Representations of witches and witchcraft in literature and in popular culture generally are incredibly useful to us, providing a way of critiquing the situation of women under patriarchy that is both effective and accessible.

Children’s literature is particularly rife with such representations. From the wicked women of Grimm and Perrault and folkloric creations like Baba Yaga and Ceridwen, through C.S. Lewis’ Jadis and the maleficent creations of Mary de Morgan to 20th century inventions like TH White’s Madam Mim and the female students of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, lady sorcerers – both good and evil – have never been far from the pages of the books we have used to educate and entertain our children.

The witches of the classic fairytales and of the stories of the Victorian era are usually monstrous and spiteful, using their magic in service of the Devil – or worse, their own self-interest. They taunt because they can and have few, if any, redeeming characteristics.

In recent decades the image of the image of the witch in popular culture has undergone a transformation, in no small part due to the witches that have appeared in juvenile literature. Since the 1970s, the stories our children have read have overwhelmingly featured good witches (though the frequency with which they are presented as inept deserves some attention). These are my favourites of the modern circle.

Mildred Hubble

Created when Jill Murphy was a teenager, The Worst Witch series follows the adventures of Mildred Hubble as she navigates the social and academic challenges of Miss Cackle’s Academy, a draughty old castle that perches atop a thickly forested mountain and ‘looks more like a prison than a school’.

It’s an uncomfortable enough environment for a youngster to be in, but Mildred has an added disadvantage, being marked as an outsider by her unkempt appearance and her tabby cat (given to her when the rest of the girls receive sleek black kitties).

She was one of those people who always seem to be in trouble. She didn’t exactly mean to break rules and annoy the teachers, but things just seemed to happen when Mildred was around.

– The Worst Witch

The young witch is thoroughly well-meaning and a little too clever for her own good, but she’s also bumbling and frequently wrangling with authority figures. Despite her perceived inadequacies, there’s an air of serendipity that follows her around; her failures and misdeeds inevitably lead to a positive outcome of much greater consequence than the proceeding mishap.

Perhaps this is why she is so well-loved by young readers and so fondly remembered by adults. Often we can see a little of ourselves in Mildred – from her practical incompetence to her trailing shoe laces, she’s a reminder that you don’t have to be perfect to be wonderful.

Mary Newbury

The only work of historical fiction on my list, Celia Rees’ Witch Child is an overtly feminist text. The protagonist of the book (and its sequel, Sorceress) is Mary Newbury, an adolescent witch forced to flee to the New World following the violent death of her grandmother at the hands of
witch-hunters.

Caught between a desire to be true to herself and the hypocrisy of Puritanism, Mary is headstrong, smart, empathetic and brave. She exhibits a tolerance that is unusual for her era and generally makes herself an excellent role model for young readers.

For Mary, independence poses a threat – she lives in a time that fears capable women, and her agency and determination could lead her to the same fate as her grandmother. But still she forges onwards, using her wit and her alacrity to light the way and finding friendship and love among another marginalised group.

I should flee, get away. They will turn on me next unless I go. But where to? What am I to do? Lose myself. Die in the forest. I look around. Eyes, hard with hatred, slide from mine. Mouths twitch between leering and sneering. I will not run away into the forest, because that is what they want me to do.

– Witch Child

Tiffany Aching

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series is often lauded as feminist; he ridicules misogyny and satirises stereotypes, he writes Strong Female Characters. But there is an incongruency to Pratchett’s feminism which undermines his intended message and ultimately, Discworld is, whisper it, not that feminist.

Tiffany Aching is, to paraphrase her creator, the most feminist of the feminists that he does not have. A child savant, she begins her witching career at nine years old when she embarks upon a quest to save her brother from a sinister fairyland a la Labyrinth. She’s got common sense and amazing chutzpah. While remaining a completely believable pre-teen, she’s shrewd, smart and she will not be condescended to.

‘Zoology, eh? That’s a big word, isn’t it?’
‘No, actually it isn’t,’ said Tiffany. ‘Patronising is a big word. Zoology is quite short.’

– The Wee Free Men

As Tiffany grows up (she is approaching 16 at the time of I Shall Wear Midnight) It becomes clear that she is the natural successor to Granny Weatherwax, the number one witch of the Discworld series, as she begins to display magical abilities rare in people of her age as well as exhibiting characteristics she shares with her mentor – gravitas, knowledge, a tendency towards literalism and the belief that a witch should remain single. Tiffany will ultimately become a better witch than Granny, and it is a pleasure to watch her get there.

Minerva McGonagall

Transfiguration Mistress – and latterly Deputy Headmistress – at Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall is both wise and motherly, embodying a binary that women are frequently told they cannot.

McGonagall cares for her charges deeply, but not blindly. She is fair and ethical and has gained great respect within the Hogwarts hierarchy. She’s often sharp with students and teachers alike, she’s a keen believer in rules – without being mindlessly bound to them – and she’s a fan of order in her classroom.

With a witty remark or condescending quip never far from her thin lips, Minerva McGonagall is a force to be reckoned with.

‘Oh, I can’t wait to see McGonagall inspected,’ said Ron happily. ‘Umbridge won’t know what’s hit her.’

– Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Though she is a slight woman in her seventies, McGonagall is a fearless combatant in the battle that rages at the close of the series, directing the action and engaging directly with Voldemort in defence of the institution and the people that she loves.

There are many women in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series that display fine qualities – caring and protective Mrs Weasley; book-smart Hermione; fearless Tonks; even Delores Umbridge can be admired for her sheer bloodymindedness and determination. But McGonagall seems to embody all these qualities and then some.

