Forums » Smalltalk » I crave better female representation in media.

Anime is bad at it, news at 11.

Child me was heartbroken to find out Tails wasn't a girl. Tails would be amazing female representation, considering he doesn't dress any different than the guys and his mannerisms are still effeminate without having any of the problematic personality traits common to anime girls.

You know the ones, they're those traits shounen anime typically file under "annoying."

Plus, his specialization in the group, and his interests, are gender-neutral, and he's never done that stereotypically 'girl' thing of crumbling for a love interest, except in that one really awful anime adaptation that cares not for the source material and is just generally not very good so we can safely ignore it and lose nothing.

Don't even get me started on Pokemon protagonists. The male characters are fine, but the female characters all wear short-shorts or skirts, or anything that shows off more of their legs. Even in the games where you can customize your character, there are few options for clothes that either don't show off your legs and stomach, or aren't tight-fitting.

The two genders in Pokemon games are Practical, and Female. At least as far as the character designers are concerned. By the way, most of these characters range between 10 and 16 if you wanna feel uncomfortable.

I can probably name a couple anime with good supporting female casts and no, Naruto is not one of them. Fullmetal Alchemist though? Yeah, I could see it. Hawkeye comes to mind first. I suppose Nami in One Piece might also count, if you ignore that she also has the "annoying" personality of being bad-tempered and bossy, but honestly there are quite a few loud-mouths in One Piece so it's a bit of a gray area there?

Probably the best female representation I've ever seen in anything is Pidge from the new Voltron. Gender-bending her was the best decision they could make. There's also Molly from Oban Star Racers, and Monica from Dark Cloud 2/Dark Chronicle. Well, except for the way the game expects her to dress most of the time, but it's a JRPG so, baby steps, Japan. Edit: Forgot to add Toph from ATLA. I have no idea how I could've forgotten her.

I like those characters because they can be silly, they can be dumb, they can banter, they can be weak, and their personalities don't hinge on being girls but they also aren't really concealing it either. Plus, whoever designed them didn't fall back on tired tropes about how making a character wear a skirt or show skin, or do that really stupid pose where they contort their legs so their toes face inward, is shorthand for "girl." I hate this pose so much that I block artists on social media whenever I see it, to be honest.

You know what good gender representation looks like? It looks like a character's pronouns being she/her, and everything else about their design or mannerisms being agnostic. A character who presents as feminine, or sometimes exhibits feminine traits, who also identifies as she/her is a feminine girl. But she is not just a 'girl', the femininity should be a layer on top that rounds out the character and should never be taken as shorthand for 'girl.'

But of course we live in a society where many industries are dominated by men, and I'm of the mind that a lot of female character designs are meant to please men. (Especially in Pokemon. No, I won't stop slagging it off for this. Pokemon is a series so sexist you can tell a sprite's gender by looking at its LEGS.)

Also "But I'm attracted to femininity!!!" is a thing I see enough that I've got a ready answer for it and I'm just gonna leave it here: If you're a straight dude, or a lesbian, maybe what you should be saying is "I'm attracted to feminine girls," signifying that your attraction is both to people with the female anatomy, and people who present as obviously feminine. I'm putting this here to dissuade anyone who thinks "How do I know they're girls if they aren't feminine" is a smart thing to say, but I suspect there are very few people around these parts who would actually do that anyway.

Thanks for coming to my unhinged rant Ted Talk.

So what characters do you know of who constitute good representation? I'm not just talking about female characters either, but in general, characters who make you feel valid about your identity? I'm aware there is still exceptionally poor representation for trans and NB people, but if there's any that exist, please feel free to also infodump those right in here. (And obviously I'm not leaving the cis guys out. I don't know what kind of experiences men have with their identity, being that I'm uh, not a guy, but also feel free to share your experiences and mention characters who made you feel comfortable with who you are.)

If we're talking strong mentally, wise/smart, outspoken and brave female characters, it isn't the most recent representation, though some are, in no specific order.

- Ellen Ripley at least in the original and sequel
- Elizabeth Bennet
- Eowyn, shield maiden of Rohan
- Hemione Granger
- Josephine March
- Anne of Green Gables
- Emma of Normandy
- Leia Organa
- Storm, Ororo Monroe
- Miss Marple
- Brienne of Tarth (probably one of the few female character I respect throughout the series)

I'm not much into anime these days, though I did watch some when I was younger, but one of my favourites was Rook Bartley, Robotech Saga, yes, I'm old!

