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Hanna Flint teams up with some Strong Female Characters to look at whether kicking ass is always empowering. From Hotel Artemis to Thelma and Louise, via the action heroics of Birds of Prey and Captain Marvel, these action heroines are here to save the day. But are characters like Lara Croft feminist icons or sex objects - or maybe both?
With each new wave of feminism, the Strong Female Character is meant to embody a different version of female empowerment in a male dominated world - but she's most associated with the action hero genre. Strong Female Characters like Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 pivot away from traditional femininity, gravitating towards traditionally masculine behaviours and imagery, and Ripley in Alien was originally written as a man, and is depicted as courageous, strategic and unemotional. But despite their physical strength and resourcefulness, Ripley and Connor are still complex characters, showing a full range of human emotion.
What happens when strong female characters stop embodying anything other than strength? An overly literal interpretation of the word 鈥渟trong鈥� can stop a supposedly strong female character from functioning as anything more than a two-dimensional action babe whose only purpose is to fight and support a male lead, or fight and look after a child, or fight and seduce male characters.
The explosion of the comic book genre has disrupted a few of these conventions - but does it go far enough? While the MCU and DC may have introduced better representation for some, are they truly representative of the diversity of womanhood, or is there still work to be done before strong female characters become truly complex?