The Case Of The Strong Female Character

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I’m on all of the social media platforms. I use each one of them differently for various reasons. Each one has a different audience and I can reach a wider group by using them all. For example I’m on X (formerly Twitter) but I don’t use it to interact with my readers. I use it mainly to network with other authors, creep around the edges of the book publishing world, and to listen in on what others are chatting about in the universe of literary pursuits. There are a lot of literary agents there, you know the Gate Keepers to the world of traditional publishing. Publishing used to be the higher sanctum of a select few. We’ve all heard the stories of authors sending out their manuscripts to hundreds of agents only to be rejected over and over. Thankfully self publishing has changed that landscape for many people, other authors like me. But Traditional Publishing is still a big business and the agents are still the gate keepers too letting in the authors they deem worthy.

Scrolling through X I see lots of agents posting. They will post that they are no longer accepting queries because they received over 250 overnight. Or that they are accepting queries …”next Tuesday but only between the hours of 2 -6 pm”. Many of them will post about what they are specifically looking for, such as “Now accepting queries from authors who have written sci fi romance with magical unicorns with manes of purple and blue hair.” I’m being silly of course but that’s really what I see. Agents in Traditional Publishing are looking for very specific things that the industry algorithm has indicated will sell.

Last week I saw several agents posting about accepting queries from authors with strong female characters. Insert Michelle’s huge eye roll. I just recently had an experience with the phrase “strong female character.”

Back in October I was at a book signing event with a couple of other authors when I overheard one of them trying to grab the attention of two young ladies walking by.

“Hey! Are you interested in a book with a strong female character?” my fellow MALE author said.

I actually felt my body cringe when I heard him. I felt the remark was incredibly inappropriate. It was sexist in my opinion. Why should girls be interested only in books with strong female characters. Isn’t it possible they might be interested in a book with a strong male character? With his off the cuff sales pitch he had basically labeled these young ladies in one fell swoop. Girls only read books about other girls. What he was essentially saying was that these young ladies would only be interested in a story where the woman was the hero, the victor, the conqueror. I struggled for the rest of the day to stand beside him. From a sales perspective I get it. You say whatever you need to say to get someone to take a look at your book. But his comment really bothered me.

So you can imagine how I felt when I saw agents saying the same thing!

Look, I’m not anti strong women. I’m actually a very strong woman. You have to be pretty darn strong to raise five children, self publish an award winning novel and then turn a campground around from run down to top rated in one season! So my problem is not with strong women.

I came into my womanhood at a time when women were expected to do everything and be everything and conquer everything. Women of my generation were expected to marry. Give birth to children, without epidurials by the way! In my day we did it without any pain medication if we could! We prided ourselves on our birthing horror stories on how long our labor was and if we gave birth standing up or lying in the bed. Then we went right home and did all the housework. Oh yes, keeping the house clean was our job! And it was the beginning of the “all natural” trend but we didn’t have organic anything in the stores. If we felt compelled by society to feed our children healthier foods we had to make those foods, at home, from scratch!!! Not only were we supposed to be strong during this phase of our life but after the children were a little older we were supposed to make sure all of them were involved in activities. As many activities as humanly possible! Gone were the days of our mothers where all they had to worry about was dragging kids to Boy or Girl Scouts. No when I was a mother your kids were expected to be involved in sports, the arts, community and academic clubs and organizations. If your kids were not each doing at least three different activities a week, plus school you were a slacker of a mother. Then once your kids got older and you’d managed to fill out all of their FIFA college forms for them, took out loans for them to attend school and saw them off, well then your parents needed help. So you then took on having to care for aging parents after just having finished caring for children.

Add on top of all of this the fact that we were supposed to have careers too! And not just a job, no these had to be a career where we became someone really great and important. We had to climb corporate ladders, break through glass ceilings, be the first, the best, the smartest, all because we were a woman. Oh and then 50% of the marriages failed so half of these incredible women were then trying to accomplish all of these things as single moms! I’m telling you the stress was intense and the expectations unrealistic for most of us. The reality was a whole generation of women became burnt out. These were incredibly strong female characters living real life on a daily basis. I know, I was one of them, trying to do it all!

For me reading has always been an escape. A place to go to that takes me away from the toils of my every day life. As a really strong woman, I don’t want to read about one when I’m trying to escape! I want to read about women that are pampered, have staff that takes care of everything. Women who meet their friends for coffee in the middle of the day because they have nothing better to do! These are my go to reads. And if there is a handsome swarthy male character in there, who just happens to have rippling muscles and saves the day by the end of the story I am okay with that! As an exhausted strong woman I am perfectly fine with him taking care of everything!

I’m not sure where this need for strong female characters is coming from. I refuse to make blanket generational statements on cultural shifts. As an author, rather than reader, my preference for balanced roles for all my characters is what I shoot for. In The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler I wouldn’t say that Lydia or Nelly were strong female characters. In the end they didn’t ride in on a stallion and save George. All three of them had trials in their lives that they had to overcome, they were strong, it didn’t matter if they were male or female.

In my next book the main female character is Alicen. Again she does not dominate the storyline. She has one heck of a journey but she is helped along on that journey by men, Gavan in particular but also Jeremy. Is she weak because she needs assistance from a man from time to time? Goodness no! I wouldn’t want to have to endure some of the things she does. She’s far stronger than I would be, but she’s not alone in that strength in the book.

I’m not sure I agree with this need for strong female characters. I write balanced characters. I guess it remains to be seen if I will ever fit in the Traditional Publishing world. I don’t write what AI and the algorithms deem worthy. I write what I like to read, and in the end that’s just fine by me!