The Ponder Room

Five lessons learnt about female characters from Tara Moss (The Fictional Woman part 2)

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By on Being female, Consumer Psychology, Inspiration, Movies, People/Interviews, Review, Writing

Finally I get to the follow up promised post about the evening with Tara Moss. Funny how one evening can have such a lasting effect. I arrived at the Dolphin Theatre on a high having pressed ‘save’ on the 88,000 word draft of my first fiction novel. Afterwards, as I made my way home, I vowed to review what my female characters were doing. You might want to too. If so here are five things to ponder.



Tara Moss © The Ponder Room

 


For Moss’s latest book The Fictional Woman she researched how women are depicted on screen and paper. The following points left me pondering a lot …

Ratio of male to female characters

That the ratio of men to women on screen is 3 to 1, I’d never noticed that.
 

Bechdel Test
When two women do appear together in a scene they tend to be talking about men.
 
This astounded me as when I think about my closest group of female friends, our menfolk are the last thing we talk about. Instead we ponder, work issues, why our computers hate us, the housing market, medical appointments, haircuts, sports cars, the joy of Sunday sleep in’s and chocolate. There’s even a test called the Bechdel test that looks at this. Interestingly the films that pass the test make more money than those that fail. Surely that would be a hint.

Diversity of female stories

Moss found that our storytelling lacked diversity, saying ‘we are diverse but other stories are not being told.’ She cited girls’ children’s books and their continued focus on stereotypes, princesses, as an example.

Reliance of archetypes
Moreover she said writers rely on habit and archetypes in stories, with women falling into one of three archetypes.

‘The virgin, the whore and the witch or crone.’


The witch/crone was usually an older women. They tended to have knowledge or power, and were probably jealous of younger women.

‘Older women are either made bad or irrelevant, not authoritative like an older wise man is.’

Strong females
Female characters are described as a ‘strong female character’, and yet ‘you never have to say it’s about a strong male character’, explained Moss.

The ‘F’ Word

Naturally the discussion ultimately led to the ‘F’ word …Feminism. It was interesting to hear Moss’s opinion that ‘the label needs work’, something I have heard often in some of the consumer psychology projects I’ve undertaken. Moss said that she meets people who preferred to call themselves ‘pro-feminism’, a ‘feminist allay’, into ‘equality’ or a ‘humanist’. When she asked who was a feminist in the audience it was surprising how many men raised their hands.

Tara Moss © The Ponder Room


She also mentioned Social Media

 

Social Media

A big fan of social media, Moss said ‘it has a powerful impact on how we can share stories’. It also enables people like her to ‘put the record straight’, making her lamented that it’s much harder for people who don’t have a public platform.

‘We can communicate without intermediately changing the angle.’

 cont…

All is not lost however, there has been movement in the right direction such as the third gender box and stories like Frozen, explained Moss. 

‘Male, Female and other, it’s good on paper but it’s not in the culture yet.’

Moss urged writers to ‘consider the way we tell stories, not stick to archetypes.’

‘There are just as many inspirational female fictional characters, pharaohs, pirates, write about their stories.’

In the days and weeks that followed I pondered:
  1. Whether I’d been lazy and relied on archetypes and stereotypes in my own novel;
  2. How to make these other stories more visible;
  3. When am I going to find time to read her book?
For the first blog post on Tara’s new book go to https://www.theponderroom.com/2014/06/how-to-combat-labels-people-put-on-us.html

For more information on Tara’s new book go to http://taramoss.com/

 
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2 Comments

    • The Ponder Room on

      Thanks BIQ, it’s a long way off yet I think, or should I say ponder. It was a really interesting talk, I hope you get to read the book soon. Hope life is treating you well.

      Reply

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