Week of April 10-16

[mrissa]

One rejection, one reply-to-query ("We have no record of receiving that story. Please feel free to resubmit"), nothing else. Which is to say, nothing good.

We are upbeat, we are cheerful, we are veritable little rays of freakin' sunshine. (Actually, I am pretty cheerful, probably because I'm letting my brain slide off the long, long sale drought and focus on finishing short stories and hanging out with people and other good stuff.)

I finished reading The System of the World and was both amused and bemused by it. I also read the whole of The Confession of Brother Haluin while working out this morning (short book), and that was tonally quite different, but...I don't know. I'm left a bit unsure about what I'm in the mood for next. Maybe something to return to porphyrin when I see her next. Borrowing reduces uncertainty for me. It also means that my piles of my own books to read sit for longer, but that's all right.

fairmer and I were talking about hard women, because she made a claim, oh, days ago, about how she should thank Sigourney Weaver or maybe Linda Hamilton for her enjoyment of Mary Gentle's Ash series, and I didn't think either of them had anything to do with it for me. I didn't see the Alien movies until I was 17 and Terminator just after I turned 19, and by that point my opinions on tough girls in fiction were probably pretty formed.

I got hung up on the distinction between "hard women" and "tough women." Tough women will slog through the worst of it and complain only sparingly and then in amusing ways. They will stab the bandit and diaper the baby because both of those things need doing, and if someone tries to make them do either for a stupid reason, they won't. Hard women, hard people, aren't transcending their reactions to sentiment, they just don't have them at all. Often for good reason, but still: when matociquala's Jenny Casey calls herself a hard woman, I think it's undeserved. (I also think it's entirely within the character to do so.) Jenny Casey is tough but not hard, I don't think.

Anyway, then Mer was talking about Pern's Lessa as an example of hard or maybe tough, and then I really was confused. Eowyn was my early childhood butt-kicking female, but for me life handed them out before art. When there weren't tough women in the large casts of the books I read, I knew the books were just wrong. (I was absolutely incensed at CS Lewis when I was about four. The line about how Lucy should keep well back because "battle is ugly when women fight" sent me into an incandescent rage. I kept repeating to my dad, "That's so stupid! That's so stupid! It's not pretty when boys kill each other!" And he kept saying, "I know, kiddo, I know...." "Aslan is wrong!" "I know, kiddo....") There was a story in Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend about how a fairy wife was able to bend horseshoes with her hands like nothing, and I thought, I have at least four fairy aunties, I think, and fairy grannies all the way back.

I liked Mickle from the Westmark books when I was in grade school. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I'm just having a hard time seeing where I got the idea that there ought to be girls kicking butt, because it was very firmly entrenched in my little kid brain. When I was 5, I convinced my cousin Garrett that George Lucas had made a grave error in not giving Princess Leia a lightsaber in "The Return of the Jedi," and that he would surely see and rectify it in the next movie he made. (As I said last night and have said many other nights, I would have forgiven him even the midichlorians, even the Jar-Jar, even the total suckage of two movies so far, if he had given me a girl Jedi character with a light saber. Even as a full-fledged grown-up person, my affections really are for sale for that low a price. And the cheap bastard still didn't do it.)

Who were your tough women? Did you need fictional ones to "get" the real thing, or did it go more vice versa? And tough men: is there an equivalent, really? Or does it go with square-jawed and rugged and make alternatives much more interesting?

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I can't recall anything specific, but one of my favorite genres/themes/tropes/whatchacallits was girls disgusing themselves as boys. If the book had that in it, I loved it. And when I read books without any decent female characters, boom - one of the guys was actually a girl who'd disguised herself as a guy for whatever reason, so I didn't consciously feel the lack of strong female characters; I just corrected for it and went on. (Pippin? Chick.)

I was also, however, just old enough to hit the wave of female-oriented YA and adult fantasy in the 1980s as a teen (early Tamora Pierce, the Sword & Sorceress series, and such), so by the time I was aware enough to start thinking critically about such things, I had a lot of books with strong female protagonists to choose from, so I again didn't notice the lack quite as much as I would have had I grown up just a few years earlier - some books were about guys, some books were about girls, and some books had both.

The one type of thing that's missing, that I still haven't really found, is a certain kind of funny, weird book, like Daniel Pinkwater or Gordon Korman, that has girls as the main offbeat characters. I loved Alan Mendohlson, the Boy from Mars growing up, but I've never found a book that has a feamle version of Alan Mendohlson in it - for some reason, the trickster or wise trickster character really isn't written as female. There was astar Trek tie-in with a female Trickster in it, and I didn't mind her too much, but the character was so self-consciously Trickster that it felt like the author was grabbing me by the throat and screaming it in my ear, which annoyed me. (Pinkwater's written a couple of quirky female cahracters that are nice, but they tend to be of the same dark disposition, adn ti'd be nice to see variety, and it'd be nice to see them front-and-center instead of secondary characters.)

