A Quick Recovery

This spring I get to go visit Lindsay in Botswana, which is very exciting. I'm traveling alone, though, and I can't help but think of the movie Taken. What if I am captured by human traffickers on my international travels? According to the movie, I would need an interested party with a particular set of skills to come rescue me. And although I'm drugged, beaten up, and prostituted, in the end it will be fine because I will be rescued and, like, all better immediately.

I don't like that movie. The daughter, the one that's taken, goes through a horrible ordeal and comes out on the other side completely unchanged. She's like the ark in Raiders, been in a pit of snakes but no worse for wear.

Many movies, TV episodes, and video games use the damsel in distress as an easy plot device to motivate a central male character. Stories revolving around a rescue have a couple advantages. The central character's motivation tends to be clearcut. The high stakes are built-in as are the obstacles. The whole story structure can fall pretty quickly easily into place, leaving the author room to get on with the action. Rescue and even damsel stories are not bad in and of themselves, but they commonly make the mistake of treating the rescuee - the object of the story - like just an object.

Where this mistake bothers me the most is in the "return" part of the story. The object of rescue, having endured enough terrors - because, remember, the captured person needs to be in serious danger in order to motivate the protagonist and raise the stakes - is rescued, and we see them return to normal in the matter of a few closing minutes.

Narrative Wheel

I was disappointed by an instance of this in a recent (for me) episode of Angel. (Now, the writers on Angel go to the damsel well all the time - Cordelia, as far as we can tell, exists in order to be captured and rescued.) "Billy", season 3 episode 6, is about a man (Billy) who imparts violent misogynist rage upon other men by touching them. The central moral question to the episode is whether Billy is infecting these men or rather just uninhibiting them - the violence and the rage against women being already inside them, innate.

It's one of the first episodes of that show where I've seen some promise of it reaching the heights of Buffy in its ability to blow up real evils and explore them through fantasy. It's an exciting episode.

Wesley comes into contact with Billy, and later, when Fred is stuck alone with him, he starts to attack her. He pursues her in hopes of killing her, his friend, potential love interest, and colleague. It's Amy Acker and she's just a little thing.

When the impact of Billy wears off of Wesley, Wesley is horrified, embarrassed, and devastated (as it goes) by what he's put Fred through. He quits the team. He won't leave his apartment. He's returned (see wheel) and changed. Fred, on the other hand, doesn't get a scene like that. She doesn't get to change. We see her, after the ordeal, showing up at Wesley's door, forgiving him and asking him to come back to work. She's been attacked, verbally and physically, by a best friend, and she doesn't miss a beat.

I want a scene where she can't sleep, where she cries at night, where she wakes up with night terrors. Then have her go and forgive Wesley. Make it hard for her because it would be (hard) if she were a person. Give her real pain and real courage. Make it her story, too.


Beyond not giving female characters real shakes at personhood, I dislike the quick recovery of formerly damseled characters because I worry it impacts our idea of how long it takes real people to heal after traumatic events. It's difficult to support someone through that process, and with our society's general discomfort around victims, I'm afraid it's easy to think, "Can't you be like what's-her-name? Get over it, already."

Everyone Else in the Room Can See It

I have a problem with a mini trope in songwriting and a recent Dove commercial. It's when the song's about a girl who doesn't know she's beautiful. It has never crossed her mind that she is good looking. It's up to the singer to tell her that she is gorgeous.

The first example I have is a country song by Sammy Kershaw. (Who? I have no idea, but this song has stuck with me since 1995.) Here it is on YouTube:

The first issue I have is that the possibility that this woman has no idea - it has never crossed her mind - that she's beautiful is ridiculous. People, especially women, get feedback on their appearances all the time. So unless Lady Don'tKnow was raised in a vacuum (culturally, I mean. A physical vacuum would be fatal.), she's been told that she's beautiful. And if she's very beautiful, she's being told in numerous ways, subtle and not subtle, in every interaction she has. Girlfriend knows this stuff.

