#writing women | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sad-endings-suck · 1 month

Text

Mizu’s Period

I’m getting kind of sick of the weirdly agreed upon headcanon within the fandom that stipulates Mizu simply must not menstruate very much if at all, solely because Mizu is often injured, possesses a slender build as well as an athletic lifestyle, and in many ways is androgynous in appearance (but that last point is always unspoken ofc).

There also seems to be an odd obsession with using fanon theories that are not directly disproved nor proved in the canon, such as “Mizu never eats enough” as evidence for the Mizu’s Uterus Is Not Like Other Girls Reproductive Organs™️ headcanon, that presumes Mizu is just so special she’ll bleed from everywhere except her pussy.

Like… is it perfectly possible that Mizu does not often get her period due to her extremely active and dangerous lifestyle? Yes, of course! Does Mizu’s slender and athletic frame make this seem like more of a possibility? It could, but her physique in of itself is not “evidence” per say, especially since Mizu’s body looked exactly the same when she was living a much easier and more comfortable lifestyle on the farm with Mikio, and they clearly had plenty of food. Mizu also wasn’t training intensely if at all for the 8-12 months she was married to Mikio. Yet her build remained the same. So it’s perfectly probable that Mizu’s physique is most greatly impacted by her genetics and thus not greatly affected by physical activity.

And for everyone that’s about to shout “but women athletes that compete at the highest levels often loose their periods for a while!” yes absolutely, some of them do. They also work out for 2-6+ hours a day six to seven days a week, use treadmills, bench press, and eat ridiculously curated diets that specifically target certain macronutrients and involve carefully curated portions that must be eaten at the right times on the right days. The fuck makes you think Mizu is doing all that?? My girl inhales whatever food in put in front of her as long as she has good reason to believe it is safe (i.e not poisoned). Do you really think modern day Olympic power lifters, track and field runners, artistic gymnasts and rhythmic gymnasts are all slurping down full servings of soba or dumbplings just whenever? Fuck no. Also, the current top women athletes in the world from the aforementioned Olympic sports I just mentioned, all have vastly different body types. As well as extremely different dietary needs, training routines, workouts, and just plain genetics that would have naturally given them certain bodies regardless of sport.

as evidenced by the above photos of various female olympic athletes: power lifter (top left), track and field runner (top right), artistic gymnast (bottom left), and rhythmic gymnast (bottom right).

Mizu is not a power lifter, or a sprinter, or an archer, or anything of the sort. Mizu does not train to be incredible at one thing, nor does she base what she eats or how she trains on when she will be preforming at a specific event (such as Olympians do). She is a swordsman, a blacksmith, and an all around athletic person that needs to stay in a state of constant readiness for any physical activity. Such as climbing, swimming, horseback riding, using acrobatic techniques, performing martial arts, working on a farm, and so much more. All of which is presented in as such in canon. Not to mention Mizu lives as a lower-class individual in Japan during the 1600s. What ever gave you the idea that she was dieting and training like a modern athlete? Mizu is not a sportsman, she’s a killer.

So can we just stop, please? Plenty of people menstruate. Its perfectly normal and natural. And as someone who has been at a much lower weight at different points in my life with less than desirable health conditions (to say the least), menstruation does not magically halt just because you (stranger on the internet) thinks it “logically” should under such circumstances. That’s not how it works. Bodies are weird, and everyone’s body works a bit differently. And if Mizu actually was as sick and muscular and thin as everyone seems to have headcanoned her as, then how the fuck is she mopping everyone she fights? If Mizu is “so active and low weight that she can’t be getting her period” then how do you explain the fact that she is able to preform at peak physical level while being so active? Make it make sense.

And for the love of god, please stop acting like menstruation is “special” or “other” or “weird”. It’s not. Get educated, and get over yourself.

#some of you make the strangest jumps in logic for the iffiest reasons #blue eye samurai #mizu #blue eye samurai meta #mizu blue eye samurai #bes mizu #mizu bes #bes netflix #bes headcanons #blue eye samurai analysis #blue eye samurai headcanons #blue eye samurai theory #blue eye samurai fandom #female characters #afab character #writing women #media literacy #reader bias

109 notes · View notes

iamafanofcartoons · 1 year

Text

We need to address how media, and media critics, portray female characters poorly. What can be done about it? What are examples of media works that portray complex female characters well? What are writing tips for people trying to write complex female characters? Why do media critics hate on women?