I'm a very masculine presenting cis-woman with a lot of stereotypically masculine hobbies. When I was a child, I hated female characters in cartoons. I cannot understate this, I do not use that word lightly. I hated them. I hated how ditsy, or bossy or clumsy or stupid they were. They were boring. They either took passive roles or were a target to be rescued. I was young at the time, and I couldn't explain my hatred as succinctly as I did just now. People talk about representation in media, and I felt no affinity to these women.

I remember just starting roleplay and thinking to myself "Who'd ever want to roleplay as a girl?" At the time, I had an entirely male lineup because I didn't want to play some bossy naggy girl who played second-fiddle to the male characters. I'm not quite sure how my mindset changed. Part of getting older? Realising that the problem was built into the cartoons I watch and games I play rather than an accurate representation of the life experiences of real people? Most of my newer characters are female, and my heart swims with love for them.

I don't know if I agree that a good girl character is a boy character with the pronouns filed off. I think that's an overly simplistic way of looking at it. As much as it sucks, real life girls have fundamentally different experiences than real life boys, and I don't think media should shy away at these. What I do think is that female characters should be written with as much depth, love, and personally as any of the male characters in the cast. I think a lot of writers are afraid to give their female characters flaws, and that leads to fundamentally boring characters. In anime, trying to give girl characters 'flaws that aren't actually flaws' is often expressed as 'ditsy' or 'comically bad at cooking'.

And please stop showing your 14 year old girls' underwear.

I suppose it's less "strong and capable" that makes good representation (at least to me), and more, characters which don't make assumptions based on gender, or rely on tired design tropes that are shorthand for a character's gender.

I'm not familiar enough with every character in the list to say whether or not they quality, but Hermione embodies a really tired trope of female characters being bossy and "having it together," because for some reason, female characters in western media needed to be smarter than the boys... Or at least, it was a very common thing that came up a lot. The "capable" girl vs the "idiot" boys... Gave off the impression that girls need to be so much more for the sake of their guy friends.

But I guess, it's not even close to the most problematic thing in Harry Potter, heh...

I can relate to this. I don't know if I would call myself masc. I don't mind that some of my mannerisms are explicitly feminine, but it took me into my adulthood to feel comfortable with she/her pronouns, and that was largely because being socialized online in anime communities, and generally being kind of a loser who watched way too much weeb trash as a teenager, left me with some serious damage about gender identity that was not helped at all by growing up in a conservative part of the US.

Probably also didn't help that people got me gifts as a kid that they wanted me to have, instead of things I wanted. (Dolls instead of train sets and the like, pink/purple things instead of the blues/greens I like, etc.)

But I didn't mean to imply that girls are boys with the pronouns changed. Boys just have a lot more room for expression than girls do, and in the superficial ways, boys and girls don't have a lot that distinguishes them from each other. Both can like video games, both can be huge nerds, both can be cool ninjas, both can have complex emotions. And neither needs to wear a dress to distinguish themselves as a girl. (It's why Tails was my first example. This is a frustrating trope. In a world of fantasy animals, one going starkers and the other wearing clothes is so gross to me, as if the female body has to be concealed for decency even when they clearly have barbie doll anatomy. It's like the idea of even cartoon nudity is a perverse thought, but ONLY when it's women. I hate this. I hate it SO much. It even carried into the one Sonic game where you can make a character. If she's female, she's gotta cover up. What on earth?!)

Honestly though... How much of our experiences only differ because of the way we're treated because of our genders? In a world where no assumptions are made about which pronouns apply to a person being correlated with their interests or aspirations, would our experiences actually be meaningfully different from boys' experiences? Outside of how our bodies work, which is a fairly limited thing in everyday life and doesn't really come up that much, I cannot think of anything which would, or even need to, apply in a work of fiction. Especially a work of fiction that takes place in a different world or time than our own.

I think for me, no person should feel the need to dumb themselves down. I think those are the tropes I dislike the most. Why should being intelligent, having strong opinions and expressing oneself be seen as a bad thing regardless of gender.

I suspect the anime I watched in the 1980s and 1990s most likely had the same or similar tropes, but the representations I have for what I consider strong moral and intellectual characters are unfortunate labeled with “B” words as though those are negative things.

