Posts Tagged ‘kick ass women’

Kick Ass Women: Literary Characters Edition

To continue my current project of praising some kick ass women that helped influence Middle School Patricia for the better, here is a list of kick ass women characters from books I remember reading and enjoying! Middle School Patricia read a lot–probably way too much, looking back–so literary characters definitely had way more influence on her than they probably should have.

Elizabeth, the Paper Bag Princess

As seen in the book of the same name by Robert Munsch


Peggy Orenstein of Cinderella Ate My Daughter fame actually mentions this picture book when she’s trying to find more female-empowering fairy tales to read to her daughter. Unfortunately, she doesn’t like this story very much either, because she says the message seems to be that princesses can’t be strong women AND find love. They have to choose one or the other. Personally, I don’t think that is really the point of the book at all. Here is a plot rundown in case your childhood was deprived:

A dragon wrecks Princess Elizabeth’s castle and carries off the prince she was going to marry! Rather than sit around feeling sorry for herself or waiting for someone to rescue her, she puts on the only thing she can find–a paper bag–and sets off after the dragon to rescue her prince herself. She tricks the dragon into wearing himself out and falling fast asleep, and then heads on into his lair to find worthless Prince Ronald. Prince Ronald is appalled by her gross singed hair and terrible choice of clothing and tells her to come back when she looks like a “real” princess. Elizabeth tells Ronald that even though he may look like a prince, he is really just “a bum” and runs off into the sunset.

Whatever, Ronald, like you're NOT dressed like a tool?

So, Peggy is right: Princess Elizabeth doesn’t get married at the end. Which I think is awesome! I hate how stories always end with the female protagonist getting married, as if that is the pinnacle of a woman’s existence and nothing of note will ever happen to her again. I also don’t see this ending as saying “all men suck and Elizabeth can never get married because she is too strong a lady”. Elizabeth won’t marry Ronald, which is totally the right choice and I don’t think anyone would argue otherwise. For all we know, she is running off into the sunset to find an awesome guy who doesn’t care about her appearance and would not act like such a prat when she just went to the trouble of rescuing him! The moral is not that strong women can’t find husbands; it’s that appearances don’t matter, and you shouldn’t waste your time with people who think they do! Elizabeth is amazing no matter what she is wearing, even if it is just a paper bag, and Ronald is a total jerk even though he is always dressed in the medieval fantasy version of Aeropastale. Secondarily, Elizabeth doesn’t “have” to get married at the end of her story just because she’s a princess or a woman. I wish more stories for girls ended without them finding love, because having it happen in pretty much every book creates too much pressure and unrealistic expectations.

Some people have thought it seemed like a weird choice for me to dress as for my wedding, what with it being kind of the opposite of a love story. And, yeah, it’s not going to work out for Elizabeth and Ronald, but I think this story can still teach us a lot about love: how important it is to love yourself, to find someone who can love you no matter the clothes or hair or other superficial things, and not to ever settle with someone who is less than perfect just because it’s the end of the story and you feel like that means you have to get married. Luckily, I have taken all those lessons to heart, which is why I’m marrying Steven Wiggins, not Prince Ronald.

I mean, is this the face of a man that cares about appearances? Not enough to untag himself on facebook, apparently


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New Project: Kick Ass Women

Ever since reading Cinderella Ate My Daughter, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a girl. The 6th grade girl I tutor tells me frequently that “girly things are stupid”, an attitude I remember espousing with just as much vigor when I was her age. It was impossible to see myself in most girl characters in movies and books, and, no matter how much I wanted to fit in with my more socially adept peers, I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about fashion or boys, the only two things “cool” middle school girls cared to talk about.

I was 13 and I knew that I was not pretty, that I would never be pretty. It’s the kind of thing you know with an awful, resigned certainty at 13. Whether or not I was right is irrelevant, because I knew that I would never be like the beautiful actresses I saw in movies or the beautiful heroines I read about in books. Though I couldn’t have told you at the time why I felt such an instant aversion to these characters, I know now that it’s because they were all almost always defined by their looks. Or a man. Usually both.

Instead, I was obsessed with wizard characters. It was 7th grade and I was obsessed with Belgarath the Sorcerer and the countless, repetitive David Eddings series about him. I got my mom to make me a wizard robe and hat which I wore for at least two Halloweens in a row, plus just any time I felt like it in my room. It’s not that I wasn’t also really into springy butterfly hair clips, boy bands, and other, more normal 7th-grade-obsessions, because I was, but all of these trends were more fleeting, and even when I first adopted them I realized that they were silly and not really for me. Each time I wore my springy butterfly hair clip to school, I felt like I was wearing a ridiculous disguise that everyone could see through. I didn’t really care about fashion or hair or glitter–at least not as much as everyone around me seemed to, not as much as seemed to be required to earn a place in the ranks of Girl. What I really cared about was wizards. Usually old guy wizards with long beards and cantankerous personalities. Why? Because they were usually the only characters who were smart. Just smart. That was enough for them to get by, and usually have an awesome part in the story besides.

Middle School Patricia recognized that smart was pretty much the only thing she had going for her, but there was no girl-equivalent of the wizard in most stories, no smart female character that always knows the answer to the stupid hero’s problems (Middle School Patricia did not have a very high opinion of heroes). Granted, there is a vaguely female equivalent to Belgarath the Sorcerer in David Eddings’ books: his daughter, Polgara. She’s intelligent, powerful, and knows how to boss people around, but the first words used to introduce her whenever she shows up, the first thing other characters notice about her, are always about her drop-dead-gorgeous looks. Plus, she’s annoyingly condescending to everyone and tries to be everyone’s mother. At 13, I knew I did not want to be anyone’s mother, and certainly didn’t want to have to lean on my looks (such as they were) to get where I wanted. Polgara seemed just as silly and annoying as any princess in a fairytale (of course, by the end of the saga she discovers what she actually wanted to do all those years was have babies). So I settled for a bunch of magical old guys. Which is pretty sad.

In an effort to cheer myself up, I’ve decided to devote my next few posts to talking about some of the kick ass ladies who were a good influence on Middle School Patricia. Ladies who, whatever they look like, refused to be defined by their beauty or lack of it, ladies who are strong, confident, and who care about way more than boys and fashion. I think girls need more such examples or, like 7th grade Patricia and the girl I tutor now, they’ll begin to hate their own gender, to scorn all things “girl” as stupid, frivolous, and petty. Being a girl is so not about that, 7th grade Patricia! Check back in the next few days for some awesome examples of why.

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