Except, in the song, girlfriend doesn't know this stuff even though people do tell her. Sammy tells her time and time again. Why doesn't she know, in that case? He explains, "She's not that kind." Not what kind? Not the kind who receives input from her surroundings and accurately interprets it? Does she have a condition? It's not attractive when I imagine her failing to respond to someone saying, "That is not food!" while she gnaws on fingernail clippers and small pieces of wood.

Another example is One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful". I've included a clip, not of that, but of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra's version, "One Direction meets Giuseppe Verdi", because I love orchestral covers of pop songs.

The thrust to this song is "You don't know that you're beautiful, and that's what makes you beautiful." Ignoring, for a second, that the subject of this song might have cognitive issues, this song taps into something else I have a problem with. It's the idea that "vanity" in a woman is ugly or wrong. Like I said, people experience lots and lots of feedback based on their appearance. Furthermore, appearance for women is touted, from an early age, to be most powerful factor in determining her success and happiness. In spite of this, it is considered wrong or silly for a woman to be concerned with how she looks. It's an expectation that slices twice. Also, it's stupid.

This recent Dove commercial continues the theme of the beauty unknown. They have women come in and describe themselves to a forensic artist. He draws them based on their descriptions. Then other people describe them and he draws those pictures too. The drawings are, predictably, somewhat different.

The biggest issue I have with all three of these, with this trope in general, is that it wants women to trade the trustworthiness and accuracy of their minds for the possibility that they might be more beautiful, and it calls it inspirational.

It's awesome when I find out I'm wrong about something because reality is better than I thought. As humans, we will always be wrong about stuff. We have biases, histories, insecurites, and various other "ees". Uncertainty is the price of being sentient. But I think it's a problem when women, who suffer from stereotypes like being unreliable, untrustworthy, and silly, are told, again, that they don't know what they're talking about. And worse (!), that their ignorance is a good thing.

Why can't we have a song that goes, "Reasonably accurate self-knowledge: that's what makes you beautiful"?

The message I would like to send and have sent to women is trust yourself a little bit more. You think you're a bit ugly? You very well might be. You might not be turning lots of heads or be headed to the cover of ladies magazines. (This is my first reaction to that possibility: "NOOOOOOOOOO!") But at least your assessment tools aren't broken.

It means that your interpretation of things that are happening in your life has weight and meaning, that there is coherence to how you see things. If you feel like something's wrong, bring it up. Talk about it. Run. Whatever. Your impressions are connected to real life. If you really like something that other people don't or don't think is cool, stand behind your thing because there's something in it that connects with you. And that's real.

Women Empowerment in Narrative

I think people mistake women empowerment in narrative with having a ripped, badass stonecold female character.

These female characters are endowed with stereotypical alpha-male traits. The problem with the persistence of this representation of women empowerment is that it implies that for a woman to be empowered she must be, essentially, a man.

It's an erroneous interpretation of what it means to be powerful. From a writer's perspective, it would be ridiculous to say that writing strong characters meant making characters physically strong.

Women empowerment in narrative happens when female characters make choices, when they drive the narrative, and/or when we see through their point of view.

What it means to write a character-driven story is to put your protagonist in situations where she needs to make choices. In this way, an empowering female character might be one who is weak physically or emotionally. The important thing is that she has agency as the audience watches her make her way through various conflicts. An instance where this suddenly fails is in the climactic scene of Disney's The Little Mermaid. The protagonist in The Little Mermaid is, predictably, the little mermaid, Ariel. Through most of the movie, she's making choices. But, in the third act, the climax of the movie, Ariel becomes Ursula's prisoner and is not able to make any choices. King Triton chooses to take Ariel's place. Prince Eric drives a bowsprit into Ursula's heart. All the while, Ariel just watches on. It's weird and poor story telling for an otherwise good movie.

This is a good depiction of how Triton is forced to make a decision while Ariel watches on helplessly. 

