Brilliant, Brilliant blog post FAO @stevenmoffatt

[miss_s_b]

I read this this morning, and my immediate thought was YES!

Part of the reason I never got on with Russel T Davies' vision of Doctor Who was that it was so clear he had grown up wanting to be the Doctor's COMPANION. I never wanted to travel WITH the Doctor; I wanted to BE the Doctor. I wanted to be Dennis the Menace and Batman and Mr Spock and Judge Dredd too. And I wanted to be Freddie Mercury and Alice Cooper and Bruce Dickinson. And later I wanted to be Rumpole, or Paddy Ashdown. Like the first commenter on that post, it never occurred to me (and I thank my Dad for that) that because all my heroes were boys, I wasn't supposed to want to be like them, I was supposed to want to be WITH them, to be their soppy female helpmeet.

My Holly wants to be a Green Lantern.



At least that's a narrative possibility - there ARE female green lanterns, even if they are generally peripheral to the male ones.

I hate this world, that it tries to frustrate her dreams of awesomeness and give her dreams of playing second fiddle instead. My little girl is amazing, and she deserves to have amazing heroes to look up to and dream of emulating. Why is there still, after so many years, only a handful? Why do Ripley and Wonder Woman have to shoulder this burden alone? DAMMIT, WORLD, GIVE ME MORE FEMALE HEROES!

Comments

[trialia]

Honestly, I think this is why it's taken me until very recently to be interested in Who at all - because it was River Song that captured my interest and actually got me into the fandom at last. I adore the woman, and a good part of why I watch her episodes is because she is such an equal to the Doctor, so much more than any companion I've ever seen. She doesn't always follow him - sometimes she even drags him kicking and screaming where SHE wants to go, and I love that about her. That and, unf, Alex Kingston always was really hot and age just seems to be intensifying that in her.

[telegramsam]

My mother has a polaroid photo of me somewhere, where I am 4 years old and dressed up as Superman for halloween. Not Lois Lane, not Wonder Woman or Supergirl, Superman. Spit-curl and all.

And thank God she was too sensible to care what the other parents thought of allowing her precious snowflake to dress up as a boy character *gasphorrors* (there is in fact a Wonder Woman in the same photo, actually, but I think I would have been an annoyed toddler indeed if somebody else had been in the same costume).

And for the rest of my childhood, I think other than dressing up as a witch one year, none of them were girly. I was a ghost at least twice, a wizard one year (crazy fake beard included), a tiger, and a dragon.

[magister]

I so wanted to be the Doctor. Or Alice Cooper. Or Ian Botham, Freddie Mercury, Mr Spock, James Bond (Timothy Dalton version for preference), Avon, Batman, Viv Richards... Still do in most cases.

[innerbrat]

I wanted to be d'Artagnon. Or John Roxton. Or the sister of one of these awesome men who was just as awesome.

Basically, I wanted to be Marie-Suzanne d'Artagnon.

[staceyuk]

Ooooh hasn't she grown up! *feels old*

[staceyuk]

To add to your blog. I know what you mean. My rolemodels were because of who they were not their gender. I grew up up with reruns of 60s Batman so no Harley Quinn, but I loved Batman, Robin and Batman, watched He-man as well as She-Ra, sang along to Jem, loved the sword in Thundercats, as well as Thunderbirds and Stingray.

No Doctor Who as that aired past my bedtime of 6.45 but I do remember watching Seven/Ace once.

[blazingskies]

What makes thing even more difficult is that anyone trying to write a story starring a female hero is told, repeatedly, that 'female heroes don't sell'. Which is bullcrap, they would sell just fine if people write them well and convincingly without turning them into personality-free eye candy, but most times if you see a female hero on the front of a comic, she is there for T+A appeal and very little else. A comic reviewer called Linkara rants extensively on this subject.

Even worse, female authors - particularly in the so-called 'genre fiction' area, just aren't taken as seriously. An acquaintance of mine recently wrote about her experience with writing for the Black Library (the publishing arm of Games Workshop, for the uninitiated) when she mentioned she was writing military SF, people would look at her oddly and say:
'But...you're a girl!' like she was breaking some unspoken taboo.

It drives me nuts. It really does. But I don't know how to fix it, short of bagging my head against that brick wall until it breaks...and I think my head might break first.