 Hey guys it's Leanna and I'm here today to talk about why I hate strong female characters. So this is a video that I've been kind of wanting to do for a while and um I just hadn't gotten around to it and then International Women's Day came around and I was like what a fitting slash perverse time to do it. I don't know what else to film today so let's do that. I'm in a very weird mood today which is like a terrible idea to be filming this today but I'm doing it so just so you know the fuck it in me today is very strong. So that's kind of where we're at today um yeah so I have been thinking about filming this video since last year um like I mean like since December of last year so it's been like three months is it March four months ish something like that something like that and um I am aware of how clickbaity the name of this video is and that's half the reason I haven't done it because like there's something in me that's like extremely contrary and like I know like having a catchy video title is something that like I should have like I should try to think of ways to make my video titles catchy and yet every time I do I'm just like I don't like that I should have more boring titles like I'm asking people to watch this like I don't I don't know what it is I don't want to be successful I think is what it is anyway all of that is an aside um so why do I hate strong female characters so in reality what I hate is the term strong female character and then a lot of things that go with that term like how that term came to be and like how it's used but that's what I hate I don't actually hate like strong female characters okay I do there are some cliches associated with it that we'll get into that I hate I'm all for having an interesting female characters in books as you guys well know and I am a total hypocrite so if you're gonna at me in the comments be like you say strong female characters are great in like pull up a like clip of me doing it in a previous video I've probably said it a million times I'm a product of the the culture and the machine that invented this term so I'm sure I've used it more than once okay but so why do I hate that term well in the first place um usually it's used like when that comes up is usually because someone's like holding up a book and is saying if you love strong female characters then you should read this or things I love about this book are the strong female characters in it and of course part of me less woke me was like yeah strong female characters we like that but woke me is thinking have you ever heard someone say read this book if you love strong male characters they don't you've never heard someone say what do I love about this book I love how strong the male characters are that's not a thing and so part of me like with that struggles and wars with the whole notion of like affirmative action style things where I'm like like I get what it's trying to do but I'm looking at it and going is this the most like logical way to achieve it and I don't have an answer that question I really don't oh it's one of those days where there's like clouds and stuff sometimes cool well the lighting in this video is going to be excellent yeah I don't mean I'm not saying affirmative action is or isn't the solution but I do when I look at stuff like that I'm like I know what it's trying to do and then is this the best tool for that is that going to achieve this goal and I don't have an answer to that but similarly for strong female characters I'm all for pushing the idea that we should have more representation of women of people of color of all those kinds of things but when we start talking about strong female characters there is usually a I object to that term being used for the reason that I just cited because that's not a thing like for dudes you just have interesting characters it's not like oh wow like let me see let me put it this way this will make more sense the fact that you have to say it means that it's sort of the exception rather than the rule so you're like pick this book up because unlike everything else the women in this are three dimensional the women in this have personalities and we like that about it I mean that's like a restaurant review saying go here because the food is good in this place but I guess restaurant reviews do they do say that so let's not use that as an example you want to be warm just like they just should be that way so to go out of your way to praise it for the fact that it the female characters in it didn't suck I don't think that like part of me wants to praise that because I want to see more of it but you know what I mean like I object to that being praise worthy like that just should be it's right up there with when um there's like I'm sure if you're a girl you've probably experienced frustration with this where there are things that you've been expected to just do and say and take care of and handle and then if a guy does a fraction of that all of a sudden he's like a hero so if you help clear the table you're like well you're just supposed to but if a dude does it they're like oh what a great guy and you're like is he though like shouldn't people just do that shouldn't they just help out do we why are we praising that we should just expect it so I guess that's what I'm saying I'm saying by by praising strong female characters we seem to be saying that that to have that is going above and beyond and good job it shouldn't be going above and beyond that should just be the norm so it's more negative but part of me is like let's not praise strong female characters let's deride people who don't have strong female characters and let's stop using the term strong female characters because literally like what the fuck does that even mean what the fuck is a strong female character do you mean she actually has a personality do you mean that she's physically