New Wave: Badass Female Characters

I decided to write this after reading an article about Gloria Steinem turning seventy-five in an article featured on msn.com. For those of you, who don't know, she is a feminist icon, journalist, and social and political activist. In the interview, she said that a lot has changed with the women's movement, but yet there are still some hurdles that need to be addressed. In order to overcome these hurdles, consciousness in both men and women need to change. With this said, I firmly believe film to sometimes mirror our society.

Too often, I get a little annoyed when I see women in film portrayed as nothing more but weak, wallflowers, or just pretty decorations to move the film along. When I was in college, I was told by an instructor that the female lead was violent (by the way, the female was a drug lord), yet she said nothing about another classmate's story whose character committed glorified rapes and violence against the female characters. Mmm, maybe that's why I've always been drawn to some of the films of Pedro Almodovar and Federico Fellini, because the females are anything but wallflowers, but they also demonstrate how this minority group is sometimes exploited by the larger society. I've also been told recently that if I wanted to have a strong female lead in my script, to make her an assassin. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing a film with a femme fatale, but giving into the "status quo" defies the purpose.

Below, I've listed Eight of my favorite female characters in film (Some fictional and some real life):

1. She-Ra, He-Man's Twin Sister. I grew up watching this in the 80s and yes I will admit that I begged my parents to buy the She-Ra sword and headdress!