Perhaps, strangely enough or not, being the youngest of three with two older brothers, I strongly identify as female and was born such, but I prefer wearing comfortable jeans or pants, though I didn’t mind wearing the occasional skirt or dress. I played with my Barbie dolls, but made sword accessories for them. I played dungeon and dragons, watched war movies, sci-fi and fantasy movies growing up. I hated most traditional fairytales and loved Marvel Comics. I learned some martial arts, white water canoeing, hiking, snowshoeing and was never really good in many traditional team sports. I love to bake and both my brothers are better cooks than I am. When and where I grew up I would have fit under the label of feminine “tomboy”.

I don’t really think the complexity of a person can fit into one or two labels. It’s probably why anime or anything that has limited character development will never be a good representation of any person in my opinion.

I'm trying to figure out if we generally agree on some things or if we're talking past each other, and struggling a bit.

I suppose what I mean is that anything a boy can do, a girl can also do, which does include human failings. But it often feels like media will portray girls as more flawless and capable, and I think growing up, there was some tacit expectation placed on me by society to be more 'mature' than boys. As if boys being less mature is more acceptable somehow. That's why the Hermione example irks me a bit.

I think that I’m just getting tired of it always coming across as “We made a strong woman character because we are a woke company!” I prefer it when there are female characters who are just, yknow, female and that doesn’t matter. She is a well developed and dynamic character who’s gender has no role in her purpose in the story.

On the flip side though, there are times where them being a woman is in fact a empowering reason for the characters development, perhaps that them being a woman makes them the underdog in the story, someone who isn’t expected anything of but in fact basically saves the day so to speak. This happens a lot and isn’t handled well, always with the on the nose “oh because I’m a woman?” Type thing. But two movies that come to mind that handled it perfectly are Ridley in Aliens and Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs.
A woman is a woman, and their gender shouldn’t be tied to the possibilities of what they are able to do or what character they can be. But it all depends on the story the movie wants to tell which again brings me around to Silence of The Lambs. In that movie Clarice was a woman in the detective field which is dominated by men who at that time didn’t feel like a woman could handle that job, and it gave her a strong motivation to work hard and prove her peers wrong but it wasn’t really in your face about it.

Because really sometimes there are great stories to tell when using gender in that way. There are plenty of good movies that tackle the themes of the trials and problems a man may face so there is never an issue with the same story existing for a woman. I think my issue mostly stems from these movies and tv shows that just come across as being very disingenuous and only making a “strong female character” to basically say face.

And on another spectrum regarding over sexuality or diving to hard into stereotypes dear lord don’t get me started on anime…it’s actually the number one reason I just don’t really like to watch anime, I can’t sit through it when there is a ridiculous fan service scene or high pitched screaming female in need of saving…it’s too frustrating and just to tasteless for me.

Agree on that: once many media outlets will stop bitching about "inclusion at all cost" and, instead, focusing on "putting up a good story with a good protagonist\characters, gender of the said twos be damned if not specifically for the purpose of the story itself, then we will have a good creative mindset to product media for us to consume. Want some examples?
- Rey of the last Star Wars is an "inclusion at all cost" example: she gets everything because she's "gifted" somehow, and her struggles are not connected to how she gets all her final powers who are able to defeat the most powerful and ancient evil in, again, canon. Even Anakin, an entity created to be, by the very definition, the most powerful force user in the galaxy (according to canon), had to train with others and, ultimately, got his ass whooped by his own teacher and friend; high ground's a bitch, Ani.
- Eowyn of LOTR is the perfect example of a strong woman: daughter of noble origins, who is faced with discrimination based on her gender (brutally accurate in terms of medieval\fantasy history), has to mask herself as a soldier with a friend that is less than "protecting and intimidating, but not one inch less brave than most", overcoming her fear to save her father from the second most powerful entity of Middle Earth (The Witch King, someone able to scare even a Maiar with his immense strength) and, ultimately, killing him with the help of said tiny companion... all of this while delivering a badass line in between that also shows why her gender was necessary for the story itself, not for eQuAliTy.


Do you want another example of what all this mindset brings to our tables? Dung like this!