strong like she can lift a lot of weights do you mean that when when people talk to her she's argumentative do you mean that she says no a lot do you mean that she has the strength to say yes like what the fuck is a strong female character like do you know what I mean I mean you can't answer me but do you know what I mean like it's when I start peace like when you start taking it apart it gets makes me really really angry so on the one hand I like books I tend to like books they get that label I tend to like books that have like that associated with it where people say this has strong female characters on it and when I see that like I have this sidelined like monologue in my head which you're got you guys are getting right now but when I see that label I'm like well that's probably a book that I'm gonna like because I do know what they're saying but at the same time every time I see it I'm like I don't want to say like that because so um let's unpack this a little bit because I don't know I'm here to talk and I have a lot to say so if you already disagree with everything that I'm saying I don't know come at me in the comments down below I don't care um but yeah so like I listed a bunch of things there like when in like sort of like rant style being like what the fuck does that mean um also I'm sorry if you have children in the room while you watch my videos but they've probably heard that word before we live in a rough world I'm a strong female character so I say what I want this has become something that's discussed more and like one of the first times that I experienced this discussion like this topic was actually to do with the show Mad Men you didn't see that coming did you and I was found it fascinating that um the representation if you don't know what a madman is because that's not exactly on brand for me Mad Men is a AMC show that's not on the air anymore that was about Madison Avenue ad agency in the 60s I think it starts either late 50s or early 60s and kind of goes through the 60s and all of the craziness that is the 60s so there are two two of the main female characters that are like throughout the entire show because there's other female characters in it but two of like the main ones are Peggy and Joan and I found it fascinating how polarizing those characters are because I watch the show and I have people that I know that are my age or near my age that watch the show and I also know people my parents age or people who like live through that era who watch the show and the people who are of like my parents generation watch it and they like Peggy they think that she's a strong female character they think that she's you know a ballbuster and that's so fantastic people of my generation and obviously I'm like this is huge broad strokes there's I'm sure there's people who are you know the reverse of what I'm saying but this has been my experience the people of my age group prefer Joan that's not to say they don't like Peggy and that's not to say people of my parents generation don't like Joan but that my generation views Joan as a strong female character and I think that's fascinating now for if you've never seen Mad Men you probably like okay who the fuck are Joan and Peggy and why do I care um basically Peggy is your sort of poster child for like a feminist character who she like enters the ad agency as like a typist or a secretary or something and she's like wearing little dresses and having little sandwiches and being like a girl and then she gets like you know feminist and woke and starts wearing pants and starts being like I want to be like one of the guys and like I can do what a man can do and like you treat me the same and like being very like combative and being very confrontational and that's kind of her MO to like utterly simplify a complicated character that's kind of what Peggy is like whereas Joan is extremely feminine and very much embraces her femininity and uses it to her advantage Joan is a very curvaceous woman and she uses that as instead of trying to cover it up instead of trying to dress more like a man she dresses even more in a way that emphasizes her feminine curves and then uses that to her advantage so when people of my generation watch that we seemed the consensus seemed to be or at least that's how I felt about it and that's what I felt like other people who agree that Joan was their favorite we're getting out of it was that Joan was embracing what it is to be a woman and not viewing femininity as weakness so you didn't have to be a man to be strong like there's a feminine version of strength so then we looked at Peggy and we're like don't be a dude be yourself and be strong and so we look at Joan and go you're being yourself you're not trying to be something you're not and you're being strong and we respect the hell out of that now there's a place for both obviously I had to interrupt myself to deal with my camera what was I saying oh there's a place for both like I personally am even though Joan was kind of my hero and I prefer Joan to Peggy I'm probably more like Peggy because I've never I don't want to say never but I'm not one that is emphasizing my femininity very much I do the opposite but um it's there's a difference to me if you're doing it on purpose or you just are that way if that makes sense so like if you're a tomboy that's great don't be a tomboy don't make yourself a tomboy because you think that that would be better if that makes sense if you're naturally inclined to do more athletic things or you're naturally inclined to be interested in things that have more typically been associated with men that's totally fine but the thing that Peggy was doing was trying to be masculine because she thought that that would be that would give her strength and that would give her power because to make it a man's world you have to be a man so she's making herself into