How Girls are Portrayed

Hello everyone, a few days ago I saw the movie Barbie, and within that story it discussed how beauty is considered an important thing a girl should have, how a girl should act, and how you look affects how people view you. I will admit that I have tried to push these kinds of messages as well within my stories, but usually in a more subtle fashion.

If you notice within both series I have worked on, both of the lead female characters are viewed as beautiful, but have an unusual kind of beauty. Alba has animalistic characteristics, but is still lovely and considered adorable. Colomba appears completely human, but has an old fashioned sense of beauty and does not follow modern beauty standards. I wanted to do this to show that even though a girl can look different from what is seen as beautiful within the modern eye, they can still be beautiful in a way that makes them stand out.

When it comes to how girls are expected to act, I wanted to make both of these characters a contradiction to what is expected of women. Both of these girls do have feminine hobbies such as needlework and cooking, but they also enjoy practicing hand to hand combat and working with weapons. They also have to play the part of the hero, fighting someone to protect their small part of the world, a duty usually given to a man. I never wanted to have them as either feminine or masculine, but a contradiction, and yet have no issues with being that way. I wanted to show that it is alright to have these different interests and duties in life, no matter what your gender is.

With both characters, they share the same struggle of how people view them based upon how they look. Both are seen as delicate, adorable, and innocent looking. Due to this fact, they were often treated like they couldn’t take care of themselves and needed to be protected. Both feel that their appearance does not match who they really are. They are both very capable young ladies, but very few actually see them that way, which causes them both significant frustration. Since they are always treated this way, they always feel like they need to prove themselves to the world.

I wrote these characters in this fashion because these are the struggles that I have had to face in my life. I have always been considered pretty, I look far younger than I actually am, and I have a rather petite physique. Due to these facts, people tend to not think that I can take care of myself. People believe that I am far too innocent for this world. I have noticed this for a very long time, and I always felt like I needed to prove them wrong. After many years, I realized that I would never be able to prove it to everyone since no matter what I did some would always view me that way even if I proved them wrong every day of my life. In cases like that, I just let them think I am helpless and they do tasks for me since they think I cannot handle it. It is a trick that comes in handy often. I can only hope that with my stories I can influence young girls to not let themselves be tied down by appearances and what the world expects of them just because they are girls.