That's a bit disjointed, since I've never really been able to codify my thoughts on the matter or even adequately describe what knd of character I'm talking about - all I can do is point at one and say "Like that!" and point at another one and say "Like that, too!"

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

Who were your tough women?

Eowyn, yes, and my high-school Greek teacher who was an archaeologist and went digging in Greece every summer in the blazing sun and came back tanned and weathered. I had a terrible crush on her for, perhaps, four years running. And then she left to be a full-time archaeologist and I never saw her again, but I have her image in my mind to model (some of) my own fictional tough women on. (Just realised that I have one in the W now in S who even looks like her, only silver-blonde instead of dark-haired)

[mkille.livejournal.com]

My tough women were mostly historical. Rosa Parks, Jane Addams, Florence Nightingale, Abigail Adams...I didn't have a sense in my present life of men *or* women being notably tough or soft. And the same for fiction. Gender stereotypes in either direction rolled right off me, because the fictional worlds were so different from mine--even the ones that weren't supposed to be--that I was already suspending disbelief.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

What comes to mind right now: Laura Ingalls (and her mom, Caroline, even if she was bigoted). She was hampered by gender stereotypes, but still. Tottie, the wooden doll in "A Doll's House." Nancy Drew.

Once I grew up enough to read Sheri Tepper, Stavia in "Gate to Women's Country" is mighty tough. In fact, Sheri Tepper's got lots of lovely, strong female characters.

[drabheathen.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I never realized it until now, but Roald Dahl had a few good female characters. Matilda, Sophie in the BFG... and both of them were very smart and... what is what I mean... proactive towards their bad situations. They didn't turn to aggression, but neither did they flip out and cower. They thought it through. Which is something all his heroes did, I think.

[sculpin.livejournal.com]

My tough women were printers. When I was very young I knew a woman letterpress printer, short and strong, who could run (and fix) enormous old presses and carry great trays of lead around. She kept an enormous pet snake and raised mice for its meals. I was enraptured.

Later on I got to know some of the women who worked at Seattle's Urban Press. To this day, somewhere in the back of my head, I think a really beautiful woman is one who can competently run a big loud commercial machine.

I'm hard-pressed to think of a fictional woman who measures up to Moira the snake-feeding lead-type-toting letterpress printer. I think I'd have to go to the sharp old lady type in mystery novels: Mrs. Marple, Mrs. Pollifax, and others.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Mickle in Westmark, yeah, and Eowyn as well, though after I got to a certain age, I began thinking that it was kind of lame that the tough girls had to dress up as boys to be able to get to a place where they could mix it up. It's one thing where there's an obvious *reason* they have to, such as with Kim in Mairleon the Magician, but when it's just ingrained gender roles or societal disapproval, well, it makes me twitch.

Part of this was because about half of my friends in high school were women who were every bit as mean and ornery as I was. At this point, I honestly don't really remember whether I decided that girls should be able to kick ass first, and then met some that did, or if it was the other way around.

Re: men, I think that "square-jawed and rugged" is a very superficial kind of toughness that doesn't necessarily correspond to my sense of real toughness, the criteria for which are essentially the same across genders. If a supposedly "tough" guy doesn't have the guts to deal with puking babies, then his license to act tough needs to be revoked.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I read Tamora Pierce and the S&S series and all that when I was 10-12, but by then I already had pretty firm ideas of how the world worked.

I hate self-conscious Tricksters of either sex. Haaaaaaate. But I like Gordon Korman and Daniel Pinkwater -- and I like that Diane and Cathy are similar to Bruno and Boots rather than splitting the prankster/sensible role off for one sex or another.

alecaustin got me reading both Korman and Pinkwater. All hail the Alec.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I've found that I do that with "historical" and "contemporary" novels in many cases, but the portrayal of reasonable human beings is one of the things I have the hardest time suspending disbelief for. Or maybe it's just the hardest time wanting to. Seeing that they're reasonable for their place and time period: well and good. Not being able to come up with a time or place that would make that shit believable: not good.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not a big Tepper fan, evidence that strong female characters are nowhere near enough for me. I always want to go hang myself after reading a Tepper novel.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

All his heroes did what? I got lost there.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My Gran (great-grandmother) ran a printing and advertising business.