Its just something I noticed.

Male writers drop the ball with female characters all the time. They'll give the men all the good lines but women get weak roles and no sense of humor. When we complain they then make a female character who has too many boyfriends and too much ego and too much power but no resourcefulness, or she's super powerful but still needs a man to save her, and of course they make her complain about everything and fight with everyone who helps her. I could go on and on.

A lot of people are incapable of viewing female characters as anything other than an innocent saint or a portrait of pure evil. Arguably the best characters are morally ambiguous ones who live in the gray area between good and evil, but women are much less often afforded that distinction than their male counterparts.

I'm been having a huge problem connecting to media. The only women around are very young or very old and their main defining feature is usually motherhood. If a woman my age exists who isn't a mom she's usually either obsessed with men or desperate to have a baby (or will be once the right dude comes along).

Fanfiction has great female characters , but you keep running into people who will only write a complex woman who's tied to a male main character.

Michael Burnham from Star Trek: Discovery . POC Female Protagonist. You probably have heard or seen a lot of hatred against.

Korra from The Legend Of Korra. Sequel Series to ATLA. POC Female Protagonist. Despite losing fights and suffering extreme trauma and making mistakes, critics passionately bash the show, calling her a Mary-Sue, and accusing the show of being Protagonist-Centered Morality.

A lot of the time if there is a military high ranking female character or just female leader that is masculine or butch she will be the villain to be defeated by the traditionally feminine or at least more feminine heroine/love interest of the hero. I hate this because it basically implies that a woman can only be good if she’s conventionally attractive or a love interest. It’s saying being butch is bad/evil.

Even movies trying to be feminist, like “Contact” which I had to watch for homework? With Jodie Foster from the 1990s told the brilliant, focused woman scientist to not be so “confrontational” (as two male characters stole credit for her work right after they stole her funding) and to be happy with “small moves.” They continued to pat her on the head and tell her to be quiet through the whole movie. The one time she even spoke to another woman was to ask where she could find a really pretty dress. This was supposed to show growth in her character arc.

If I recall correctly, one of the playable characters in the next release of the grand theft auto series is gonna be a women. People online were flipping out over this saying they are being too "woke", among other things. Its funny to me because there has been 5 gta games with only male protagonists, and now there's 1 female in it and suddenly its a problem. Its like these people think there are only 2 genders in games, male and woke.

Heck, people love basic trope laden protagonists..... until they are women.

People love unreasonably over powered characters that are loved or feared in equal measure by the entire cast..... until its a woman.

Then all of a sudden, she's a Mary-Sue and the show/game/book is "Protagonist-Centered Morality"

Some characters who are torn apart for their initial naïveté like Sansa Stark or Usagi Tsukino (Sailor Moon) are immediately written off as stupid girl characters. Never mind that one becomes a political powerhouse and the other routinely saves the world. People just write their characters off as too “girly” or “annoying” before they even have the chance to redeem themselves in their stories.

Feels like at it's core, people don't like women trying to build self confidence and play out power fantasies. The only difference with the original Mary Sue was that she was imagining being liked by everyone, which was every woman's dream back then and to a certain extent, now. The power was being well liked, and that made her annoyingly boring because there was no struggle for her. Men think struggle is needed, even in fantasies and dreams, but it isn't.

The term Mary-Sue gained a new popularity by shaming female characters (such as Rey, Galadriel, Captain Marvel,…). I am not saying the term is not used towards male characters as well, but it is more rare, and it is rarely as violent as when it is used to characterize a female character.

More importantly it is used against female characters unevenly compared to male characters, its accepted as a genre trope for a male character to be extremely capable or to acrue experience and ability rapidly throughout the narrative. But when it's a woman suddenly "realism" must apply, a real person doesn't simply gain strength and talent through endless perfectly leveled hardship. In simpler terms, Batman can launch a thug across the room with a single punch and it's awesome, Black Widow, however, is breaking the laws of physics when she does her famous around the neck takedown.

Neither are realistic, arguably any grown man launching another grown man bodily through the air with a casual punch is less realistic than a woman pulling off a skilled takedown, but the unequal application of standards says all that needs to be said about the critic.

Writing a "mary sue" to be male often results in a praised character that people don't really worry about. Like Goku or Kirito. People are fine with it. Enjoy it. And there's massive amounts of rather popular fanfiction taking random male characters in series and sue-ifying them, making them the protagonist over the actual main characters, and slapping in poorly developed romance arcs. It's "mary sue" 101, but hardly anyone talks about them in that light.

