30 Day Awesome Women Meme
Oct. 15th, 2010 01:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
featherxquillSo a bunch of you have linked to this bullshit flowchart, and are pissed off by the way it reduces all female characters and some real women wtf to nothing but stereotypes. Which I completely agree with. Seriously, WTF?
So I decided that now would be a good time to complete the questions on that 30 Day Awesome Women Meme that I started writing a while ago.
Starting tomorrow, I will be posting about an awesome woman, real or fictional, every day for thirty days. The questions/prompts are under the cut, in case anyone wants to jump on the bandwagon.
Write and/or picspam about an awesome woman, every day, for thirty days. The women can be real or fictional. If a prompt stumps you, take the opportunity to go learn about an awesome woman you didn't know about yet. Minority categories have been included, but this in no way means that characters from these groups can't appear on other days. What awesome women should *your* flist know about?
1. Someone you've loved since you were little
2. Someone you discovered recently
3. A leader
4. A mother
5. A fighter
6. A goddess
7. Someone funny
8. Someone bitchy
9. Someone sexy
10. A writer
11. A singer
12. An artist
13. An actress
14. An athlete
15. Anyone you like
16. A woman of colour
17. A woman with a disability
18. A lesbian, bisexual, transgenderd or genderqueer woman/individual
19. Someone you'd love to have teach you
20. Someone you'd love to get drunk with
21. Someone you wouldn't want to cross
22. Someone you'd love to be for a day
23. A woman from traditionally male arena (politics, science, medicine, military, etc)
24. A woman over 50
25. An activist
26. A woman from the past
27. A woman of the future
28. Someone you once disliked but now admire
29. Someone from your own life
30. Anyone you like
So I decided that now would be a good time to complete the questions on that 30 Day Awesome Women Meme that I started writing a while ago.
Starting tomorrow, I will be posting about an awesome woman, real or fictional, every day for thirty days. The questions/prompts are under the cut, in case anyone wants to jump on the bandwagon.
Write and/or picspam about an awesome woman, every day, for thirty days. The women can be real or fictional. If a prompt stumps you, take the opportunity to go learn about an awesome woman you didn't know about yet. Minority categories have been included, but this in no way means that characters from these groups can't appear on other days. What awesome women should *your* flist know about?
1. Someone you've loved since you were little
2. Someone you discovered recently
3. A leader
4. A mother
5. A fighter
6. A goddess
7. Someone funny
8. Someone bitchy
9. Someone sexy
10. A writer
11. A singer
12. An artist
13. An actress
14. An athlete
15. Anyone you like
16. A woman of colour
17. A woman with a disability
18. A lesbian, bisexual, transgenderd or genderqueer woman/individual
19. Someone you'd love to have teach you
20. Someone you'd love to get drunk with
21. Someone you wouldn't want to cross
22. Someone you'd love to be for a day
23. A woman from traditionally male arena (politics, science, medicine, military, etc)
24. A woman over 50
25. An activist
26. A woman from the past
27. A woman of the future
28. Someone you once disliked but now admire
29. Someone from your own life
30. Anyone you like
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-14 02:40 pm (UTC)But about that flow chart: I've seen lots of people on LJ and DW getting really angry at it, and I'm thinking I must have misread it.
I initially thought it was a highly ironic critique, a demonstration of how popular storytelling, especially in films and TV, is reductive and simplistic when it comes to depicting women (and often when depicting men, too, but that's a separate issue). I didn't see it as the author's straightforward belief about female characters. I thought she was criticizing the stereotyping, not supporting it.
But evidently my reading is significantly in the minority, so I'm willing to accept that, cynical postmodernist that I am, I see irony everywhere, even where it apparently isn't. /g/ But yes, if this chart is meant to be taken at face value, then it's depressing.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-14 03:01 pm (UTC)I don't know. You could be right that what the creator was intending irony, but I'm not so sure about that. I don't know if you've seen the original post (http://www.overthinkingit.com/2010/10/11/female-character-flowchart/) on Overthinkingit, but from the text of that it doesn't read much like irony to me.
I think she is trying to criticise the stereotyping process in general, though. The problem isn't so much saying 'stereotypes are bad', but rather that she is confusing stereotypes with tropes, and reducing a number of really awesome, three-dimensional female characters to single characteristics and saying 'ur doin it wrong'.
It just seems like more fodder for the 'all female characters are crap, and that's why we *have* to write fics about men all the time' crowd.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-14 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-14 05:18 pm (UTC)I'm hoping we'll get a few Australians who are too little known in other parts of the world from you!