Here’s a fun little exercise: try to think of female movie and TV characters whose gender is an afterthought. Characters who matter-of-factly defy gender boundaries, whose sexuality is not a focus, who will be praised as “strong” rather than “strong for a female character.”
It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be. We spent 20 minutes on this during a train ride and only came up with one or two names. Here’s the few that come to mind now:
- Ellen Ripley from the Alien movies, portrayed by Sigourney Weaver
- Sarah Connor from the TV show, portrayed by Lena Headey
- Zoe Washburne from Firefly, portrayed by Gina Torres
- Dana Scully from The X-Files, portrayed by Gillian Anderson
Star Trek is pretty sexist on the whole, but managed to present a few solid female characters in its time, and Battlestar Galactica–while not perfect–is full of strong, complex women. My list is very sci-fi biased–I wonder if takes an imaginative genre to get beyond stereotypes. And these aren’t perfect. You can see how Lena Headey is sexualized in this poster. And she reifies the mother-protector archetype, albeit radically, which shifts the focus from her incredible strength to the journey of her son. But, all things considered, a damn good character.
See if you can think of more examples!