Meanwhile a woman shows a level of competence similar to another character in the same series (e.g. Rey to Luke or Anakin) and the accusations are everywhere.

Calling these characters one-dimensional is one of the dog-whistles of the modern [whatever]-gate colony creature.

They know that they'll get savaged if they come out and say they're mad because this character is a woman, so they couch everything in these subjective terms. She's one-dimensional. She's flat. She's badly written. She's a mary sue. I just couldn't relate to her.

You can argue with them, you can point out that, say, in Star Wars, that Rey's ability to handle weapons intentionally established in the early scenes of TFA, that we see the setup for the skills she's going to display later in the movie/series, and that her first win is against a badly wounded Sith apprentice. By contrast, Luke successfully fights his way through a huge space station against professional soldiers, then hops into a starfighter he's never flown before, outflies a bunch of experienced pilots, and pulls off a physically impossible shot to save the day.

But sure. Rey is the one who strains credulity.

You can point all that out, but none of it matters. They're not arguing in good faith. They're just mad that there's a girl, and know better than to say that out loud.

He pulls off the shot because he has a throwaway line about murdering animals the size of a camel for fun in his civilian craft that just so happens to have controls similar to the military superiority fighter because they were manufactured by the same company. Because that doesn't strain credibility. Also guess which parts were filled in later by novel writers who were like, "holy **** that makes no sense at all"

Sailor Moon and Sansa Stark are two female characters that start out as whiney cry-baby girlie girls who evolve into political powerhouses and heroes in their own right. But most people write their characters off immediately, because they’re disgusted by their girlish-ness.

While our media gives male characters a chance to grow, female characters are generally written off unless they either show masculine traits, or are used for fan service. It’s why women in movies and TV are usually a kickass tomboy or a girlfriend character.

So anyway, I guess my point is that there are amazing kickass women characters who are well-written and evolve and grow, but their growth tends to be written off as frivolous and not as cool as their dude counterparts.

Imagine an anime where the woman is the main character and she's strong, smart, and not sexualized ?

How about Guardian of the Spirit (seirei no moribito in Japanese)? The MC is a mercenary woman who fights with a spear. She's a complex character, maybe somewhat emotionally stunted because of growing up on the road. She meets a wonderful, compassionate male healer and I love how they break stereotypical gender roles. There's also a complete badass old lady with magical powers and a temper. One of my favourite characters in any genre.

But I'd like to add SuleMio to the list.

Some people did not like that Gundam had its first female protagonist last year, or that she's engaged to another girl, or that they have a romantic moment where Miorine makes Suletta "promise to be with me forever".

It's my first Gundam show and I was nowhere near the fandom, but even I heard the howls of rage from the otakus over that show while it was airing.

“ I highly recommend reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. Strong female main character with a supportive cast of male characters. His Skyward series is also good for this. Sanderson is great but there are some female fantasy writers that do this even better IMO. NK Jemisin has tons of great female characters. Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series has a majority female cast and I’d say 4 or 5 of them are in the top ten most interesting and complex female characters I’ve read. “

You heard of The Bechdel test: Two women have to talk about something other than a man. There is no time window. It came up in a 1985 comic Dykes To Watch Out For and although it is not a great indicator of more feminist content, it's a wonder much media fails to pass that test.

Have you seen

Arcane? That is a wild crazy masterpiece with awesomely complex awesome characters. It's animated, yeah, so what? But I mean, to say "it's animated" is a heavy understatement. Have you seen Jinx? Have you seen her portrayal of psychosis and godknows what else was happening in her head? No one in history came even close to that.

Queen's Gambit? Anya Taylor-Joy brought Beth Harmon flawlessly through immense complexity of the character

Mare of Easttown - Kate Winslet there is, I kid you not, the best acting I have ever seen. Her character is going through complex situations and emotions and learning to deal with her human side. Bryan Cranston raised the bar ridiculously high with Walter White, but Kate Winslet pushed it further up, set explosives on it, and walked away like a badass without looking at the explosion. No one is topping that anytime soon.

I'm sure there are more examples. But what I love about these, and a big part of what makes them perfect is that they are their own characters and aren't defined by men around them. Their greatn

I wish female characters were given better in terms of development and characterization. Honestly, I feel like a lot of people hate female characters simply because most male dominated media does such a poor job of writing women, and those characters aren't given the same excuses as poorly written male characters.

