"I believe in strong women", reads an image that I happened upon in my Pinterest feed, labeled "feminism" and with a cropped picture of a woman with dark lipstick in the background. "I believe in the woman who is able to stand up for herself. I believe in the woman who doesn't need to hide behind her husband's back". The post then continues with more examples of how a true Strong Woman behaves; she's confident, headstrong, independent - never one to back down, never the victim, never weak.
It's not very hard to understand why this kind of woman is a liberating ideal for many feminists around the world. Of course, in a world where we're still constantly fed the idea that girls and women are sensitive, fragile creatures whose sole purpose in life is to find a man to cling on to, having personality traits that are the complete opposite of that feels like a rebellion. A woman who makes her own decisions and doesn't need a man to save her is a punch in the face to the society that expects her to be the opposite. And I love that idea.
But I can't help but feel a knot in my stomach every time I read something along the lines of the image I quoted above, or every time a magazine or a website compiles lists like "10 bad-ass female characters that are great role models for girls" (ok, maybe that exact title is a bit too exaggerated to actually exist, but you get the idea...). The motivation for why these women are such great role models usually goes something like "Anna knows exactly what she wants and won't let any bullshit get in her way", or "Sarah is the last person you'd see crying herself to sleep at night because of a man - she has more important things to worry about".
Why do I feel bad when I read or hear these kinds of things? It took me some time to figure out the reason - as a feminist, shouldn't I celebrate depictions of women that are the antithesis of the smothering damsel in distress cliché? After a lot of thinking back and forth I realised my problem with Strong Women actually consists of two separate –although closely connected– issues.
The first issue is that, by idolising these traits, we're simply replacing one smothering ideal with another. Much like the Real Women Have Curves campaign, I feel that the Strong Women concept does more harm than good because it completely misses the point of why the ideal is smothering in the first place. Well, I shouldn't say completely –an ideal that is essentially designed to keep half of the population subordinated to the other is certainly more harmful and imprisoning than one that is a reaction to that very system–, but by propagating the Strong Women ideal we're still not doing anything about the root of the problem: pressuring people to live up to a very limited set of traits in order to be true to your gender, whatever those traits may be. Do we really get any closer to solving the problem of women's body anxieties by condemning skinny women instead of chubbier ones? If the answer to that question is no, then why would it be a good idea to try the same approach when it comes to personality traits?
The other issue has to do with the word strong itself. First of all, what do we even mean when we say that a person is strong (well, except for muscular)? The word is so open for interpretation that it's hard to tell what people actually have in mind when they want women to be strong. Independent, confident, decisive, stubborn, free-thinking, extroverted, bold? I don't really see any problem with encouraging any of these characteristics per se, but all too often I sense the underlying message don't be weak when you're encouraged to be a strong woman. And this is what I find to be so tragic. We've already succeeded in raising the other half of the population to be just this: un-weak, un-emotional, strong. And what results has it yielded? An entire gender that feels ashamed, if not completely incapable, of crying and talking about their emotions. Why would we want even more of this? It feels like such a misguided action to strive towards being the exact opposite of what we're expected to be, when that opposite is just as extreme and hurtful as the original norm. Why shouldn't women, as well as men and everyone else, be allowed to be weak? Are being emotional, sensitive, shy, introverted or careful (or whatever people choose to characterise as weak – a word that feels as arbitrary as strong) inherently bad? Of course, if any of these characteristics becomes a problem that severely lowers the quality of your life or the lives of those around you, seeking help for it is a good idea (and being shamed for being "weak" is definitely NOT going to make it any better). But overall, these "weak" qualities are just like most other qualities; good to have in some situations, not so good in others. Too much of it can become a problem, as well as too little. Amazing to some, annoying to others. And, most of all, human.
So why don't we just stop with idealising a certain set of traits and putting gender labels on them. People can be emotional, cool-headed, introverted, extroverted, clingy, independent, weak and strong. You can be all of these at the same time, or just a few of them, or some of them in certain situations and the complete opposite in others. You might cry yourself to sleep because of a boy or a girl one night, but feel independent and empowered the next. You might have all of the traits traditionally associated with your gender, or none of them. And none of these is a wrong way to be, whether for your gender or for humans in general. They're simply human traits.
Yes, I want to see more portrayals of strong women in media. But I also want to see more portrayals of weak women. I want to see portrayals of women as full-fledged human beings, with whatever traits they may have. Because believe it or not, that's what we are.
