Top 6 Ways to Undermine Your Female Hero Part 6
In which we discuss what the Smurfette Principle is and conclude the series
5. The Smurfette Principle
We finally come to the end of the Top 6 Ways To Undermine Your Female Hero with one of the most conventional forms of undermining female heroes: The Smurfette Principle. First coined by Katha Pollitt in The New York Times, this is a trope in which the cast of characters consists of a group of males but only one woman. As scholar Carolyn Cocca points out in Superwomen: Gender, Power and Representation, the issue with this trope is that it weakens the woman not only as a hero but as a character by burdening her with the impossible task of representing all women. As the sole representative of her gender, the lone Smurfette is forced to play to stereotypes of women in order to encompass as many women as possible, and therefore predictably fails to be a compelling or likable character due to her subsequent one-dimensionality.
What makes this trope so toxic is that it attacks female heroes on two fronts: quality and quantity. Because the Smurfette Principle demands that there be only one woman in the cast, her character is reduced to a mere figurehead of femininity instead of being allowed to be simply human. The less female characters there are, the lower the quality and substance of these characters becomes because the more they are forced to either perform a generalized stereotype of their gender, or to “subvert” their gender through tropes such as the “tomboy girl.”
On the surface, the Smurfette Principle appears to be the sexist trope closest to extinction. And yet, a 2018 study found that there are fewer speaking roles for women now than there were a decade ago. Hence the irony in Felicity Jones’ words when she claimed in 2016 that “female heroes are now the norm,” especially considering that her character was one of only two women in the male-dominated cast of Rogue One (2016). Female heroes may finally be on the rise with films such as Birds of Prey (2020), Mulan (2020) and Black Widow (2021), but before we allow studios to congratulate themselves for having made a couple of female superhero films, we must put pressure on them to improve both the quality and the quantity of their female heroes. This means putting every title and every show through the Bechdel Test, watching out for all of the harmful tropes listed in this series and not settling for the few good female heroes we’ve been granted so far. Because, unfortunately, these storytelling tropes do have real-life consequences, and the consequence of the Smurfette Principle is that it perpetuates stereotypes such as “women are too emotional,” or even “women talk too much,” to the point where women convince themselves that those stereotypes are true because that is all they’ve ever seen themselves portrayed as. For better or worse, media is a reflection of culture, and what it reflects now is the world’s inability to accept neither three-dimensional female heroes nor a realistic male-female ratio.
Final Conclusion
It is impossible for most female heroes to avoid these limiting tropes, no matter how well written they are or how good the writers’ intentions may have been. Elizabeth Swann in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has an epic (and seriously underrated) character arc in which she foils gender roles in a literal sense by becoming king of the pirates, but this does not save her from often being the Damsel in Distress or always being the lone Smurfette. Similarly, Star Wars ladies are remarkably powerful and considerably less sexualized than most female superheroes, but also tend to be the lone Smurfette in their respective trilogies. Wonder Woman has never been violated, is not demonized and is not a Damsel in Distress, but she is still Othered, and is also disappointingly objectified in the theatrical (and sadly, still the official) version of the Justice League film. No female hero is safe. Especially not from objectification, which is arguably the most long-running and insidious of these tropes. As a matter of fact, it has even been used to disempower male characters by "emphasizing [their] terrible lack of agency.” Case in point, Bucky Barnes is one of Marvel’s most popular characters among women, who likely find him more relatable than the traditionally masculine Captain America because they subconsciously recognize and identify with the “female coding” of his character, particularly in Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014). The same could be said of Loki’s appeal to women, as he is also female-coded and, coincidentally also enjoyed more popularity for a long time than the heavily juiced up Thor (at least until Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok (2017) effectively rebooted the character and let Chris Hemsworth's humor shine).
Captain Marvel may have broken box office records, but her greatest strength is that, like Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, she is undermined by less of these tropes than any other female hero. There is no romance plot to emphasize her heteronormativity and she is not objectified through the male gaze (if anything, she is queer-coded and is, in fact, queerbait). And while the symbolism of Captain Marvel freeing herself from the constraints of patriarchy to achieve her true power is somewhat cliche, it is nevertheless an important story to tell because it resonates with many women and young girls. Yet, the film's true achievement, like Wonder Woman back in 2017, is in the steps it is taking to deconstruct gender roles and what it means to be a powerful hero by avoiding most of these harmful tropes (objectification, The Damsel In Distress, The Tragic Origins, etc). As this deconstruction of gender begins to take place, our new female heroes will pave the way not only for women in film, but for queer and non-binary characters as well. We have seen this with DC’s Supergirl TV series, which was the first Warner Bros. project to cast a transgender woman. Maybe once the standard for power and heroism stops being so male-centric, the James Camerons of the world will no longer confuse a feminized hero with a sexualized one, and the ‘hero’ will become truly ungendered.
Yet, it is not necessary for all stories to avoid every single one of these tropes; sometimes a traumatic origin, when treated with the proper respect and consideration on the part of the writers, can provide critical insights into stories and experiences that really do need to be shared, as Jessica Jones (2015) did with rape and abuse. Sometimes watching a woman grow from being a damsel in distress to becoming King of all pirates can be a very satisfying character arc, as Elizabeth Swann’s was. And sometimes it is important to see women battling past abuse, trauma and their inner demons onscreen in a human way so we can see ourselves in them, the way we do with the protagonists of Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey. The defeat of these tropes can be just as significant in storytelling as the avoidance of them, when done right.
What we do not need is to see these tropes employed as a means of undermining women (and other under or misrepresented groups) by continuing to enforce toxic gender roles. Practically by default, the only trope from this list that male heroes tend to suffer is The Tragic Backstory. Yet, laughably, the tragedy is almost always something that befalls the woman in the hero’s life. Even Deadpool, the first pansexual superhero to be portrayed on film, could not escape this trope, seeing as he makes the decision to be experimented on in the first film and then watches his girlfriend be killed in front of him in the second film in yet another case of women being 'fridged.' It may seem impossible to have a fully fledged female hero that is not burdened by any of these tropes, but in fact it is definitely possible to avoid these tropes and still have compelling (and commercially successful) female narratives. Black Panther (2018) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) are proof of this, with Black Panther being one of the few examples of such strong female characterization that it completely avoids every single one of the tropes here discussed. And, coincidentally, it was also the first superhero film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, while Mad Max: Fury Road, a film which was centered entirely around society’s need to stop objectifying and constraining women through gender essentialism, essentially "won" the Oscars in 2016. The fact that men can naturally be heroes, be powerful, or be capable of violence, is never questioned through the use of these tropes in films, and that is just as it should be. Now, however, it is time to make that the norm for everyone else too, and instead make the employment of these tropes the rare and thought-through exception.
By R. Jordan Ortiz
We want to thank everyone for sticking with us through this series. Superheroes and gender issues are important to us (as you can probably tell), and the influence that media has on our way of thinking should not be underestimated. We hope you’ve managed to take away something useful from this series. For those who are interested, we will continue to analyze all our favorite pop culture objects in the most open-minded way we can. Thank you and see you next week! :)