Anyway, yeah, sorry for my rant. Having grown up on Anime, Harry Potter, Star Wars, you name it?

I later in life realized what was missing, what is needed, and really needed to hear other people's input on this stuff.

I never understood the need for every main character to be only a cishet white guy. I had already come up with several characters of my own, all of them LGBTQIA+, and half of them women, and several also POC. But my writing and art skills are poor so I can't visualize them properly...

We need more female authors, and we need to promote the ones that are out there more!

(there are plenty of really, really good female authors, in all genres, but often they get less attention, because, well, misogyny)

Edit: If you want an example of how the double-standard towards women and LGBT is applied? Go watch RWBY or Legend of Korra. Both involve a deconstruction of tropes. Both involve women standing up against an authority that demands respect based on being authority, not based on respect. Both shut down the white male savior trope so hard, that men and women who love the patriarchy despise both shows.

But of course, anything that Team RWBY or Korra does is immediately held to a double standard and ripped into for anything that they do NOT because they’re flawed or because of writing decisions. Its because they’re LGBT women that they’re held under a microscope. Or have you noticed that every fixit fanfic for both series involves defending the Patriarchy while supporting toxic masculinity and trying to revive the White Male Savior trope that both shows have tried so hard to bury six feet under?

332 notes · View notes

youngandwild99-blog1 · 7 months

Text

What I mean by strong female characters is

I want a female action hero who comes away from her fights with sweaty armpits and messy hair. Not messy-chic, but actually messy. I want to see rough fights that give her chipped teeth and puffy broken noses and ugly dark shiners. I want to see actual cuts and scrapes that don’t exist to accentuate her cheekbones. I want injuries that aren’t used as makeup. I want to see a female action hero on the receiving end of a slow-motion face-punch. And then I want to see her get back up and try again.

I want a female comic relief. I want to see a woman who makes jokes, not just to be snarky or to put others down, but because she loves it. I want to see a woman who slips on banana peels, who falls down staircases, who puts on a hilarious disguise without hesitating, even though there were like 5 other options that would have worked just as well. I want a female comic relief who is socially awkward, but not because she’s shy or just needs to believe in herself.

I want to see a female character who is dumb. Not dumb in a “bimbo” way, but dumb like “not book smart”, the way Philomena Cunk is "dumb". I want to see a woman who can judo flip a mook with perfect technique, but doesn’t give a flying fuck about proper grammar. I want to see a woman who can scam people out of their lives’ fortunes without breaking a sweat, but always yells “Speak English, doc!” at the sound of sci-fi jargon.

I want a female protagonist who makes mistakes. The kind of mistakes that matter. I want her to get it wrong. I want her to fuck up, not because she’s worse than a man, but because she’s a human and that’s what we do. And then I want to see her own her fuckups, and work to fix them, and do better next time. Because that’s what heroes are supposed to do.

I want to see a strong female character. And by that, I mean I want to see a female character whose strength comes from her humanity.

17 notes · View notes

ya-boii-tank · 3 months

Text

Hey guys quick question for my fellow writers out there. As a man, what should I keep in mind when writing female characters. Like I know that the over sexualization of female characters is a big no no. But iv also heard that writing them the same as I would a boy character can also be bad, because there are differences. I don't want to just avoid female characters but I want to do it right you know.

#sandwiches?#writers on tumblr #writing #writerscommunity #writers and poets #podcast #fiction podcast #podfic #fiction #audio drama #writing advice #writing help #please help #writing women #woman #women

6 notes · View notes

noahsfault · 2 months

Text

People will be like “Name your problematic fave: fictional women edition!”

