The more I read, the more I come across “strong female characters” (SFCs) who seem all the same to me. This is worrying, because while people are similar in many ways, there are downsides if all SFCs have nothing that distinguishes them from each other in how they are strong and how they’re female. Following are some of the things that writers get wrong about SFCs (although these apply to creating good characters in general, too):
They reject femininity, inwardly and outwardly
This is by far the most common—strength is seen as masculine, and therefore the opposite of feminine. This is a very limited definition of strength and writers who write with this conception in mind have characters who think that their protagonist liking dresses, the color pink, long hair, embroidery, cooking, looking after kids—anything feminine—would not make her strong. These characters are always making clear their disdain for such things.
While there are women who don’t like those things and shouldn’t have to, there are also women who do love these things, and in no way do these things make one less strong. A protagonist isn’t better just because she thinks pants are more practical and skirts are stupid. She’s just a person who likes pants over skirts.
Emotional strength comes from being reserved/suppressing feelings
This is something that men are expected to do and so a lot of SFCs also do the same when writers just turn a male character into a female character to create an SFC. Emotional strength isn’t just about not crying when in pain (of any kind) or about keeping one’s emotions to oneself. Emotional strength also comes from facing one’s worst emotions head-on. It’s about having patience, forgiveness, kindness for those who we’d otherwise hurt. It’s when you don’t use emotions to justify your every action, when you not just recognize shame and guilt but also practice acceptance. A female character who refuses to show emotions or is always hard-hearted isn’t necessarily a strong character—she can be, but strength isn’t one-dimensional.
They don’t need men/romance
While it’s essential to criticize stories where women exist merely as the romantic lead or where a woman’s existence is defined only by a man loving her, wanting romance isn’t in itself a weakness. Love is a natural emotion and so is belongingness. It may be problematic to center one’s existence on only having a relationship and neglecting everything else in one’s identity and life, but it’s not problematic to want love, marriage, a home and a family. One can be happy and strong without these, just as one can be happy and strong with these. A female character shouldn’t have to hate domesticity or romance or men (that’s misandry) to be strong (see point #1).
They always stand out from the crowd, especially with regards to social norms
We may admire women like Malala Yousafzai, Rosa Parks, or Savitribai Phule, for speaking up. But strength isn’t always about standing out from the crowd, rejecting social norms, or doing things differently from everyone else.
And strength isn’t rare. It manifests in different ways, and so it’s especially irksome when the strength of a female character has to be explicitly pointed out by showing the love interest/male lead/everyone else in the story saying, “You’re/She’s not like the other girls” or by having the character break rules and defy authority.
Strength can be and is quiet. It doesn’t always draw attention to itself—a lot of us know stories of our mothers and grandmothers who quietly and patiently built a life, a house, and brought up their kids and worked hard, day after day, year after year.
I think a good rule of thumb is that if the narrator/other characters have to explicitly and repeatedly tell the reader about the character’s strength, then there’s something that needs to be reconsidered in how that strength is shown in the story.
They’re “sassy”
Somehow, strength also got associated with being “sassy,” perhaps because being soft-spoken is also associated with femininity or even submissiveness. But again, it’s not always necessary to be sarcastic, to always have a retort ready on the tip of the tongue, to always be able to speak one’s way out of problems.
There’s a very thin line between being sassy and being rude. Once in a while, everyone gets a laugh out of it or it’s a much-needed reply from someone who’s had enough. But sometimes it can also be a cover for insecurity, or just plain disrespectful. In fact, being soft-spoken—in arguments, during political negotiations—can be a strength, because it can disarm someone who’s expecting anger and shouting. When writing, just pause and think about how people would respond to the character’s words if they were spoken in real life—would it be perceived as strength, or as rudeness?
They’re strong because they’ve been victims/survived trauma
I’ve also seen a rise in stories where the character has had a troubled past. They’ve been beaten, abused, displaced, orphaned, harassed, and so on. While I agree that stories of such experiences need to be told, I’m also noticing that a story is somehow considered “good” just because there’s trauma of some sort in it.
Surviving trauma is a difficult, often lifelong process. Many make it, many don’t. It’s important to remember that strength doesn’t always emerge or build up in a person when they go through shit. Sometimes, it can also completely weaken them. In an essay from a couple of years ago, I quoted Kate Jacobs, who wrote in the book Comfort Food, “Sometimes suffering is just suffering […] It doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t build character. It only hurts.”
A character doesn’t need to go through hell for her to be strong. She doesn’t have to be (or think of herself as) a victim of anything. Strength can come not just from personal challenges but also from observing and learning from the difficulties of others, from empathy. Requiring a narrative of trauma to show strength can lead to romanticize suffering, which is deeply problematic. Can we not imagine a female character who is strong but did not have to suffer at the hands of other people or systems in order to have that strength?
They’re everything and also conventionally attractive
Even when all the above points are taken care of, there’s still something that authors stress too much on: how attractive the female protagonist is. Either the narrator will let us know, “She was everything—a good mother, a smart engineer, a brilliant negotiator and the most beautiful woman I’d had the fortune to be with,” or they’ll let us know that although the character’s features weren’t conventionally attractive (depending on the culture), there was still some sort of beauty in her.
In other words, the female character simply can’t be a person. Some degree of attractiveness, some mention of her physical appearance in terms of how others evaluate her beauty always creeps in, as if it’s a mandatory characteristic. Ours is a world that does reward attractiveness—it can give that person attention, money, or power. But those things can belong to someone who’s not strong. And someone can have those things and be strong without being pretty.
A Reading List
There are exceptions to all of these rules. My point isn’t that having any of the above automatically means that a female character isn’t strong or that her strength is one-dimensional. But if every strong female character looks like this, are we writing characters or are we inserting a template, instead of a person, into our stories?
These recurring features should make us reconsider how we understand strength (even in ourselves) and how it could limit how writers and readers imagine and portray strength not just in female characters but in any person. Here are some books and short stories that go beyond the limited conceptions of what strength looks like in female characters:
Books:
- Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson
- The Reluctant Queen by Sarah Beth Durst
- Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki
- The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri N. Murari
- Nothing But the Rain by Naomi Salman
- Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao
- Ten Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel
Short Stories:
- “The Girl Who Welcomed Death to Svalgearyen” by Barbara A. Barnett
- “Celia and the Conservation of Entropy” by Amelia Beamer
- “By the Far Salt Lake” by Portia Elan
- “Only Kings and Doves” by M.S. Dean
- “The Passing of the Dragon” by Ken Liu
Bio: Ratika Deshpande is a writer from India. Her work has appeared in Authors Publish, Reactor Magazine, the Brevity Blog, and other platforms.