a man and so this is kind of the issue that we get with strong female characters because and this is changing which is great but for a long time it seems like when you had a strong female character you basically just had a dude but then you put boobs on them or a dress but basically people were writing male characters and then just like making them women and saying oh this is what a strong female character but she's not you know what I mean and that's not to say that you can't have characters that are more masculine in their behavior and that's totally fine but the sense was in order for the character to be strong she had to be dude-like and then she would be a strong female character which I object to and that's why I think I object to the the very phrase strong female character I think is absurd because it's not by emphasizing strength that's already an extremely masculine thing to be emphasizing because that goes hand in hand with ideas about macho and testosterone and like all this kind of thing and the fact that power is ultimately associated with strength that power is associated with physical size with violence with things like that as you know if you watch my channel I love stabby books I love violence and a lot of things that go hand in hand with exactly that picture but that just happens to be my taste I object to the idea that the only form of strength would be that and I don't that's that's not true and I don't I don't like it when I read it it's very two-dimensional frankly so I do try especially now that I'm more aware of this as an issue and as something that I myself am pissed off about to use other words like it has very I'm sure I say strong female character a lot because that is the word that's used um but I do try to think of other ways to say it so like having interesting female characters having three-dimensional female characters having complex female characters having just having a characters with like very gray morals or having interesting representations of femininity like stuff like that that to me is more important because whether or not a female character is strong is irrelevant if you mean she's strong because the character is well written then say that say that it has very well written characters and then also say that many of those characters are female because it's not as though I want a book where the male characters are badly written I want to read a book where the characters are well written and ideally we would have a little bit more women in there than we have traditionally seen especially in certain genres like looking at you Tolkien where where where's the ladies so I understand where this comes from and the kind of thing that's trying to achieve and the kind of people using this phrase are generally coming from a place that I support but I think that's the wrong way to go about it and it makes me angry and I think it creates a different problem because we want representations of women that doesn't mean that they have to be ballbusters that doesn't mean that they have to be physically strong that doesn't mean they have to be warriors you can have a story about a woman who's quintessentially feminine and she'll be a strong female character because she's well written but people won't typically I I don't think people usually use the phrase strong female character to describe a woman who is very who is very stereotypically feminine because ah you know she's that's weak it's not weak I mean it might be weak she might be badly written and she might be a weak character but just because you're not hostile or confrontational or violent or masculine or physically strong that doesn't mean you're a you that doesn't mean you're not a strong female character so I object to it being in put in such polarizing terms if that makes sense because again you wouldn't say I love how strong these male characters are and you wouldn't then by contrast pull up a book and say ah you know what I love about this book is how weak the male characters are like you wouldn't because that is the dichotomy that you create when you say strong female character does that mean that the other ones are weak that's not the issue here I don't think and I don't if it is the issue then it shouldn't be we want to see female characters prominently featured and and represented in a way that's layered and complex and that all of that is not built into the word strong as far as I'm concerned so if the word strong is meant to suggest um I mean because I've heard the word strong I suppose use when people say like she's got strong talent or something like that but most typically when people hear the word strong they think strong I mean when people say you have a strong voice they usually mean you're loud they don't mean you sound good if that makes sense so don't call it strong I think I think I'm making sense um and like so I kind of also wanted to go into why like this in particular makes me angry because I do I do do do I really like um representations of women that are ball busters for sure that does happen to me my taste but I do often wonder how much of that is conditioning because I remember growing up and watching movies where the heroes are always dudes and they're always heroic because they're doing doodly things like using swords and knives and guns and running around punching people and so constantly seeing that image of a man slaying a dragon of a man being a vigilante of a man punching that guy in the face and you're like oh like he's the one that has the most agency and he's handling situations through violence so the one who's the mover in the shaker here who's the hero here is the dude and he's doing it by being aggressive and violent so if you see that enough you're gonna look at that and be like okay so strength means violence and to be strong and violent you gotta be a dude because otherwise you're a