I'm generally dissatisfied with the sharp old lady type in mystery novels, because they're not nearly as sharp as my old ladies or as much fun. And the ones who are, aren't generally types.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Pinkwater went from being Really Cool Author in my book to being Really Really Really Cool Author when he emailed me, back in 1995, to thank me for saying nice things about him on my website at the time.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

(I was absolutely incensed at CS Lewis when I was about four. The line about how Lucy should keep well back because "battle is ugly when women fight" sent me into an incandescent rage. I kept repeating to my dad, "That's so stupid! That's so stupid! It's not pretty when boys kill each other!" And he kept saying, "I know, kiddo, I know...." "Aslan is wrong!" "I know, kiddo....")

I remember reading that passage and assuming that meant that if women got into it, they would commit atrocities or something. I sort of found it believable based on my family and the sorts of things my mother, aunts, and grandmothers would say about people they didn't like. I assumed that should they be moved to actual physical violence for any reason that they wouldn't be content with defeating their enemy and would escalate into punishment.

I remember being frustrated at a lot of female characters because they would start to show signs of toughnes and then do a U-turn, often saying in character (or thinking) that they couldn't do that because it wasn't seemly. Those characters and that attitude pissed me off to no end.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Strong-willed, tough-spirited people are way more impressive than physically tough people, men or women.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Similarly, I have no patience for girls who wish they were boys as code for wishing they were allowed to do interesting things. I recognize it as historically accurate in some periods. I just don't have any sympathy for it. It accepts the premise, is I think the problem.

If a supposedly "tough" guy doesn't have the guts to deal with puking babies, then his license to act tough needs to be revoked.

Reasons We Love Alec, #736.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I remember reading that passage and assuming that meant that if women got into it, they would commit atrocities or something. I sort of found it believable based on my family and the sorts of things my mother, aunts, and grandmothers would say about people they didn't like. I assumed that should they be moved to actual physical violence for any reason that they wouldn't be content with defeating their enemy and would escalate into punishment.

This is believable in the context of my family, too. My mother told me many times when I was little that if anybody tried to hurt me, they'd better hope my big strong daddy and my grandpa the Marine DI got to them first, because Daddy and Grandpa didn't have the patience Mom and Grandma had, so it would all be over much faster. I have never had any reason to doubt this point.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I want to hang all her characters. Not sure that's better.

My strong women as a kid were... I did like Pam in The Black Stallion & The Girl. Because she was a girl, not a boy in a skirt, and yet she was just as good at everything as Alec, and didn't give up her own dreams because she cared about him.

Of course, it got her killed off in the next book, but at least that felt more like a plot device than a judgement.

I liked Wendy in the Gypsy books, too. (Maybe girls like horse books because there are independent girls in horse books? Just a thought.)

I agree with you, by the way, that Jenny's not nearly as hard as she thinks she is--or wants to be. *g*

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Oh! I just thought of two more. Harriet the Spy, and Claudia from From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

If you get a little bit older, then I started to get into SFF, and characters like Signy Mallory and Cirocco Jones, who had a lasting effect on me.

[anaparenna.livejournal.com]

I have not yet, alas, found a fictional female character who lived up to my expectations (er, rather, desires) for her. Some came very close. But I have had exceptionally profound feminine role-models in my life (as well as male, actually), and they were difficult shoes to fill in my fictional imagination.

Perhaps I'll succeed in writing one someday. :)

[ckd]

Given your opinion of Uhura's Song, you might like Janet Kagan's other book, Hellspark better. (No shoehorning-in of the Trek crew and no self-conscious Trickster, but a good strong female protagonist....)

Meisha Merlin has brought it back into print.

[drabheathen.livejournal.com]

:) Used brains, not brawn. Since they were children, after all, in a nasty unfriendly world, and the only way children can beat adults is to outwit them...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I didn't like horse books. I didn't dislike them categorically, but I never went through a horsey phase like many people, including many of my friends, did. I thought I might lean tht way for about a week, and then my mom took me to witness someone mucking out stables. She also did this for me with gymnasts and their ripped calluses, and to the same effect.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I didn't like HtS, but Claudia was extremely cool. I read something else by E.L. Konigsberg not that long ago, and it just wasn't nearly as cool as From the Mixed-Up Files. I wanted more of the things in the files, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't consider myself to write role models per se, so it comes up a good deal less.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

*g* I loved mucking stalls.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have my books and my poetry to protect me.

I am a rock, I am in Thaaaaaaailand....

Signs Mris should go to bed soon #17 (this evening): considering it perfectly reasonable to answer people's comments with Simon & Garfunkel lyrics.
#18: Using the wrong Simon & Garfunkel lyrics.

