And another thing...

[ivyfic]

Another thing I've been turning over in my head a lot lately. I am deeply enjoying The Musketeers on BBCA. The Three Musketeers was one of my first favorite books. I adored it as a preteen. I so wanted to be a musketeer. In high school, at a carnival, there was a photo booth guy that would photoshop your face onto whatever fictional character you wanted. I chose the musketeers. So he made me D'Artagnan, beard and all. (As an aside, I feel like this is the weird dissonant identification mass media forces on women. I have never wanted to be a man, but I wanted to be a musketeer, and since those were only ever men, there you go.)

But this had me thinking--where's my female musketeers? For real. I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for a team of women that made me feel the way I did about the musketeers, and later about The Hunt for Red October, another film with no women in it at all (unless you count Gates McFadden's one line).

There are action/adventure type things with teams of women, but these tend to go one of two directions. Either they are hyper-sexualized, like Charlie's Angels, or, as is more common in books than movie or tv (cause oh look! women write and edit books! way more than women write and direct film!) is the "sisters of the heart" trope (a phrase I HATE HATE HATE). These are women who are overly and effusively emotional with each other. Now, I have seen groups of women do this (and men! it's not just women), become artificially incredibly emotionally intimate very quickly. I mean, I went to summer camp. I don't know what else you can say about a ceremony where we stand crying while telling each other how much we mean to each other after only knowing each other for SIX WEEKS. Anyway.

But the brotherhoods I see in media? Not effusive. Largely made up of clams. And you don't get clams in groups of women as portrayed in media. Also, while the Musketeers are all awfully hot, they're sexuality isn't the most important part of their characterization, the way it usually is with women in action/adventure.

I had an epiphany, though, about exactly what it is that I am missing: stories about groups of women soldiers. These stories of brotherhood that I love so much, they're usually stories of soldiers. Action adventure and loyalty, all together. And right now, I can't think of a single anything that was about women soldiers. There are plenty of smurfettes in media about soldiers, everything from the GI Joe movies to The Losers. But a group of soldiers that is exclusively or even mainly women? I got nothing. Closest I can think is Battlestar Galactica.

So yes. Where are my stories of women warriors? (without cleavage being the main focus of attention) Where's my all for one and one for all sisterhood? Dear Hollywood, I am waiting.

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

Not just female soldiers but teammates of any kind, really. It's tough when there's just the few and they often don't work together.

For example, what about sports team? I think that connection is so clear it's of no surprise to me that a load of Merlin modern AU stories transplant the knights onto sports teams.

[ivyfic]

Yes, there is a serious lack of female groups generally. I'm just realizing that I always thought I had a kink for brotherhoods (which led me to question whether I deep down believed that women were incapable of that kind of connection) but I think I actually have a kink for soldiers.

Which suddenly makes a whole lot more sense of why I LOVE LOVE LOVE Mulan.

Re the Merlin thing, yeah. In The Musketeers, there are three key women in the show: Milady, Constance, and the Queen. But ain't none of them musketeers. They're all proscribed in some way by their femininity, and all are secondary characters. The one with the most backstory--Milady--is actually just a part of Athos's backstory. It's not even her own. (And yes, I know this is how it is in the source material.)

I've been turning over what I was trying to say about wanting to be a male musketeer. Cause it wasn't that I wanted to be a man, but I also didn't want to be a female musketeer. Cause if you made one of them a girl, or added a girl to the group, she would inherently be treated completely differently, by the others, and by the meta narrative of the show. A girl musketeer would always be a girl first. And I wanted to be a girl and a musketeer, but not be othered in the way that Miss Male Characters always are. That is I think at the heart of consuming media as a woman (or any other disempowered group). Wanting to be yourself and in that position, but knowing that as yourself you never could be, so having to choose. Even in fantasy.

(The only medium I've seen add a girl to a mix without making her a girl first and everything else second is, unsurprisingly, genderbending fanfic. Which is why I keep reading it.)

[yourlibrarian]

That reminds me that I saw a story today about how Thor is going to be a woman, which immediately made me think of an Avengers AU fic where Jane became Thor.