damsel and then we moved into okay you're not a damsel now the women are also punching now the women are also slaying dragons which is great it's definitely better than them not doing those things but there are other kinds of power it's not always about punching people which it feels weird for me to say that because I do really like stories about that and again I mean it is taste but it's also I think conditioning that isn't always the solution to punch someone even though it feels like it should be the solution sometimes but so when I went to see Laney Taylor for her signing from use of nightmares and this was she pointed this out about her own story which is something that when she said it I was like I had it and I not noticed that but it was so true and I loved it even I mean I already loved the story um and she said she had just finished writing The Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy where there is a lot of war and battle and stuff like that and that's fine and she enjoyed writing it and it's great but in writing Strange the Dreamer and in writing that duology she was like she said she didn't want to write a story where punching someone is a solution where violence is the answer where war will solve your problems she was like sometimes that won't solve your problems and what do you do then what do you do when violence will not solve your problems you have to find another way you have to compromise or you have to go through diplomacy you have to do something else you can't always just kill somebody and that is really at the heart of The Strange the Dreamer duology if you've read it which I do love and I love that that the story explores something in a way that is interesting and exciting and you read it and you're not like oh how boring like they're sitting in board meetings going through the diplomatic process but where where violence isn't the answer where you can't just be a strong female character and just come in there and like just cut some throats take some names wham bam thank you ma'am and we uh we killed the bad guy yay us saved the day sometimes that's not sometimes killing the bad guy will not solve your problems so there's there's subtlety and there's intelligence in other solutions and other ways of doing things and I love that about the story when she pointed it out I was like I never thought of it in those terms before but now that she are pointing it out to me I see what you mean and I wholeheartedly agree that we don't see enough of that in stories like this it's always either you're weak and you have no agency or you're killing people attacking people going to war and I do love stories about attacking people killing people and going to war I do I really do but there are other kinds of strength and a story I think in my mind will only be stronger I shouldn't use the word strong will be a better story will be a more interesting story if there's more to it if it isn't just about killing people that can be part of it and I will love that part of it but I bring up Leigh Bardugo all the time but she writes about a bunch of criminals in the Six of Grows duology but the things that they're doing aren't always violent sometimes they're tricksy sometimes they're using the brains sometimes they're making deals making compromises negotiating coming up with other solutions sometimes you have to find a way to work with your enemy instead of working against them because that's the only way to get something done and that's a way more interesting story as I love the parts with the the guns and the violence and the killing and the stabbing and we all know my last video was a thumbnail of me covered in fake blood but um it's a more interesting story for the fact that there isn't just that it's not just like show up shoot them and leave so that's a bigger problem than just strong female characters but that's why I object to this emphasis on strong female characters how about we just have good female characters how about we just have and then okay well yeah I don't want to call it that either because that's a whole other thing to unpack is the representations of of what is goodness and virtue and all of that maybe I'll do a whole other video but females should be represented and represented well but the whole spectrum should be represented as it is with dudes which is why you'll never hear someone say I love this book because it has such strong male characters it's just people you just say it's a good book and if you say it's a good book then people will tend to assume that the characters in it are well written I would say hold up a book and say this is a good book and it features a lot of women characters and to me the natural conclusion after those two statements is that they are well written female characters otherwise that wouldn't be a good book so yeah I think my rant is over I can't think of anything else to say let me know in the comments down below why I'm wrong or why I'm right I like that too um oh yeah I keep meaning to add this to my videos I post videos on Saturdays I can now say that because I kind of started doing that at the beginning of this year and then I was like let's see how that goes I've been pretty consistent about posting videos on Saturdays so now I can finally add that to my outro please like and subscribe I post videos on Saturdays there you go I'll try to remember to say that next time too watch now that I've said it I'll never post on a Saturday again but let me know in the comments down below your thoughts on this issue on this subject if you get what I'm saying do also let me know if you don't get what I'm saying at all because I'm totally wrong you know let me know as usual and I'll see you on my next video bye hey guys it's Leanna and I'm here today to talk about why I hate female nope that's not what I'm here to talk about okay let's try that again