A second part of women empowerment in narrative is to have a female character driving the story. This is accomplished through her making choices, like explained earlier. But while side characters can also be allowed to make choices, the character driving the story is the central protagonist. It's her story.

A third way female characters are empowered in narrative is when they have a voice and perspective, when the audience is seeing their world through their point of view. (Again, the Little Mermaid fails this a bit in that for a while, Ariel literally can't speak.)

There is a discrepancy between how frequently consumers of media see things through male and female perspectives. Girls are coached from a young age to see things through a male gaze. They are to evaluate themselves as a man might evaluate them. They are encouraged to appear pretty rather than to see keenly, to be in front of the camera rather than behind it. Because of this practice in "seeing as men see", I think the prospect of getting into the head of a male protagonist feels more natural to men and women. It propagates the idea that men are the norm and women are slightly off-center. Practice seeing a fictional world through a female character's point of view, I think, can help offset this attitude. 

The movie Gravity employs this literally, as the audience is put inside Ryan Stone's (Sandra Bullock's character's) helmet. We see things first-person-shooter style from her perspective. 

Back to the ripped badass female character, they can also be empowering. Characters like Starbuck (Battlestar Galactica) and Buffy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) are kickass and physically strong while also making choices and driving (at least some) story line. (While the ones pictured up top, not so much.) 

Am I Pretty or Ugly?

Jane Garvey (my favorite) presented a piece on Women's Hour, today, about the trend of girls posting videos on YouTube asking, "Am I pretty or ugly?" You can listen here (7 min).

She interviewed artist/performer Louise Orwin who has recently done her own version of these videos, while playing different characters, as a kind of experiment. They were downcast at the idea of young girls asking the internet whether they're pretty or not.

I'm writing this post to say that I disagree with Jane's sad head-shaking, and I never disagree with her, hardly.

I watched some of the videos for myself. Lots of the girls are wearing heavy make-up, and on some you can tell they're making the videos late at night on their family's desktop. The worst ones are where you can overhear family members talking. They're in the same room with the girl and just letting her ask high-charge questions to the internet! Come on people.

While I wouldn't recommend watching these videos - it feels pretty creepy - I don't fault people for making them. They're being sensible.

Here's how I break down the Ugly/Pretty YouTube trend:

1. Attractiveness is a social currency.

For girls it is the social currency. Every little girl, by the time she gets to high school, knows that inner beauty is the Weimar Mark to outer beauty's dollar.

2. Social currency is important.

Because it gets you laid. (Plus other things - like people just generally being kinder to you and all those studies about attractive people making more money and living longer and being uniformed of the gross hardship that is suffering of any kind! But mostly it gets you laid.)

3. Attractiveness isn't objective. But it is, kind of.

Those "she don't know she's beautiful" songs absolutely lie. If a woman is getting a top 40 song written about her, bitch* knows she's beautiful. No question.

Otherwise, there's a lot of grey area - 50 shades of it - wah wah. A lot of average-y looking girls who are wondering if they're going to be allowed to participate in any grand adventures, if they're going to be anybody's princess, if crowds of people will love or remember them. It's important in mapping out expectations for her life, for a girl to know whether or not she's pretty.

It's like all these girls are given so many drachmas of beauty and shoved into a strange country. These YouTube videos are just queries to find out what the exchange rate is.

*Am I allowed to say "bitch" on here? Do I believe in that? Oh well, if I wake up in the night feeling remorseful about it (happens), I can alter it.
--

I remember thinking in college that if I just knew exactly where I was in the spectrum of pretty, then I could budget for the social-currency equivalent of some Pringles.

Economic metaphors aside, so much of life is an assessment of risk. Should I talk to that guy? Should I crack a joke? If I get up in front of these people, will they be mean to me? Having an objective-ish idea of her attractiveness is an important element when a girl evaluates risk. So why the shock and dismay when she consults the internet about it?

It's like Old Gregg says, "Make an assessment."