As a side note, the OP tends to cite Anime a lot, which is a media that has, as its target, not us euro\usa people, but Japanese. There, the concept of what is feminine and what is not is incredibly different from ours (same goes for masculine\not masculine), so it doesn't make much sense to make a comparison using our meter of judgement when talking about that.

Kinda like Luke, who didn't grow up with the "street smarts" that Rey would have needed, and who did most of his development via plot needs after abandoning Yoda - who, along with Obi-wan, was pretty convinced that Luke was going to go get himself killed by doing so, to the point they started discussing Plan B? That is less of a problem than Rey - whose whole life had been arranged specifically to prepare and strengthen her from the shadows, who was less directly involved in the war details and thus more able to focus, who trained under Luke, who was part of a powerful bloodline, and who still needed a massive amount of help from the other powerful bloodline in the end? And you feel her struggles with figuring out who she even was and what to do with that information wasn't connected to the development of her power?

You sure you're using the right example for your point?

Generally agree, I like the genders to be equal in the true sense, at least in fiction. Frankly, my perspective on real life is that the only reason there ARE differences in the way the genders behave is purely based on the life experiences forced on them by society's flawed attitude that the genders need to be treated differently. In a fictional world, you don't need to include or even acknowledge these social constructions at all, and I really prefer them to be absent personally.

Having said that, I also can appreciate if a story does consider the toxic social constructs around gender segregations and does things to subvert them, but like you mentioned, that... usually isn't handled with too much grade too often. Probably because it's usually dudes writing stories or b-plots like that in the first place.

Sonic has a history of extremely poor gender representation and was made explicitly to appeal to Americans, so I'm not sure that assumption really works here. His original design was based off the US flag, his shoes are meant to emulate Michael Jackson's, his personality was cited as being inspired by Bill Clinton, he was born on "Christmas Island" because western kids love Christmas (Except the actual Christmas Island is a prison island which is hilarious to think about), and Sonic 2 was developed in America when a good chunk of SEGA's veteran devs, including Yuji Naka, moved to SEGA America's branch after the first game released. Sonic was one of my examples in my OP.

On anime in general: A LOT of anime, especially the more modern anime, is made with the west in mind because western anime fans are too big a market to ignore. Anime is considered a niche thing in Japan, so focusing on the global anime audience is a better bet in the age of online streaming and simulcasting than trying to strictly appeal to a Japanese audience. Also, Japan has been obsessed with American culture for decades, and they inherit many of their modern attitudes about gender and expression from us. (For better or worse.)

Well, yes, but actually no; let me explain.
It is true that the American market (alongside the European one, let's not forget) is considerably large, and an opportunity that the eastern creators cannot simply pass up, but we, again, are still not the biggest portion of the money cake for a single reason: merch. In Japan, the amounts of "whales" (a term used in gaming to define people who spend a gigantic amount of money on microtransactions) are larger than us Europeans + you Americans combined, and this tiny fraction of people is the one who truly makes them the money. This is the reason of why, for example, they decided to use Uzaki-chan and her gigantic bankers (Necessary quote from this new anime plot I've got) as the front model for a blood donation campaign, who was slandered on Twitter by US enraged twitters (and no, they did not change her for that).

In terms of Sonic, if you are referring to the anime released in 2003 (which is the original representation of the videogame, not the recent movie with Jim Carrey which was also done in the US), it is, again, a bad representation to define this term because the 4kids Entertainment, the original distributor for the west market, was criticized because of the heavy censorship they put over the original source before release. If we want to discuss anything over this media, it is mandatory to proof check the original source, not the bastardized copy we got.

Also, Japanese people are not obsessed with US culture, they are interested in western culture, which includes (but is not limited to) the US; let's not confound the two things, all right? I have plenty of friends back in Japan who are genuinely tired to hear this all the time.

I'm not sure what you're on about, friend. I'm not talking about Sonic's poorly-adapted anime (that is garbage even in the original Japanese sub, I watched both) but the series as a whole. If you don't know its history before 2003, I'm... not sure what to tell you. That isn't even Sonic's first anime, by the way. The OVA from 1995 is considerably more sexist.

My OP references media in general, it just takes a special jab at anime. The problem of decent gender rep is not exclusive to Japanese media, Japanese media is just an easy target to point out what it looks like when it's especially bad.

Anyway, Sonic history happens to be my rodeo, so I'll leave this here for reference:


Bit off-topic but hopefully it gets us on the same page.

