Yesterday was Gianna’s birthday and I can’t believe what a beautiful and fascinating young lady she is becoming. Yes, she is six years old, still a child, but grown up enough that I am getting a glimpse of the woman she is becoming. 
It brought me back to looking at these pictures of her and an article I read about “Strong Female Characters”in movies. I can not do the article justice. I recommend you go read it. I’ll wait here. (If you don’t have the patience/interest, I’ll sum it up. The Strong Female Character as they are currently written is a poor attempt at “equality”. The Strong Female character is bland and just as much of a box as The Damsel In Distress. Instead, why not create female characters that are “interesting”?) I’ve been thinking a lot about the article since I read it, but not in relation to cinema. What is this cultural push for our daughters to be Strong Women, and do I think it is a goal worth pursuing? Is that all they should strive to be? Strong? Strength is all well and good, but is it all the only thing to strive for? Why not Affectionate? What about Curious? What about Intelligent? Heck, Why not Vulnerable? Compassionate? Tender? 
Instead, why not help my daughters grow up Interesting? Help them to discover passions, embrace their strengths, and work through their weakness. Allow them to grow into that unique blend of flaws and gifts that make up their fascinating little selves.
Strong by itself is a box is too small, too ambiguous, to contain my daughters.
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To steal borrow from the article:
I want her to be free to express herself I want her to have meaningful, emotional relationship I want her to be weak sometimes I want her to be strong in a way that isn’t about physical dominance or power I want her to cry if she feels like crying I want her to ask for help I want her to be who she is
Have you noticed this push for “Strong Women”? Is it a good thing? If it isn’t, what is? I am processing this out loud here and I want to hear what you think!
Loved that article! Thanks for sharing. When I worked as a children’s librarian I always got annoyed at the “strong female characters” in children’s lit who are always dressing up as a boy and running away from home to escape from sewing duties. Because as we all know, sewing is the worst.
I can’t seem to get the link to the article to work, so at the risk of sounding stupid I will opine anyway. Which is that I agree with you, that there are a lot of different ways to be a great female character. To me, a Strong Female Character isn’t just the cliched, “hot,” kick-ass character Hollywood is currently so enamored of (but see Pacific Rim for a great corrective), but rather any female character who is three-dimensional, has an actual personality, is active rather than reactive or passive, and isn’t just there to serve as a love interest to the male character. That’s one of the (many) things that made Battlestar Galactica such a phenomenal show — between Roslin (possibly the best female character to ever appear on TV), Starbuck, Six, Boomer, Athena, Callie, and others, you got to see a huge variety of women with different strengths, weaknesses, flaws, quirks, likeability, moralities, personalities, etc. You know, just like real women.
ooohhh.. I like that “active” instead of passive. yes! 🙂
I love this post! I am an 80’s child, and I remember we were told to be strong, confident women who could do any job we wanted to! But we were never told that one of those jobs could be “just” a mom or “just” a housewife… And now that I am older and I love to sew and knit and cook, I am kind of amazed that I found these hobbies when all of those things kind of looked down on when I was a kid. I’m a professional woman and I have a family and when I really take stock of what I love about my life, the best things about me have nothing to do with my strength! So yes, I totally agree with you about teaching our daughters to be “strong”… what about kindness, empathy, curiosity, patience and grace?