Maria Alexander is an award-winning author who can wield a pen and a sword with equal ease. And if you've read any of her fiction (or non-fiction!) you know that she cuts as smoothly and precisely with her words as could (if she chose to) with her steel. Her debut novel, Mr. Wicker, hits hard and fast, plays brutally with readers' emotions, and has as many twists as a rollercoaster ride. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and several stories have earned Honorable Mention in various Year's Best Horror anthologies.
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Women
in Everything: Why the Badass Chick Schtick is Just Bad
By Maria
Alexander
I'm a
real-life sword slinger. I own a katana and I know how to use it. Not long ago,
I wrote a blog post that went viral about how the media depicts women as warriors.
Thereafter,
I wrote an article for Nightmare Magazine about what really makes some of the
most popular female action characters “strong” in horror films and TV. (Hint:
It’s not their muscle.)
That said,
I’m absolutely sick to death of the phrase “strong female character” and I want
everyone, myself included, to stop using it stat. First, the phrase implies
female characters are inherently broken and that male characters are generally
okay when they all can suffer from poor writing. While I agree that a problem
exists, the de facto shortcut to solving it unfortunately is to give the female
character fighting skills. You think putting a sword in someone’s hand makes
her “strong”? Wrong. Giving a female character a gun, sword, battle axe,
chainsaw, butcher knife or piano wire does absolutely dick for her. Literally.
In most cases, she just becomes Rambo with boobs because the writer has tacked
on a traditionally male definition of strength. And now genre fiction and film
have fetishized the “badass chick” to the point that, unless she can fight off
six guys without flinching, audiences don’t consider her to be strong.
This only
makes matters worse.
While my
award-winning debut novel, Mr. Wicker, received
much critical acclaim, one of my friends was deeply offended that my main
character, Alicia, kills herself in the first paragraph. “She’s weak,” this
person said. “I want my female characters to be strong.”
The
stigmatization of mental illness deserves its own blog post, so forgive me if I
bypass it here to make another point. As this friend described the rest of the
story, it soon became clear that, because of her “tough chick” definition of
strength, she was blinded to the complexities and strengths of the story's
characters. One of the most brass-knuckled characters in the story is a senior
woman of color who manages both the lockdown staff and her sociopathic boss. (She’s
even a fan of horror.) Alicia’s grandmother is also a bag of nails, having
survived brutal family dysfunction. Another great character in the lockdown is
a young schizophrenic woman of mixed background. She has an amazing power no
one would ever guess. Everyone, even the patients, has agency.
It’s true
that Alicia’s main battle is to wrangle her inner demons, and those little
bastards have her on the rack from the get go. But dealing with those inner
demons is tough, and frankly not many people have the courage it takes. Most
would rather drink/drug/fuck/Facebook away their pain and pour concrete over
their souls than face their personal flaws. Alicia’s certainly tempted to do
many of the above. But once she realizes what she has to do, she walks right
through the fire to seize the gold. All of us are broken, even our heroes. That
gives them depth and believability. We need characters of both sexes showing
the moral integrity to rehabilitate their broken bits. While physical threats
are certainly scary, taking personal inventory can be one of the most
terrifying things we ever do because we might just find something so unbearable
that the guilt and self-loathing pushes us over, or onto, the edge.
But
instead of focusing on courage itself, why do we now have to make every woman a
Brienne of Tarth? (Of course, she’s not usually allowed to be ugly. If she’s
the heroine, she has to be Brienne of Tart, appealing to the male gaze.) One
reason is because it’s obviously exciting, empowering and refreshing to see an
amazing, ass-kicking woman. But I think there’s another reason that’s far
darker than we’d like to admit.
The more
women talk about having control over their lives – whether it’s their bodies,
whom they marry or their careers – the more dangerous the world becomes for
them. On one side of the globe, if a woman says “no” to a suitor, she gets acid
thrown in her face. Or she’s shot in the head for getting an education. In my
‘hood, her partner rapes or outright murders her for any offense. Online, she’s
terrorized, threatened, stalked and doxxed for speaking her truth, never
knowing which of those hundreds of threats is going to solidify on her
doorstep. While we’ve certainly come a long way towards equality and we have
more male allies than ever before (bless every one of you), male entitlement
poses an even greater threat to women’s safety. In a heartbeat, Susan Faludi’s
Backlash looks more like Backdraft, as male rage engulfs us. And it’s not just
men. Women defend the status quo because, like Amy in Gone Girl, they want to
be the “cool girl,” never making a fuss or seeing to their own needs, eschewing
feminism so that men will accept them. We see them on social media packing as
much hate as possible into 140 characters as they stomp on women who speak up.
Given the
threats women face every day just for telling their truth, who wouldn’t want
more heroines who can protect themselves and others with physical force?
If writers
want to empower women, though, I suggest they explore an alternative, far more
subversive approach.
In fiction
and film, we need to portray women with authority, autonomy, and interests
independent of whatever is going on with the men in their stories. Women who
are main characters that dream, face challenges, and make decisions not based
on their romantic interests. Or maybe they do. There’s nothing wrong with
having romantic interests. We’re human beings, and love is a huge motivator in
our lives. But it’s got to be the woman driving the plot, the War Rig, the
investment schedule. Filthy rich dames brokering backroom deals. Judges. CEOs.
CTOs. FBI. CIA. Church leaders. Doctors. Attorneys. Engineers. Astronauts.
University chancellors. Athletes. Directors. Sheriffs. Principal research
scientists. Presidents. Women who have this kind of power and use it are the
cure to what ails us in literature and in life.
To this
end, horror has major work to do.
I recently
read the first chapter of a new novel published by a well-known small horror
press. In that first chapter, I counted 28 women. Sounds great, right? Wrong,
because 25 of them had been viciously murdered (some described in detail), one
was a secretary, one was a mom with no dialog, and the last was a little girl
(the presentation inferred she and the mother were potential victims). A raft
of male characters were on the scene: one was the serial killer, one a doctor
and the rest were government agents. Basically, everyone with a pulse who had
any power, education, or authority was male. You can see why I couldn’t get
past the first chapter.
This is
seriously not okay, and it’s not unusual for horror. Try searching the web for
some variation of “badass female horror novel characters,” and you’ll come up
with more or less the same short list of movie heroines. Not books. Movies. I
think I found only one list of female horror novel heroines, and out of a
handful of characters, at least one of them was actually the monster and two
others were human villains from Stephen King novels. (Those also appeared in
the movie lists.) Maybe it's an SEO problem or my Google Fu is lacking, but I’m
guessing it’s because far fewer people either care to make such lists about
horror novel heroines or, more likely, even can.
We must do
better. Even I’m trying to do better. The female protagonist of my latest YA horror
trilogy is a teen robotics prodigy. She’s also biracial – half black, half
white. If you’re about to say “Well that’s not realistic,” 1) fuck you and 2)
just tell that to Thessalonika Arzu-Embry, a 16-year-old African American girl
in Illinois with an IQ of 199 who is pursuing her doctorate in aviation
psychology. Oh, and she’s written three books.
Now that’s
badass.
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Maria
Alexander is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, poet, and games
writer repped by Alex Slater at Trident Media Group. Her debut novel, Mr. Wicker, won the
2014 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. In a Starred
Review, Library Journal called it "a horror novel to anticipate" and
Fangoria called "a powerful read." She lives in Los Angeles, where
she studies Japanese swordsmanship.
Don't ask
her which is mightier. You might regret it. Instead, stalk her on her website,
Facebook, and Twitter.
To find out more about Maria's thoughts on women and swords, check out her blog post on the subject.
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