say whatever u want but i am diving headfirst with my expectations HIGH as hell for the dragon prince not only becos of their solid crew, but bc this was their first tweet
I put the ten baby rats on my bed, and gave them a dollhouse that I had lying around, to see what they would make of it. Clearly they enjoyed themselves.
Okay this is a very half-formed thought and I’m not sure where I’m going with it yet, but the fact that the teen girls we’re meant to root for in so many Teen Girl Stories are the ones who are bad at or uncomfortable with performing femininity probably isn’t a coincidence.
And it’s mostly not because the people who create media about teen girls want to shatter gender roles; it’s more likely because even though femininity is the prescribed way for female-identified people to behave it’s also seen as something largely unpleasant.
Um. I’m going somewhere with this, maybe after I finish my homework. But I want to hang onto this thought.
ex: the proof of Regina George’s redemption is giving up her hyper-femininity in favor of aggressive, masculine-coded sports
ex 2: in High School Musical Gabriella and Taylor have a bonding moment over their nail beds being “history”, contrasting themselves with the more conventionally feminine cheerleaders. Gabriella is hardly butch but her femininity is portrayed in a more soft, natural way to contrast with Sharpay’s louder, more eye-catching and implicitly unpleasant outfits. Sharpay is not the bad guy because she’s girly, but she’s maybe more girly because she’s the bad guy.
Because caring about your appearance is BAD, that’s a character trait that we associate with Bad Characters, and most especially Bad Women Characters. Sharpay and Regina care so much about their looks because they’re shallow, and that means they’ve unpleasant.
All teenage girls are told, one way or another, that they should care about their looks and put effort into being attractive. But in the stories about teen girls, the only ones visibly caring about their looks are the bitches.
If a Nice Girl ™ wants to make an effort to look good she better have an excuse, like prom or a date or finding out she’s a princess.
Princess Diaries makes such a good point about this, actually. Mia is supposed to be attractive, because she’s the protagonist, but she also can’t do it herself, because that will make her look like just another Vapid Teen Girl. So she gets a makeover handed to her. Pretty is something that Just Happens to nice girls, because if you work at it you’re a bitch.
(Not to mention pretty isn’t compatible with frizzy hair or glasses.)
God, fucking Harry Potter isn’t exempt from this. Hermione gets contrasted with Lavender and it’s so obvious that Lavender is Wrong, because she’s goofy and sentimental and clingy and girly girly girly, in sharp contrast with Hermione “I only do my hair for the Yule Ball, I’ve got shit to do” Granger over here. And that’s not shitting on Hermione! It’s just clear that there’s a very particular sort of teenage girl we’re supposed to like in HP and she doesn’t care about Girl Things.
Even Sky High, the greatest teen movie of all time, falls into this. The women on the good guys’ side are Layla – soft femme, a little tomboyish, has strong opinions – and Magenta – vaguely punkish, v snarky – neither of whom do feminity “right”.
On the bad side there’s Penny, who’s a LITERAL evil cheerleader hivemind, and Gwen, who’s both the most popular girl in school and the actual super villain behind everything. These things are not coincidences.
Tbh as a parent I didn’t realise the baggage about this I carried until my kid got into MLP and I watched it with them and encountered the character of Rarity
She’s a character who is extremely feminine but her positive character trait is generosity she wants everyone she encounters to look as good as they can because she knows looking your best can make you feel good and she wants to share it
And for the first time I saw fashion and make up and all that stuff as self expression and artistry and something that, like almost all things, can be good or bad depending on the person
and I was and am really fucking ashamed that it took a fucking children’s cartoon about magical ponies to help me recognise that
This trope needs to die.
Give me more characters who are stereotypically girly and kind and generous and soft and strong and REAL
“[Katniss]
is supposed to be attractive, because she’s the protagonist, but she
also can’t do it herself, because that will make her look like just
another Vapid Teen Girl. So she gets a makeover handed to her. Pretty is
something that Just Happens to nice girls ”
wonder how many other teenage girl protagonist we can swap that name for
Because natural beauty is associated with inner purity. For a bad human to be naturally pretty? Oh my goodness no! Can’t have that.
It’s one reason I like Riverdale. Veronica is definitely a Good Guy character, but is very girly. Cheryl is naturally beautiful AND enhances herself, and is both good and bad depending on the day. lol And Betty is perfect and naturally beautiful, but portrayed as having a darker side.
Katniss is kind of an exception here because of her background as a poor girl in a dystopia, not to mention that it’s made clear the “makeover” is not for her benefit but for those who are going to watch her and other kids die on live tv.
what she means: the tv show iCarly always portrayed Spencer as some bumbling idiot after dropping out of law school after three days, but they disregard the fact that this means Spencer did in fact finish college with a degree and knew enough about the law to pass his entrance exams and had good enough grades in his classes to be accepted into a law school therefore the image that they portrayed of him being stupid is false, he was simply a man who realized his passion lied elsewhere and he wasn’t going to pay a tuition for a law school studying that when his heart wasn’t in it. he was a smart man with the knowledge and capability to do anything, and he chose his art
For a little background, my players were buying robes to sneak into the bowels of this temple. The temple in it’s infinite greed sells identical red robes for newcomers in town in a shop. We have a gnomish rogue and a dragonborn barbarian going in, the dragonborn is doing what he does best, kidnap (that’s another story). The other characters are outside the shop.
Rogue, OOC: I walk into the store and look for robes.
Me: Ya know what, roll investigation.
Rogue, OOC: …I got a three
Me, now regretting my choices: Ah, okay, so you look around and see no robes, however you do see many large gowns.
Rogue, OOC: I would like to go up to the shopkeep and ask about robes.
Me: The shopkeep gestures behind you from under his heavy scarlet robes, whispering like the wind, “they’re behind you”.
Rogue: No they aren’t! Those are dresses! *rolls to convince*
Me: *rolls a 1 to save*
Me: …you manage to convince the shopkeep that these are in fact, not robes, but heavy gowns. He is now on the floor, holding his head, occasionally whimpering “they’re not robes?”
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