In reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher, she discussed about possible reasons as to why girls go through harsher developmental issues during adolescence. One of the biggest aspects of our culture she critiqued was the media and how women are portrayed in television shows, ads and movies. As a research material I chose to pick a video on YouTube called, The Tough Girl Trope, Explained by a YouTube channel, The Take which creates video-essay like content about different movies, tv shows and characters. In Pipher’s video, she touched upon how many times female characters or tropes are based upon a woman’s sex appeal, and how they are catered to the male audience. I chose this video about the ‘tough girl’ trope because it did an excellent job commentating about how even if ‘tough girls’ were made in order to counteract the idea of the common dainty, sexualized side character, women are still continually being used as shallow, surface level characters with little to no personalities. Even if female characters in movies are more ‘useful’ by being strong, writers either make their character only about being tough and in service or second to the man in command, being the token woman in a male cast. The other example given in the video was ‘tough girl plus’ where not only is the female character tough, but also multifaceted with other traits that make them more interesting. This video connects to Pipher’s perspective because I think that just because a female character is strong or not treated as a sexual object, women in general need to be given layers of personality and portrayed as someone multi-faceted that can even include moments of vulnerability and ‘flaws’ because that is what us as the audience can relate to. Tough girl characters in a male lens are women who have to adopt male traits like being physically strong and repressing emotions, the second not being the healthiest lesson to teach young girls. Stereotypical feminine traits such as love, family, emotional vulnerability need to be considered strengths within themselves, not weaknesses. It is not just about desexualizing women in film and shows but writing them as realistic and given the same depth as their male counterparts.
Sources: Roth, Bobby. (Director). (2002). Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls [Film]. Media Education Foundation.