Strong Female Character

Dear Reader,

It’s been a minute since we last talked.

We’re in the throes of August and in preparation for Women’s Equality Day ( mark your calendars it’s August 26th) we’re proud to announce this month’s theme: “Strong Female Character”

This is a concept that came to me after watching Tavi Gevinson’s 2011 tedxtalk “Still Figuring It Out” in which she talks about how the portrayal of powerful women in media is too often two-dimensional. She goes on to say, that it’s most times just a highly sexualized portrayal under the guise of empowerment.

These two-dimensional “super-women” with often unattainable features and one standard look do little to represent women and to show that as women we are more than just objects to be desired, depictions to satisfy the male gaze.

The popularization of this singular depiction does more harm than good and upholds the stereotype of what women must be in order to be considered strong female characters. This depiction does little to recognize the work of and to accurately represent a diverse range of women.

What about women of colour, plus-sized women and queer women, do they not fit the mold of what is deemed strong female characters?

Are you a strong female character if you’re not a gun- slinging female vigilante or a superhuman with x-ray vision?

This insular concept does more to exclude women than to empower a group of more than 3 billion worldwide.

A strong female character does not have a single aesthetic. She is not perfect, she is flawed, she makes mistake and she is humanized by the fact that she fails sometimes. She empowers because she reflects not one type of woman but so many different types of women. Furthermore we can say that because there are more than 3 billion women worldwide, there are also three billion ways to be a strong female character, because we are all strong female characters, flaws and all.

“ What makes a strong female character is a character who has weaknesses, who has flaws, who is maybe not immediately likeable but eventually relatable,”

- Tavi Gevinson

So, this month on Caribbean Feminist we’ll be talking about what it takes to build a strong female character, strong females in media, a special feature on what it was like as a girl taking up a position of power for a day and of course a playlist filled with female powerhouses to jam out to this month.

I hope you enjoy this month’s theme on Caribbean Feminist, see you next week!

- Caribbean Feminist