[anaparenna.livejournal.com]

Dammit. Good point. Now I have to go back and consider whether my characters were intended as role models rather than characters. :P

[anaparenna.livejournal.com]

I just remembered. I liked Blossom Culp a great deal.

[sculpin.livejournal.com]

Alas, I have had a run of not-so-sharp old ladies in my own life, or I'd probably feel the same way.

Well, there was one. Rosemary Flora. Such a sweet name, don't you think? And such a wonderful holy terror. She was the wife of my favorite professor, and together the two of them led a bunch of us students through all sorts of strange places in the tropical Pacific one summer a decade or so ago. We learned to form a sort of flying wedge behind Rosemary, who was ready to intimidate -- flatten, even -- any pesky petty bureaucrat who might get in our way. We would have been lost without her.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Eowyn, yes. I adored her when I was young. Then I read the books early in college and went, 'Lady, he's just not that into you, chill.' And her falling for Faramir was always too suspicious, because he had the blood of Numenor too, and probably looked a lot like Aragorn. Mildly creepy.

After Eowyn the ones that stand out are Alix and Keely from Roberson's Cheysuli books. Alix wasn't quite a tough woman, but she did what needed doing. Keely was a bit too self-conscious about being a tough woman, but I liked her anyway.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There is nothing whatever wrong with having a "type," she said primly.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

My mom, who is still my role model on how to just bear down and do what needs doing.

Bertha Cool, from the series of detective stories that Gardner wrote under the name A.A. Fair.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

#19, making me laugh so hard tea comes out my nose.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do I have to go to bed every time I do that?

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

The one type of thing that's missing, that I still haven't really found, is a certain kind of funny, weird book, like Daniel Pinkwater or Gordon Korman, that has girls as the main offbeat characters.

weetzie bat? (by francesca lia block)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do you want to hear my Weetzie Bat rant?

I don't think you probably do. The brief version is, I don't particularly care about See Jane And Her Nontraditional Family Run prose, and I don't particularly care about using magic to solve really huge interpersonal problems. Oh, I went off and got pregnant by my two gay best friends when you said you didn't want a kid, and then I didn't have to do anything and it was eventually okay, because: magic! Everybody loves everybody magically! And eats cool food and wears cool clothes and I should care because it's magic and hip!

Haaaaaaaate.

I wouldn't characterize them as anything remotely like Pinkwater or Korman. Not with a gun to my head, I wouldn't.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

ah. i haven't read pinkwater or korman, so i was going off the description, really.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I would recommend them. Pinkwater is children's surrealism. Korman is...Korman is good wacky fun, but not nearly so self-consciously hip as Block. (Also, both are children's books rather than YAs.)

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Um.

*doesn't go there.*

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Mm. They both write back and forth between children's and YA. Korman's non-Bruno and Boots stuff like Don't Care High and A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag tends to be aimed a couple of years older. And even Pinkwater's memoir-type nonfiction has that same thread of surrealism running through it (you can see exactly where lots of the weird things in his books come from). It's hard to say exactly where some of his books are aimed. I'd say Young Adult Novel is a bit more, er, young adult, but it's hard to say for sure. It's certainly the most surreal.

Not that *I* care what group a book is aimed at, as long as it's good. :)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

And it has linguistics! By an actual linguist!

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I do like Blossom. And Encyclopedia Borwn's sidekick Sally who did all the beating up - though I suspect if I reread those I'd think the smart boy and the tough girl were too-conscious reversals of stereotype.

And in Pern, I think in a lot of ways Menolly was tougher than Lessa - Lessa got vindictive where Menolly just went out and did what had to be done without fuss, even when it was something that would have had male or female adults gibbering. (Interesting: she never dressed as a boy, but her mentor "dressed" her as one in his letters - and even when she's not trying people keep thinking she's male. But still, the ultimate tough female in those books (at least, in the ones I read before deciding McCaffrey needed to Stop Already) would have to be Jaxom's mother Gemma.

[jenfullmoon.livejournal.com]

I read ONE book of hers (Beauty) and swore never to touch her again. Boy, do I second that "hang myself" reaction.

heroic women

[(Anonymous)]

I grew up on images like the archetypal Soviet female war hero - an 18-year old Komsomol partizanka, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya*, who was captured, tortured and hung in November 1941. Unfortunately the legend of Zpya, just like all other legends of the War and the Soviet history in generaL, was loaded with lies...

I had to grow up to understand that killing and getting killed (even if the cause seems a good one) is not true heroism. Staying alive and keeping your children alive when raising them as decent persons, no matter what craziness goes on around you, that is what being tough means in reality.


* more about female warriors in here: http://www.cishsydney2005.org/images/TM3cMarkwickText.doc

Aet