Female-Led Media Needs More Whimsy

Camaraderie has been an enduring element in female friendships throughout history. Whether in medieval convents or as newly working women in the past century, sisterhood and female solidarity have helped women fight against all kinds of bigotry, or at the very least, make persisting through it just a little more tolerable.

Women have typically been underdeveloped, if at all developed, characters. For the longest time, entertainment media in particular have represented the interactions between women and the relationships women have in their lives as unexplored territory at best and wholly inaccurate at worst. Female characters have primarily existed to support the often-male leading characters’ motivations and journeys, or as foils to enhance their “aura”. Disney’s early films portrayed women, even their princess protagonists, as passive maidens. Video games don’t operate much differently, like the ubiquitous Mario franchise, which has kept Princess Peach’s physical autonomy in a questionable state for most of the franchise’s existence, with her primary role having been as Bowser’s hostage that Mario must rescue over and over. Misrepresentation of women worsens with nonwhite female characters. Even if white heroines do get a chance at being at or near the foreground, albeit rudimentarily at times, the portrayals of nonwhite female characters are bastardized with shoddy stereotypes, such as black and brown women being depicted as unduly desexualized and undesirable or Asian women shown as overly submissive. 

With mainly male writing rooms and casting directors and editors and directors, where are women, and especially impressionable girls, supposed to find their stories on the big screen?

The 2000s and early 2010s saw a host of female-centered, primarily animated media in response to young girls consuming more digital media just like everyone else, with popular selections like the Barbie film franchise, the Monster High media franchise, the Winx Club series, and the Bratz series coloring my childhood. Such productions often included a mix of original and revamped content, with the latter in large part done by the Barbie film franchise, whose early works featured remakes of existing works like the Brothers Grimm’s Rapunzel or Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers or Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake ballet. Even these remakes were a first for women-centered media. Now, women were at the forefront of stories and fantasies involving them. 

No, these stories didn’t just involve them; these stories were theirs. Women were the main characters in every possible way. They were active players in their stories with the most interesting backstories and the best supporting cast. Men were frequently relegated to the background, with their most significant role being as supportive love interests. Notably, the men in these productions were never dehumanized, and the most underdevelopment their characters may have seen was in terms of… computer-generated motion graphics. Characters’ relationships, whether platonic or romantic, were not going to be ignored. The respectful yet flattering attention of male characters could be appreciated—and sometimes even reciprocated—by female protagonists, who also didn’t slow down to save their kingdom from evil sorcerers.

Depictions of female friendships were realistic: women could disagree, argue, and fight, even as part of the plot or conflict in an episode. But sisterhood was never abandoned. Women were rarely pitted against each other unfairly, especially over a man, as most male-dominated media may characterize female connections and bonds.

The target audience—Gen Z and younger millennials—has now grown up, but pop culture has maintained the relevance of popular women-oriented media. Nicki Minaj, despite having since fallen from grace, paid homage to Barbie’s brand with lyrical references and prominently pink stylistic choices, so much so that her fanbase calls themselves “the Barbz”. Zara Larsson’s rebrand mirrors the design of the Winx Club protagonists, with neon pop colors and glitter galore. Bratz’s impact on women of color cannot be sidelined with the main cast being overwhelmingly nonwhite, challenging the European beauty standards that even Barbie upheld to some extent. Gen Z and younger millennials have now been able to use the styles of the beloved characters from the films and TV shows from their childhood to inform their own aesthetic choices in how they dress and present themselves, especially when they want to make a statement. It is media like these that gave women, whether as young girls or evolving teenagers, a space to healthily engage with topics like beauty and fashion and life, without thematically being too “adult”.

Stories about women and with women in leading roles don’t always need to be about institutional sexism and omnipresent misogyny with dramatic monologues on the seemingly inescapable nature of firmly established patriarchy. Those stories are undoubtedly important, and we need them too. Awareness is a necessary first step to having the intellectual tools for women’s liberation from any and all oppressive structures. 

But sometimes, women, and especially impressionable girls, need to be able to see themselves as fairies and princesses and adolescent magazine editors, and everything in between. 

Fantasy is a means by which we can conceptualize our dreams and desires through imagination. In order to do, we need to be able to think. And without imagination, thinking doesn’t extend much too far. It may be an idealist perspective, but if there were no idealists, I certainly wouldn’t be a literate college student writing and drinking Moscato I bought with money I earned, with no one’s permission but myself.