“The elegant helpless female who needs to be rescued at the critical moment, or the gutsy, closet warrior, who needs rescuing at the critical moment.�

Heh. I like this. I mean, in an ironically amusing way.

Someone was recently describing to me an old novel (Burroughs, maybe?) in which the female character is hyper competent at everything, except when the Alpha Male Hero is around, at which point she always needs to be rescued by him.

I haven’t read or seen Practical Magic, and I have no opinion on chicklit or chickflicks in general, as I tend to watch movies based on whether I think I will like them without (much) regard to how they are labeled, so if, forex, the 2006 “Something New” with Sanaa Lathan and Simon Baker counts as a chickflick, I liked it. But it is a romance, and the two leads are portrayed as people in a two-way relationship, that is, you need them both to have the story.

I agree. Although she didn’t have enough screen time, I thought she was a very interesting character. Her situation reminded me a bit of women after WWII who had to suddenly adjust to husbands who came home and seemed like strangers in so many ways. I didn’t think she was one-dimensional at all. Tragic, yes, but then most of the characters in “ROme” don’t exactly have happy stories.

Thank goodness, the market share is oversaturated, and with very bad works too, so publishing is moving on. OTH, some works that were marketed as that were not that, not really. For pete’s sake, Some even try to lable Jane Austen as chick lit. Shame on their ignorance.

But Romance/Fantasy, Romance/SF, etc. irritate me even more so. Go figger.

However, there are always exceptions to the annoyance of any genre or subgenre, because, what they are, fundamentally, and first, are really good books in some way. Or, at least, an excellent, single read. Outlander is one of the latter, for instance.

Love, C.

Give me G.I. Jane, which supports its overt point on the covert level of cinematography: the camera lingers lovingly on Demi Moore, but on things like her abs and shoulders, not her boobs. (And what I wouldn’t give to have her muscles from that movie.)

That said, it’s rather telling that the film was cut that way. It certainly wasn’t done to appeal to a male audience.

With “women acting to defend each other,” sort of thought this was the whole point of the “chick flick” genre. You know, How to Make an American Quilt of Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias for Thelma and Louse. None of which I’ve actually seen, mind you, but I did see A League of Their Own, which does also have “women acting to defend each other” along with a rather cool historical plot about women’s league baseball.

Of course, compared to the huge swath of sports films, A League of their Own stands out simply because it’s the only one actually about women.

I will, however, stand behind, ‘original’ and ‘women acting to defend each other’ being quite on the same spectrum.

Because, nope. You don’t see it much in fiction or anywhere else either.

Yet, sometimes, in real life, yanno, one woman might well very quietly step between a woman and some sort of very bad thing directed at that woman, and stop it.

I’m thinking of what my maternal grandmother did, now and again, standing between my father during his worse moments, and me, when I was young (and so was he).

Love, C.

I see a problem with equating “original” with “this will be empowering to women.” Empowerment may be many shades of good, useful and whatnot, but it’s hardly original. Remember the old folk tale about the husband and wife who switch jobs for the day, the wife does fine plowing the fields while meanwhile the husband has put the cow on the roof to eat the grass thatch and it falls through? Moral: Guys are dumb, chicks kick ass. Empowering to women, yes. Original, no.

For an example of turnabout, with exactly the sort of BS Alis is talking about, but with the men, anyone seen the film “Practical Magic”? Anyone remember the first husband who dies because of the family curse, whathisname, Penis? Yes, there’s women’s empowerment out the wazoo, but we’re also expected to sympathize with a 200 year dynasty of incompetent witches who seem to think it’s more imporant to wear garden party hats and enchant their blender for margaritas and chick power than it would be to end a family curse that kills any men who actually love them and any women who love them back. Yes, the curse is ended, but only because the line finally produced a semi-competent witch, and there isn’t a single cross word for the margarita-swilling aunts whose love spell is responsible for said witch’s first hubby’s deadness. At the end of the film, all the women are the town are applauding the witches, presumably because no one in this inbred village was related to Mr. Penis or even knew him.

The writers didn’t quite have the guts to have those two guys who go in to beat up the Chief and Helo go so far as to rape them, did they?

I thought exactly the same thing.

Still, the fighter crew mechanic deck and the pilots have weapons, know how to use them. Why are they less privileged to run to the rescue of Boomer than the 2 guys? Other, than, of course, none of the women had baby mama-erotic-romance issues with Boomer.

Which again, would still make more sense, over all, considering everything, because history of culture has taught us, when push comes to shove, especially in war, men will push their love object under the bus to save their own a$$es almost every time.

Please, guys, notice the “almost” ….

This isn’t a diss on any o’ yall. It’s about, like, well, why this choice rather than that choice, which would have been more dramatic, more interesting, more original, and far more egalitarian than the choice they chose.

After all, by now this is a crew that has been fighting for quite a while by now. It knows how to fight. Boomer fought. Thrace and 6 fight each other. Blah blah blah. We have seen women fighting. But basically, fighting only each other.

Not for each other. I would, I have fought for my women friends, with our own weapons. We’re not soldiers, etc. But surely, if we were, we’d use those weapons too.

Love, C.

I read mainly fantasy, and based on the examples in my library I realised I had 2 choices for a female character.

“The elegant helpless female who needs to be rescued at the critical moment, or the gutsy, closet warrior, who needs rescuing at the critical moment.”

I think perhaps I’ll just look at some of the normal women around me and use their personalities - maybe even talk to one or two. There’s an idea!