But I know I don't like this woman, nor do I think that acting like an ungracious child is "strong". (From an article about the new trope of the "strong female character" in the NYT.)
Every time I hear someone use the term “strong female character,” I want to punch them. The problem is, I hit like a girl. Before I go further, here’s an anecdote that might help set the tone for what I’m about to try to say, which I worry has the potential to come across all wrong unless I manage to dispel certain widely shared assumptions without unduly setting anyone off.
Years ago, in the nascent days of the George W. Bush administration, while en route to the airport from his parents’ house in Florida, my boyfriend at that time and I spent an afternoon visiting with his brother and his brother’s girlfriend. Like many Democrats, I was still very angry with Florida, and as fond as I was of my ex-boyfriend’s parents, navigating the minefield of our respective political affiliations (which pretty much meant we had to limit our debates to discussing the relative merits of Outback Steakhouse versus Chili’s) left me exhausted, depressed and somewhat bloated. By the time we reached his brother’s house, I was ready to go back to California and resume my life of loudly resenting Florida from a safe distance while eating at restaurants that didn’t require their servers to memorize corporate scripts. All that stood in the way of me and this golden dream was the visit.
It started, innocuously enough, with lunch in the kitsch-yet-sinister town of Celebration, where we hoped to be lucky enough to experience a postprandial, regularly scheduled fake snowfall. It took a darker turn after we piled back into the S.U.V., headed to their house to pick up the guns and drove to the indoor gun range. As Rush Limbaugh fulminated at top volume, I slumped in the back seat like a sullen 13-year-old, a gun case resting heavily on my lap, and wondered how I had arrived at this place. What did it mean that I was here? Could I be here and still be me? Who was I? Within about 15 seconds of stepping inside the shooting range, before the guy behind the counter could take my gun order, I burst into tears, ran outside and spent the next couple of hours alone in the car reading Jane Austen.
So here is the question I’m posing: If this story were a scene in a movie, and the movie were being told from the point of view of a young woman, would you describe that protagonist as a “strong female character”? Or would you consider her to be weak?
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I mean, lady, you took the vacation. You knew what these people were like. If you wanted to stay at home and pout about politics, you should have done so. *That* would have been strong. Being gracious about your differences and enjoying the time for what it was = strong.
Crying in the car with a book like a 12-year-old? Not only weak, but unacceptable in an adult.