MINTZ: There are no “strong female characters”

Among my friends and family, I am known as The Feminist and I am proud of it. I am the girl who will derail a discussion at the dinner table if my dad says something about traditional gender roles, and I am the person my friends go to if they need “that article with the graphics about the Pink Tax” (something that has actually happened).

So when my boyfriend, who is a screenwriter, asked me a question the other day, I knew immediately what it was going to be about. And, in fact, it was: how can I make sure I’m writing female characters in a way that does them justice?

First I thanked him for actually being concerned about that when most big-budget screenwriters aren’t, and then I started listing off examples.

But when faced with the question of what it was, exactly, that made these characters strong female characters, I drew a blank. I realized that these characters had absolutely nothing in common, besides that they were all female. Leslie Knope and Olivia Pope could not be more different, save for the fact that they both work in government and their last names rhyme.

It took some self-reflection and a good night’s sleep, but I think I finally have the answer to my dilemma. Ladies and gentlemen: there is no such thing as a strong female character.

I know. But before you kick me off my feminist soapbox forever, let me clarify.

Actresses are asked about this all the time, but most recently, actress Sophia Bush spoke about this concept at an interview with AOL. She basically said that she’s always asked on the red carpet about how it feels to play such “strong females” while her male counterparts are never asked how it feels to play strong male characters.

Female characters are frequently only allowed to be one brand of “strong” —  the triumph-above-all survivor, the leather-clad (or nearly-naked) ass-kicker, the rude bossy type, the tough misandrist — you get the picture. Men, conversely, are not relegated to one small box. There’s a world of possibilities for them, from ass-kicker wearing a normal amount of clothing to ladies’ man in a cute romantic comedy where they show just enough emotion but not too much so not as to appear too feminine.

And therein lies the problem. Male characters are, well, male, and therefore seen as inherently strong without having to lean on one of a few “strong character” stereotypes. Female characters are inherently not strong because they are female. The only way to make a female character “strong” is to take away some aspect of her femininity: her ability to be emotional, or weak, or kind or loving. Not to say that, in reality, femininity is tied with weakness or emotionality, but we seem to be reluctant to associate it with strength.

While representation of females in the television and film worlds is getting a lot better, we still have a long way to go. Part of this is because of our negative view of femininity, but another part of it is the lack of female writers. A 2014 study by the Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that only 14.1 percent of all theatrical-released films in 2011 had a female writer on board.

Of course, all of these male writers cannot convincingly write female characters that have a fully fleshed-out humanity, and they don’t. According to the same survey, only about 25 percent of lead characters were female. Think of the discrepancy here: if there are more female characters than female writers, well, you can do the math. That’s a lot of men writing women. And a lot of potential for it to go horribly wrong.

So how is one “supposed” to write a female character to ensure she is as close to a realistic person as possible? Some people like The Bechdel Test. The test, named for graphic novelist Alison Bechdel, has three conditions: a story has to 1.) have two named women in it who 2.) talk to each other about 3.) something other than a man. A film can pass no parts of The Bechdel Test, one part, two parts or all three.

You can probably guess that films written by females were overwhelmingly more likely to pass The Bechdel Test, but ultimately, even the creator of The Bechdel Test herself has said that it originated mostly as a joke. The test is effectively useless: when you actually put it to the test, any movie, no matter how egregiously sexist or vapid its content, passes it so long as it has two female leads (for example, “The Bratz Movie”). In addition, a movie with one incredible, fully fleshed-out female character such as “Gravity” doesn’t pass the test because, in that case, Sandra Bullock’s character is the only female.

A better test of female humanity in films is called The Sexy Lamp Test, which has much simpler conditions. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s actually a great barometer of whether or not the woman in the film is only there because the director needed some sex appeal (think Megan Fox in “Transformers”).

The test is basically this: if a female character can be removed from the story and be replaced by a sexy lamp — that is, if the female’s sole purpose for being there is to look nice and maybe act as a motivating object for the lead men in the film — then the female’s presence for any diversity measures doesn’t count. Nice try, Michael Bay.

But ultimately, a film does not need to pass either of these tests or any other tests that one could come up with in order to show that women are people, too. You should be able to see parts of yourself in every female character you see on screen — that’s what makes a character human. The “I want to hang out with her” when Olivia Pope drinks red wine and eats popcorn after a long day, or the “I would do that too” when Cookie Lyon snaps after finally having had enough of Lucius’ illegal antics.

Female characters should be able to throw a punch and they should be able to cry. They should be able to break up, be broken up with, make poor decisions and be 100 percent right. Female characters are not plot functions, they’re women, and they should be treated as real people just as much as male characters are.