And then list women who have never done a thing wrong ever in their lives

#you ask the same question for fictional men and you’ll get a list of serial killers and degenerates #but for women you’ll get like #devi vishwakumar #from never have I ever #and that one mean fairy from the Tinkerbell movies #fictional women #problematic fave #fiction #writing #women #fandom #feminism #writing women

6 notes · View notes

creepymoonbeam · 11 months

Video

youtube

Firefly is a show I hold very dearly and I’ve been waiting for years to talk about it. How do we watch it in the modern day? Does it hold up? Was it really THAT bad with how Mal treated Inara? Joss Whedon strikes again

#firefly #firefly show #joss whedon #nathan fillion #malcom reynolds #youtube #video essay #feminist #writing women

18 notes · View notes

loxosceleslolo · 22 days

Text

lolotte's guide to writing kick-ass female characters:

1. create a dynamic, well-rounded character

2. gender them female

3. there is no step 3, you are done

#writing #female characters #women aren’t aliens #writing women

3 notes · View notes

pinkandpurple360 · 5 months

Note

Watching helluva boss and other show who have similar problem writing their female character. I read manhwa, comic, watching movie and series etc i come across different female character who's likable and unlikable, kind and cruel, complex etc

I hate some female character but i'm grateful they don't end up have the same problem with helluva boss. They could been simply just written as a bitch, selfish whore, ungrateful cunt, cruel for no reason. In some worst cases they punishing the female character by her being SA, they being left with their abuser, you named it. Especially if they suffer from trauma if they don't fit the perfect victim just like cinderella

Even to the most infruating, despicable, annoying female character. I'm happy they don't end up being done dirty by the their writer

Yeeesh a lot of slurs here take it easy anon

And yup writing women isn’t that hard but if you compare everything to HBoss’s writing of women it all looks like gold

#anon #misogyny #writing women

6 notes · View notes

cephalopod-celabrator · 7 months

Text

Female characters who only exist to provide romantic options: 0/10 Badass non-sexualized female characters: 7/10 Female characters shown to be caring and well-developed and kind and protective but will also make their enemies unlock new levels of fear: 1000/10

#writing #stories #writing women #granny weatherwax #tiffany aching #amalia cornaro #angua von uberwald #zamira drakasha #haley starshine #la contessa #galadriel #freya #goddess isis #ashe rooks and ruin #perenelle flamel

19 notes · View notes

merp-blerp · 8 months

Text

So… Rachel Zegler and Snow White… (My Thoughts)

(This is a long ass post, but I wanted to make myself clear)

Disclaimer: I just wanted to express my opinions on the controversy, as the Disney princesses, fairytales/folklore, and their influence on kids and adults is very important to me as someone who grew up with them and wants future generations to as well in the best way possible. My opinions are mine, so I can only speak for myself and my experience with girl-boss-feminism and other related topics. It’s okay if you feel differently and have different experiences than me. I’m not trying to tell anyone how they “should” feel. Just express yourself civilly and do not harass anyone, please.

Opinions under the cut ↓

If you don’t know the situation, in short, Rachel Zegler, who is cast to play Snow White in Disney’s remake of the animated film has made some statements on the original that have angered fans. Some of these statements include: “I just mean that it’s no longer 1937. We absolutely wrote a Snow White that ... she’s not going to be saved by the prince, and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love…” and “There’s a big emphasis on her love story, with a guy who literally stalks her. Ha, ha—weird! Weird! So we didn’t do that this time!” and “Cast a guy in the movie, Andrew Burnap, great dude. All of Andrew’s scenes could get cut—who knows! It’s Hollywood, Baby!”

I recommend watching the clips of her in these interviews. I can’t possibly give every controversial quote here.

Let me state right out of the gate that I have no issue with a WOC playing Snow at all, as a WOC myself. I’m not here to say she can’t. Yes, the fairytale traditionally states that she’s named after her white skin, but this is an adaptation and things can change in adaptations; they could easily change the reason for her namesake, like maybe she was simply born around winter. Outside of her name, Snow being white doesn’t have much bearing on the story. Even if you want to pull the historical accuracy card, fairytales aren’t meant to be history lessons like that. They’re fantasy, where any kind of reality is possible. Last I checked queens owning literal magic mirrors wasn’t very historically accurate to any place at any time. And of course there are other countries where people of ethnicities other than European ruled.

I also don’t enforce hate or harassment to Zegler for any reason. Just fair, constructive, criticism. I think she’s misguided, and I want to unravel that in this post, but I don’t hate her. I don’t suspect she’s sexist, just mistaken.

