Art is supposed to say something three-dimensional — that is, something of worth. Modern, realistic characters shouldn’t have to sleep through their stories in the Snow White/Sleeping Beauty fashion to be considered admirable. They shouldn’t have to lose everything that makes them human to be a fan favorite, either.
Audiences want to see honest portrayals of women’s lives. They want to see women they can relate to, women who can teach them something. Sexy doesn’t cut it.
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Edited by Sarah Rubinstein | srubinstein@themaneater.com
