Avoiding the "not like other girls" trope?

If you want to avoid showing a character as "not like other girls" then make sure your "other girls" aren't stereotypical.

The trope shows up with female characters who don't fit in. They don't have a lot of female friends, if any. When they do the stuff they like to do, they're surrounded by men. You can praise these characters all you want but the sexism sticks. Because they're doing these fun, intellectual, deeply felt things because they're different.

Don't make them different.

Make your female characters just like some other girls and very different from others. And just like some boys and very different from others. In real life, there's a mix anyway.

Our culture does steer kids from a very young age into male and female roles and activities (even when the parents don't, even when you don't think it's happening), so you'll have some lopsidedness. And that's okay. But for any large group where the social gender pressures aren't too extreme, you will have various genders doing all sorts of things and acting all sorts of ways. Show that.

Girls who like stuff that is more commonly done by boys will seek out other girls who like it too. It's only in TV shows that these girls have no female friends. Ditto boys who like "girl" stuff. Sure, maybe there are some exceptions, but it's not common.

If your female characters aren't actually doing things that most people would identify as "boy stuff", and it's just that they're strong and independent, and that is what makes them "not like other girls," then your problem isn't with your main characters but with your supporting cast. Not everyone is strong, not everyone is independent, but that has little to nothing to do with gender.

Write true to life and balance your characters out. That's how to avoid stereotypes.

posted over 5 years ago

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Cyn‭

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"Strong and independent" does not have to mean "behaves in a masculine way."

• Strong can simply be "has healthy self-esteem and doesn't rely on third parties for her self-image."
• Independent can similarly be "doesn't require a romantic relationship and/or partner to be happy" (even if she has one, she doesn't need it).

These characteristics mean the person is whole, unto herself, and doesn't need to be part of someone else's plot. Your character can be a delicate Southern belle, a Brooklyn bulldyke, a Beach Boys tribute band singer, a biologist, a grumpy babushka, a blind dogwalker, a brine-soaked sailor, a ballerina, a biographer, or any combination thereof and be "strong and independent."

Does each character have her own arc? Does she have her own life and her own interests she is pursuing? Does she do things which don't have anything to do with the main plot of the book or any of the other characters? That is what makes her unique.

posted over 5 years ago

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Lauren Ipsum‭

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Show, don't tell. Write a set of arguably challenging situations where the character is tested. Her decisions and reasoning behind said decisions are what makes a good character. As a reader I don't want to read "I bought red shoes because I like them, giggle" but rather gritty, petty or otherwise symbolic reason. I want to explore a character and not be given a bunch of quirks that mean nothing or change by the flip of the pen.

posted over 5 years ago

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Alex‭

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Start by understanding that a girl with super-powers is a girl just like any other girl except with added super-powers.

Then understand that it is perfectly normal for girls to be capable and competent. And that those are qualities you learn from experience. So your characters would over time grow to be capable, competent and confident. Gender actually has no impact on this.

You probably should acknowledge that we live in a society where it is still somewhat awkward for young women to express being confident and capable. There are studies that suggest that in subjects such as maths girls do worse in mixed groups.

Incidentally this is also not specifically a gender issue. It is part of the process of growing up and building up your adult self. Both genders actually have the same issue. The difference is that boys are specifically told they should be confident and "man up".

The role models for girls that are pushed otoh... Fortunately you can solve this fairly easily simply by providing your girls with some adult women they can look up to.

This moves your issue from characters in focus to background characters. Your main characters would not really need to know or care if these role models fit into the trope, so you do not need to show readers either.

So I'd go with ordinary girls with super-powers, normal growing up issues with self-confidence, and good role models. Then show them organically growing into whatever you wanted them to be without changing into another character.

That incidentally is a common issue with these types of stories. If you start with the super-hero and then insert "the backstory", it is very easy to end up with two different characters. So you should make sure that the pre-powered character has enough development that carries over.

Classic Spider-Man is probably the best example why this matters, it is actually Uncle Ben and Aunt May who made Spider-Man not a radioactive spider. (And that one selfish moment that makes certain that making Spider-Man give up is well beyond the reach of normal super-villains.)

posted over 5 years ago

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Ville Niemi‭

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The thing you're seeking to avoid is creating a character who is nothing but an inverted collection of stereotypes.

That's arguably better than just relying on the original stereotypes, but not by all that much. You avoid this by putting the work in to create a three dimensional character. Some typical advice for doing this is:

• Give her a complete backstory (not in the story, but in your mind)
• Do the research (interview, study, read about, or otherwise get into the head of someone like your character)
• Make sure she's not just serving a functional purpose in your story. Samuel Delany suggests guarding against this by giving your character three types of actions --purposeful (goal oriented), habitual (characteristic of this particular character), and "gratuitous" (related to a life outside the framework of the story).

posted over 5 years ago

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Chris Sunami‭

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Embrace the opposite of the trope.

Is there some reason Supergirl cannot love talking fashion, and own ten pairs of shoes?

Is there some reason a brilliant chemist must also be mousy and withdrawn?

There is no reason a brain surgeon can't be emotional about receiving unexpected flowers on her anniversary.

Whatever a woman's superpowers are, there is no reason they should preclude anything ELSE in her personality, so go ahead and make her a plausible woman first, and add her superpower as more of a tool she can use when it is necessary.

The superpower may have some influence on her personality; but I'd make it more like "Hey, I'm really good at math!" and not like "I'm good at math so I must be a nerd and wear glasses and dress in a gray sack."

Find (Invent) opportunities for her to express her femininity, so she IS like other girls; and at the same time IS NOT like other girls; which probably applies to MOST girls; they all likely deviate significantly from the average in some trait or another.

posted over 5 years ago

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Amadeus‭

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Just be aware that almost everything is trope/stereotype of some sort: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysFemale

One of the best ways to mitigate that is to make sure there are MANY women -- Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a classic "strong & female" character, but she's so into "normalcy" that in s3, she competes to be homecoming queen. But there's also Cordelia, a rich "girlygirl" who also is amazingly direct and honest about what she wants. Willow, Faith, Tara, Anya, Jenny Calendar -- all are very different type of women. By the nature of the show, they have some superpowers (magic via chemistry, magic via witchcraft, technopagan, demon-life), and they take different elements of the patriarchy and adopt or rebel against them. Anya loves capitalism and heterosexual sex. Jenny goes to Burning Man.

In my own real life, I've noticed I hated pink, partially because I was rebelling against what I was supposed to like...until I started trying to cosplay Delores Umbridge...suddenly I'm looking at all the pink in Goodwill and finding... I like it! Not all pinks, but quite a few look good on me. So often there's a struggle between figuring out one's OWN tastes, the current social-group's tastes, the over-arching society's tastes, etc.

Another, less-gendered example: So many of my friends love Firefly, but I don't care what in-jokes I won't get: I'm just not interested. Am I trying to be "not like those other SF fans?" Have I just not encountered the right podcast to make me reconsider? I really don't know. A lot of people locally are upset that a local Dr. Who convention died, and they don't want a general SF con to take its place: are they trying to say they're better/different than all the other fans? Or is it that these are the type of fans that whichever fandom they found (Baseball, Roman history, antique cars), they'd want a deep focus, and not be interested in "sports", "history," or "transit"?

The best way is, especially since it's YA, is 1) have multiple characters, so no one person is The Representative Whatever (woman, person of color) and 2) have the characters recognize that they're struggling with this. As YA protagonists, trying on identities is pretty normal; as superpowered ones, expressing that via costumes and variant names can really display this!

posted over 5 years ago

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April Salutes Monica C.‭

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