The issue many are having with these statements is that Zegler not only comes off as ungrateful to some, but that she disrespects and misrepresents the original movie. I personally don’t agree with her statements. There was nothing wrong with Snow being saved by the prince and he was definitely not stalking her. They had one conversion at the beginning of the film, he exits the film for most of it’s run time, with Snow barely mentioning him outside of the two scenes where she sings “Someday My Prince will Come”, and then he comes back at the end of the film once he hears of her death and kisses her goodbye when he thought she died, only for her to wake up; then she goes to live with him in his (likely metaphorical) castle in the sky on horse back (live with, not marry him, we never actually see them marry if they do). Due to sexism, AFAB people are often shamed for enjoying feminine types of media and activities , such as romance and princesses, so this has led to the “girl-boss” or “not like other girls (NLOG)” mentality in some AFAB people, causing an often aggressive rejection of femininity. This also led to the “Strong Female Character(s)” trope, which often preaches rhetoric similar to Zegler’s statements. Though I’ll of course never know, I suspect this rhetoric could be what’s going on with Zegler to some capacity. She’s somewhat around my age (Zegler’s 22, I’m currently 19, I’ll be 20 in Dec. 2023), so she and I grew up right when this girl-boss rhetoric was becoming popular. Snow is a very traditionally feminine character, so maybe that has made Zegler feel negative towards the character. Maybe—I’m not a Jiminy Cricket inside her head. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a man, you just shouldn’t be co-dependent on one, and Snow was not; as mentioned before, she spends most of the film getting along without him. Snow’s prince, along with most princes from this era of Disney, are more symbols of freedom rather than actual characters by todays standards; this is reflected in the fact they don’t even have names, apart from Prince Philip, who is more of a character. And of course Snow wants love, she has an abusive step-mother, with her biological mother and father out of the picture; the dwarfs and prince (and maybe the huntsman—if you count him) were her only true company. Her only source of love and kindness. I personally see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a story of survival. Snow’s vulnerable, being a princess who’s likely only ever lived in castle walls, and she’s been mistreated by a woman who was supposed to mother her, to the point of her having to run away to live on the woods for safety on a whim (as well as maybe due to her age if you believe she’s 14 years old, but Disney has never confirmed this odd internet rumor, so I don’t personally believe she’s 14—nor her prince being in his 30s—no clue where that comes from). But she adapted by coping with her fear and pain by calming herself by singing and finding refuge in her found family of the dwarfs and animals. She found the love she lacked in her life though the dwarfs and the prince. That’s strength if I’ve ever heard of it! She doesn’t need to be a “Strong Female Character” type to be strong. It’s sexist to imply that femininity equates to weakness. The new Snow White can be strong, but so is the original in her own beautiful way, as well as the other subsequent Disney princesses after her. I find that people who tend to have these sexist takes on the Disney princesses, especially the original three (Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora), tend to have not seen their films much if at all, and/or have only watched them passively, not truly computing the story because they feel like they know every beat from memory or cultural osmosis. Zegler has admitted to having only watched the film once when she was a little kid, being scared of it, and then only recently watching the film a second time after being cast for the remake.

She also seems to disregard the original film’s importance in history. Snow White as a character was seen as a beacon of hope during war times and the Great Depression. It was one of the first, if not the first feature-length animated film ever. And so much more! There Will Be Fudd has a great video essay on the importance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a film and also expanded on this topic I’m discussing here (I don’t claim any of this as a purely original opinion, I know many also view Disney Princesses this way, just throughing my own personal tidbit to the conversation). I think Zegler had failed to consider how she subtly insulted women who are more traditionally feminine by speaking of Snow this way, as well as people who enjoy this movie. I know that girl-boss-feminism made me feel really bad about myself as a kid who was naturally a bit more of a classic Disney princesses type of person rather than a kin to the newer Disney princesses that were coming out at the time, like Rapunzel or Anna. I just wasn’t super spunky or outgoing like them (not that they are bad at all—I love them). The Disney princesses have so much variety between them, so any kid is bound to relate to at least one of them a little bit; I should’ve been able to relate to Cinderella or Snow without shame, but the girl-boss rhetoric told me that they were bad and therefore I subconsciously thought I was too since I saw myself in them more. I attempted to force the more feminine traits away from myself and kind of become a blank slate, till i realized in my late teens that I didn’t know who I was. I’m still in the process of reclaiming myself from that phase of my life, trying to remember who I am. I’m not saying every personal issue I have was birthed from girl-boss rhetoric, but it did have an effect early on, and I don’t want anymore people to feel this way. I think Zegler’s statements can be harmful. Girl-boss-feminism is not what people need anymore if it was ever needed at all. We should let every person of every gender live as feminine or as masculine as they please, as long as no one’s harmed. Femininity is beautiful. Masculinity is beautiful. Just don’t be toxic.

