Sabrina Is As Human As a Faerie Can Be: A Rant Against Hollywood-Style Feminism

I’m going to go off on a writer’s rant for today’s blogpost about how I really can’t stand Hollywood sometimes, especially when it comes to how it portrays women.

No, I’m not going to accuse it of baring all our assets all the time, turning us into a closed box of bedroom fantasy characters. Though that’s true too.

I’m actually going to take issue with how kick-derriere those bedroom-fantasy heroines are these days. They’re physically, emotionally, psychologically and intellectually capable of handling just about anything that comes their way.

In other words, they’re not really human. They’re false portrayals of what feminism can be, giving women everywhere the idea that we can constantly bend a boardroom of hostile coworkers to our will, turn the tables on four – count them: four – bad guys who have us trussed up in an old warehouse without messing up a single hair on our head, and manage our personal lives with the casual cool of… well… someone who has the patent out on being casually cool.

Clearly, I’m running low on awesome metaphors today. I suppose that means I don’t qualify for Hollywood-style feminism. Which just happens to be my point: I’m usually a confident woman, but I do have my limits. There’s no way I can take on everything under the sun.

In writing her dark and twisted novels, including run-away bestseller “Gone Girl,” Gillian Flynn had this to say about how she portrays women: “Isn’t it time to acknowledge the ugly side? I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims [and] soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books.”

While I still quite like my spunky heroines, I understand exactly what Flynn means: Women aren’t perfect. (Before you get all cocky, boys, neither are you.) So why try to depict us otherwise? What’s so wrong with just being human… capable of good, evil and mediocrity?

Now admittedly, with her superior faerie strength, Sabrina does have a physical edge on us non-winged women. And she also successfully handles a lot of psychological stuff in “To Err Is Faerie.”

But as any instructor at Langley will tell you, everyone has their breaking point. And I’m sure if they knew about faeries’ existence, they wouldn’t amend that statement one bit.

My writer’s philosophy is that fiction should reflect reality, even in the fantasy genre. Which is why Sabrina isn’t consistently kick-derriere throughout the Faerietales series. She falls, she breaks, and she needs help putting herself back together sometimes.

Because faerie or not, she’s still quite human in the sense that she’s mortal. Unlike Hollywood-style feminism.