Let's Hear It For the Heroines

I do so love a good heroine.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m still madly in love with Han Solo, Captain Reynolds, Apollo, and any man to sit in “the chair” on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. But, come on, girls like me don’t get guys like that.  I can, though, become my favorite heroines.

That’s why I think all this talk about the need for “positive female role-models in media portrayals of women” is a bunch of bunk.  “Positive”--that’s just another way of saying “perfect women who are smart, wordly, virtuous, independent, emotional honest, and responsible citizens”.  In a word: BORING.  Pop Quiz: who did you love more, Scarlett O’Hara or Melanie Hamilton?  Yeah I thought so.  Authors don’t (or shouldn’t) write perfect role-models because perfect people are too unreal.  Do you know a perfect person in real life?  Someone without a single fault?  I highly doubt you do.  Characters should be people that we can associate with, or at least recognize as being realistic copies of people we encounter every day.

That isn’t to say we need to be raging alcoholics like Starbuck, or have the myriad psychological disorders of Ripley or Sarah Connor.  We can, though, be unabashedly awesome at our jobs, fiercely protective of our young, or really good at delivering snarky one-liners in the face of gruesome death. (Though, really, spend the energy avoiding the gruesome death and save the snark for when the YouTube re-enactment is filming.) Laura Roslin certainly wasn’t perfect, but I’d sure as hell rather vote for her to be our next president instead of the choices we currently have! Yes Kaylee was naive and hopelessly pining after a man with severe commitment issues, but damn wouldn’t we all like to have her skills with engines? And come on, even a sarcastic cynic like me can appreciate a woman so positive that “there’s not a power in the `verse can make Kaylee stop being cheerful”.

Instead of encouraging girls and young women to be a Madonna-like (speaking of the Holy Virgin Mother, not the pop star, obviously) paragon, let’s teach them to celebrate the good in themselves while acknowledging the bad.  Teach them to recognize that the literary, movie, and television characters they encounter have flaws because they are based on real women.

Real women have flaws.  Battling and, if we are very lucky, over-coming those flaws makes us better women. Honestly sharing our stories, even the painful bits, can make us Big Damn Heroes for the next generation.