Another thing I wanted to mention that I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone else bring up: the way she spoke about Andrew Burnap, her co-star playing the prince (EDIT: Apparently he’s actually playing a character replacing the prince… okay I guess…?), in one of the quotes I mentioned above, which was pretty bad. Another thing this kind of pseudo-feminism can enforce is putting down men because women are “superior” in someway, because they’re girl-bosses, all in the name of “feminism”. Burnap is just as worthy of having his work get displayed on screen as Zegler is. It would be really unfair if all he’s scenes were cut. It’s very… strange at best that she said that. I don’t think people are in the wrong for being upset at her words and I don’t think people are getting mad at her “over nothing”. It’s something.

[EDIT: I wanted to acknowledge that I am currently aware, and also was when I made this post originally, that other live action Disney Princesses cast members have said similar things akin to Rachel Zegler’s statements before. The reason why I didn’t initially mention it in this post was because I didn’t think it mattered to Zegler’s controversy as it had to do with other films, but after some thinking, I realized it does add some context and it could be debated in this conversation. I also don’t care for those statements for very similar reasons I don’t care for Zegler’s. I think the reason why Zegler’s words are being so scrutinized in comparison to the others is because 1) the pop-feminism movement as a whole being scrutinized in some aspects is something that’s happening only very recently, in the very late 2010s and early 2020s so far. It seemed like this girl-boss stuff really began to be condemned hard around when Mulan (2020) came out, which in part caused that film to flop. Zegler is only the third live action princess to have a film come out in the 2020s, if I’m correct. These ideals weren’t being so criticized when say, Lily James, made her statement(s?) on my favorite princess Cinderella in 2015. Zegler’s just happened to make her comments at the worst time. 2) It could also be the way Zegler’s said her comments. It’s not just the words but the way she said them that rubbed people the wrong way, and maybe that’s not fair, as tone can be very hard to fully decipher in a true way and sometimes your tone doesn’t match how you feel. I don’t agree with the idea that “Rachel HATES Snow White” as some have said, but I see how people think she does based on the really taunting tone of the viral clips, but a few clips don’t paint a full story; she probably doesn’t hate Snow White. 3) It might be racism for some people. A lot of people are upset to see Snow White being played by a WOC, especially since in the standard version of the story it was stated specifically that Snow was white, unlike, for comparison, the The Little Mermaid where Hans Christian Anderson never stated what race the mermaid was. Evil people want to be racist, but not called out as racist, so Zegler’s outdated sentiments gave a very easy scapegoat for hating her and her casting without being overtly racist. If Halle Bailey said something similar to Zegler she might’ve experienced the same hate train as Zegler is, not just because it's a sexist view, but because people also hated seeing her play Ariel as a black woman and wanted to do so openly, but couldn't without showing they're racist and being called out. Not saying every person criticizing Zegler is racist, however. 4) It’s the newest remake and people hate those. I don't think the concept of remaking films is bad at all, as if you don't keep telling stories they die. Many of the fairytales that Disney has adapted like Cinderella, Aladdin, Snow White and more wouldn't have existed in any way if people didn't tell them over and over in different countries and time periods till they were written down over and over. Remaking them over and over is a modern option to do that. Everyone has the right to remake Beauty and the Beast, The Wizard of Oz, etc. if they want to because that’s how stories stay alive for generations to come (and because versions of those particular stories I mention are in the public domain). But the reason Disney’s remaking their films at the moment doesn’t seem to be so they can bring something new to the stories or showcase it to a new generation, but to make money, as a lot of these films have been making bank for some unholy reason. That's why so many of them fall short quality-wise. This is really an overall problem with Hollywood right now and Disney is arguably of how the biggest perpetrators of the issue. We are all overexposed to these low-quality remakes to the point where a lot of people hate the concept of them at all, calling them “unnecessary”, but I personally think this is a bit too pessimistic. The idea of remakes isn't bad, the executions of them are.]

There was also some controversy on the fact that they cut the seven dwarfs from the film; the remake is actually simply called Snow White, not Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs like the original. This was done (allegedly?) to not offend little people. They will be replaced by some magic creatures. Now, I am not a little person, so I can’t decide what’s offensive to little people, but I can repeat what I’ve heard from some little people online who’ve spoken on the topic; I recommend looking up more testimonials from them if you want more opinions from little people. It is very odd that, in order to not offended little people, Disney excluded them from one of the few roles Hollywood would allow them to play. It would’ve been better if they evolved the dwarfs from being mostly comic reliefs to being characters who were treated more like characters, along with hiring actually little people actors and having little people writers in the writers’ room. That is all I’ll say on this topic to the reasons I mentioned before.

