bookgazing (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bookgazing) wrote2009-09-07 11:41 am
bookgazing) wrote2009-09-07 11:41 am
Evil - You're doing it wrong
sarahtales wrote this post about how female villain are often very sexy and how this means that evil gets all tangled up in sexuality and femininity so that a particular kind of highly sexualised beauty becomes associated with evil (please go read it, she puts it so much better). And it got me thinking about how difficult it is for women to write female villains that don’t make them go ‘ew look what I did to my gender’.
If your female villain is of the incredibly hot persuasion she’s reinforcing the idea that women who are too beautiful are evil temptresses, bent on destroying our virulent hero’s morals.
If you go the other way and make your female villain ugly then you’re backing up the witch stereotype, where ugly, odd or unusual women were suspected of nefarious pacts with the devil.
How about if your villain is plain, that should be fine right? No, no, because then you bring everything back to the mirror idea to the ‘hot women are evil’ thought by showing that plain girls are (as men have always suspected) bitter and unfulfilled because of their inferior looks.
So my question for you guys is how might a female author create a female villain without making her a stereotype that reinforces traditional ideas about beauty and evil? Does anyone have some examples of this kind of fictional female villain?
If your female villain is of the incredibly hot persuasion she’s reinforcing the idea that women who are too beautiful are evil temptresses, bent on destroying our virulent hero’s morals.
If you go the other way and make your female villain ugly then you’re backing up the witch stereotype, where ugly, odd or unusual women were suspected of nefarious pacts with the devil.
How about if your villain is plain, that should be fine right? No, no, because then you bring everything back to the mirror idea to the ‘hot women are evil’ thought by showing that plain girls are (as men have always suspected) bitter and unfulfilled because of their inferior looks.
So my question for you guys is how might a female author create a female villain without making her a stereotype that reinforces traditional ideas about beauty and evil? Does anyone have some examples of this kind of fictional female villain?