Femininity as an Advantage

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect commonly spotted in most works where a woman is the ‘heroine’, is the habit of writers/production staff to point out that the character’s feminine qualities are her downfall. When examining the nearly polar character descriptions of Katniss and Bella, she deduces that femininity is often seen as a boundary preventing female protagonists from reaching the same potential as their male counterparts. Heroines that embody ‘girly’ characteristics are often portrayed as weak, defenseless and purely driven by the desire of a man. However, when these feminine attributes are far removed from the character and she embodies a more ‘masculine’ persona, she is more independent and motivated by personal goals rather than the goals of a romantic interest. For example, in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, the beautiful princess Aurora is the perfect manifestation of a feminine character. From her flawless singing voice to her long golden hair, her daintiness is not easily surpassed. However, the cursed princess speaks sparingly for most of the film and spends the rest of the hour and a half being rescued by her betrothed Prince Phillip or the three resourceful fairies that raise her in the forest. Conversely, Disney’s Mulan breaks the general gender rules set by the film company’s previous works. Not only does she openly defy her father in one of the most strictly male-subjugated societies in Asia but she manages to out-perform the entire Chinese army in defeat an army of barbaric ruffians, enlisting only the help of a shrimp-sized dragon and a hapless cricket. The writers of this film make it clear to the audience that Mulan has abandoned the common conventions of femininity before she goes off to war, therefore making a distinction between the strength associated with masculinity and the same associated with femininity. Films often prove to be inept in terms of pairing femininity with any form of mental and physical strength. Whether this is a bias or a benign oversight, the film industry has chosen to portray femininity as a liability rather than an advantage. Furthermore, Ross claims that young girls are taught to think that imagination and fantasizing about personal aspirations are punishable offenses. Films like Alice in Wonderland reduce young girls imaginations to realizations that their worth in society will be predetermined by more superficial indicators. Since the late 1990s,, the film industry has been drowned in romantic comedies where women are merely objects of the male character’s desire and are deprived of the opportunity to aspire to anything better.