It’s worth noting that Zegler has addressed the situation (yes, that link to an ET TikTok vid is the best place I could find it—I guess it’s the original source? If I find a better video I’ll change the link) and I don’t really know how to take it. (EDIT: I've been notified by an anon that this video was actually a response to something else; If so, sorry for the incorrect info. My feelings forward still stand when it comes to the idea of pardoning her actions.) While I understand she’s young and was pushed into notoriety very quickly, I feel like, specifically when it comes to her comments about Burnap, she should know better. You should know at age 22 that comments like that aren’t seen as very appropriate. I suspect Zegler wanted to come off as a down-to-earth and playful, cool girl, and assumed that the girl-boss takes on the Disney princesses from the 2010’s were still popular, not realizing that they’re more often condemned rather than uplifted, and rightfully so. All I know is that will likely be hard for Zegler to come back from this behavior. The internet is pretty hard on people who they see as “mean girls” and other phrases like that, sometimes to a really unwarranted level that leads to things like doxxing and death threats. Zegler doesn’t deserve treatment like that, but she does deserve constructive criticism, as does everyone when they do something that’s arguably wrong.

It’s statements like Zegler’s that are making me somewhat worn-down on Disney, or rather Disney-corporate, as I feel that this pseudo-feminism they’ve sprinkled in some of their modern films has been a problem for a while now. In highsight, I feel like in the early 2010’s Disney could’ve been on their way to another renaissance, with hits like Tangled, Frozen, and Wreck-it Ralph, plus adult interest in Disney sky-rocketing with social media. But the remakes got in the way of that. It doesn’t come off as Disney wanting to retell stories in a new way, but as Disney, due to the cynical takes on their past works from the 2010’s, trying to fix what wasn’t really broken out of almost shame. Like they want to prove a Buzzfead article from 2014 wrong rather than make a good story. They don’t seem to understand that this line of thinking is dangerous and sexist in and of itself. This isn’t an improvement, but a downgrade. You’re supposed to make characters, not walking, talking political statements; you can totally make political statements in film—they’ve always had them—but you need to do it carefully because they’re important topics, especially when you’re including it in media made for a general audience, as it could be someone’s first exposure to the topic and you want it to be correctly done. And you need to make the characters who make or represent these political statements well-rounded or you end up coming off as still offensive, but in a different way. Think about all the Disney original concepts for animated movies based on older fairytales such as Gigantic, Newt, or Hiawatha that were canned, with these often try-hard-y remakes in there places (I know Hiawatha was cancelled decades ago, but I still would’ve preferred Disney revive that in a more culturally sensitive time rather than what they’re doing). With the exception of Cinderella (2015) and maybe The Little Mermaid (2023), I feel like all the remakes are just Disney’s attempt at besting critics who either lacked media literacy or were just critiquing for shits and giggles. Other than the exceptions I mentioned, they all range from not awful but meh (like the 2016 The Jungle Book), to insultingly bad or bland (like the 2020 Mulan or the 2019 The Lion King). Even though this film is still in development and I know I can’t/shouldn’t truly have an opinion on it’s quality yet, I fear it’ll be more a kin to Amazon’s Cinderella rather than a good film. Amazon’s Cinderella had many of the issues with pseudo-feminism Zegler’s statements had. I don’t think this movie will be very good if Zegler’s sentiments reflect how the film’s themes will be. Hopefully I’m wrong, but I’m admittedly not too optimistic.

I don’t think it’s wrong that people care this strongly about Disney and the quality of their films. I’ve seen people ask “Well, when did people start caring about Snow White?” And my answer is that people have always cared, this situation is just making people speak up about it. That’s normal. And saying “It’s just a movie” negates it’s importance to the history of film, not just animation, and it’s role in the lives of people who enjoy it. It might not be important to you, and that’s okay, but it is to other people and you should respect that.

Well, I think that covers my thoughts, If you’re still here, thank you for getting this far. I appreciate that you seemingly care about my opinion that much. I just wanted to get these thoughts off my chest.

7 notes · View notes