Anyway, the US and Japan have a long history of trading culture with each other that means influence does go both ways, and while I didn't mean to imply that Japan is fanatical about US culture, they do have a hyperconsumerist market and the US's biggest export is our culture. (Again, for better or worse...)

Sidenote, but I do tend to go into things with good faith intentions. I also fronted this post with my good-faith response, but you've used several phrases in all of your posts that remind me very distinctly of the way the anti-woke crowd talks on anime boards when they feel like their objectification of the female gender is being attacked by the culture they were born into, and idealizing Japan for having the kind of conservative attitudes about gender and representation they did. Those people are the reason I stopped hanging out on anime boards because they made me feel like my gender was boiled down to an object for their pleasure instead of a facet of a real person. I have a strong dislike of screaming weirdos on social media for my own reasons, and I don't particularly care what people get out of fictional characters on their own time, but I'm a bit sick of the implication that better representation for women, besides something to please men, is done to satisfy some agenda and isn't for the sake of appealing to more people who would like to see themselves represented in the content they enjoy.

I'm pretty desperate for better female representation in media myself. I agree with the general idea that women are severely underrepresented in how they're portrayed as human beings in general, but even in some of the most progressive narratives and female character development, I still... struggle being super happy about it all.

Most notably, I've never seen a female character who is like me in media, ever, who wasn't some object of ridicule. I'm a 6'1" fat cis woman. There have been fat women in media, there have been tall women in media, but I've never, ever, seen someone like myself who I feel I can relate to even physically. And in many cases, fat and tall women are reduced to their literal sizes. The movie Tall Girl was pretty cringey for me to watch, despite some familiar aspects of it all, the narrative just boiled down to "Did you know this girl is tall?". I don't remember any other distinctive feature about the protagonist that humanized her and made her interesting as a person, it was just boilerplate teenage drama. The most empowered women are still shorter than their male peers. The most badass women are still tiny even when they're packed with power and resolve. I feel completely invisible in media and it really, really sucks.

I've always been very feminine in how I want to present myself, and my interests heavily favor elegant/pretty and cute, but every female representation I can think of that fits these boxes also includes small, dainty, everything... not like me. Luisa from Encanto came close, but she's mostly muscular bulky with feminine traits, and that's really not what I'm like either.

Not to mention disabled female characters are basically non-existent. Turning Red showcased two diabetic background characters, and I presume both were girls. I LOVED that, and I'm super grateful for the representation in that way, but it still falls short because protagonists are rarely, if ever, disabled. I don't ever expect there to be a tall, fat, type 1 diabetic female character with chronic pain and neurodivergence who's represented as being a whole person with a ton of interests and skills and personality traits in media as a main character, ever, and that kind of sucks??

Let's not forget the lack of fat ugly girls in media unless that is their entire purpose is to be fat and ugly. Oh the nerdy geek boy will end up getting with the cheerleader, but for the reverse to happen, the girl has to get skinny and get a make over. Obvious this is because in the eyes of society, women are eye candy and sexual objects first and foremost. So if we cannot serve that purpose. All of these supposed good examples mentioned here? They are all beautiful or at the very least played by beautiful people who use make up to make themselves look plainer.

I was gonna say Velma from Scooby-Doo is the only non-standard female body type I can think of but uh... Her terrible eyesight is played for jokes a lot and that personally bothers me, as someone with terrible eyesight.

I admit to preferring fit-looking characters (or at least characters who look like a healthy weight, because my fat ugly butt wants to project onto them lol), but there could stand to be more room for more types of representation across the body type spectrum for the people whose escapism doesn't necessitate needing to look conventionally fit and nimble/athletic. (Not gonna pretend my preference is entirely okay, and admittedly I could get invested in a character regardless of their body type if they're well-rounded and relatable anyway.)

Just dropping in to say that... anime is not a niche in Japan.

Japan's culture, especially in large cities, is absolutely flooded in its markets with anime. Anime is one of their biggest and most massive selling points in almost everything they market. A very dear and close friend of mine, who is Japanese and grew up halfway between America and Japan, and is first generation Japanese, states this plainly. Anime is not a niche in Japan by any means. It is one of their most influential parts of their markets. They love it as a culture all over the country itself.

That's not what I've heard from other Japanese people but it's not really the hill I would die on either.