Winnie the Witch

Winnie the Witch lived in a black house in the forest. The house was black on the outside and black on the inside. The carpets were black. The chairs were black. The bed was black and it had black sheets and black blankets. Even the bath was black.

Winnie lived in her black house with her cat, Wilbur. He was black too. And that is how the trouble began.

– Winnie the Witch

Winnie the Witch – not to be confused with the 1970s Charlton Comics character of the same name – made her first appearance in 1987.

Created by Valerie Thomas and illustrated by Korky Paul, she’s a comical character by design, gangly and tall with an unruly mane of black hair and a reddened nose that I like to imagine comes from a fondness for gin. When we first meet her, she is the only colourful thing in a very dark world. A series of books for middle grade readers featuring Winnie is also available, written by Laura Owen.

But Winnie has no qualms over using her magic to amend the world around her to suit her own purposes without considering the consequences. Winnie is heedless and impulsive, with a catch-all cry of ‘ABRACADABRA’ that, predictably, gets her into scrapes.

She learns from her blunders, though, and she puts things right with grace and unerrring joy. Winnie the Witch lives a hedonistic life and she makes mistakes, but she’s always got a genuine smile on her face and that’s what makes her so refreshing.

Bonus Material: HERE IS THE ACTUAL MASTER READING WINNIE THE WITCH.

• Libby earned her feminist stripes interning for the Fawcett Society where she was horrified by most of the stories she heard. An accidental activist, she is a regular contributor to BCN. Her blog, TreasuryIslands, is the home of her other passion – children’s literature. Libby is very proud of her bad reputation.

Writer Matt Fraction and artist Chip Zdarsky have created a warm and intelligent comic with an overtly pro-feminist take on sex and relationships. Don’t let the fact that it’s called Sex Criminals put you off – the title is a play on words and refers to the main characters’ ability to literally stop time when they have sex, which they use to carry out bank robberies.

It’s a surreal concept, and one which is difficult to write well, but Fraction has built a successful career out of telling these kinds of stories, and is skilled in persuading readers to suspend their disbelief.

In Sex Criminals, time is not presented as strictly linear: events are shown out of sequence, and the adult version of the lead character Suzie narrates scenes from her adolescence, sometimes even appearing next to her younger self on the page. This time-travel effect makes it easier for the reader to accept Suzie’s time-stopping powers, while also establishing her as our link to the story.

By choosing a female lead character, writer Fraction is challenging popular culture’s tendency to shy away from female leads, as well as the relative taboo of women’s sexuality.

In particular, his willingness to discuss female masturbation is refreshing because, while male wanking is openly discussed, joked about, and accepted as a fact of life, there’s still a lingering sense that it’s dirty when women do it.

Early on in the comic, we see young Suzie discovering the Greatest Love of All in the bath, and it’s dealt with in a sensitive, not overtly-eroticised way – adult Suzie, narrating while fully clothed and perched on the edge of the bathtub, is the focus of the panel.

Although we are aware that young Suzie is masturbating in this scene, the aim is not to sexualise her but to introduce her orgasm-related superpower, so the masturbation is less important than what happens immediately afterwards. In a pastiche of the old comics trope of an ordinary kid acquiring superpowers when they hit puberty, Suzie realises that time stops when she comes. Here, Fraction takes an inspired dig at the state of sex education in American schools, because Suzie has no idea whether her experience is normal, and she’s forced to rely on the dubious wisdom of a classmate when the adults won’t answer her questions.

Despite this, Suzie eventually becomes more confident about sex, and it’s made very clear to the reader that when she has sex with a partner it’s her choice to do so. As the narrator, she informs us that the first time she slept with her high school boyfriend Craig she had decided to do so in advance, and we see her enjoy the experience, even though it doesn’t live up to her expectation that it would be a profound, life-changing event. From a feminist point of view, the most interesting of the comic’s sex scenes is Suzie’s first encounter with Jon, who has just been introduced as the love interest. Jon explicitly checks for consent before initiating physical contact, in a way that seems natural, relaxed, and pretty damn sexy.

The admirable gender politics of the writing are perfectly complemented by Zdarsky’s art, which fits perfectly with a comic which is played for laughs as much as for titillation. It isn’t drawn in an overtly erotic style, and there isn’t as much nudity as you might expect. The fact that the art isn’t wank-bank material in and of itself highlights the more cerebral aspects of Suzie’s attraction to Jon; they fancy one another, but their interest is sparked by shared interests over looks.

The art is also key to conveying the comic’s humour, whether it’s in Craig’s ridiculous gurning expression when he’s frozen in time right at the point of orgasm, or the crude drawings of nonsensical sex acts that Rachelle uses to explain “the real raw sex shit” to teenage Suzie. There are also a range of less obvious visual gags worked into the art in backgrounds or on characters’ clothes, including numerous references to a celebrity called “Sexual Gary” who appears to be a pin-up figure for teenage girls.

Although Sex Criminals is a very funny comic, it also has emotional depth. The scenes from Suzie’s adolescence aren’t solely about her sexual development, but also deal with her father’s sudden death and her mother’s difficulty in coping afterwards. Young Suzie’s reactions are balanced by the narration from her adult self, creating a richer and more satisfying narrative.

Sex comedies can often disappoint feminists, but Sex Criminals shows that writers don’t have to rely on tired sexist stereotypes when writing jokes about sex, and that decent gender politics don’t have to be po-faced and humourless. Whether you’re a devoted comics fan or simply curious, this one is definitely worth a look.

Sex Criminals is available now from Image Comics for digital download and from, ahem, specialist retailers.

• At night Alyson Macdonald dons a cape and tights to fight sexism and the Tory government on the internet. She mostly blogs at Bright Green and tweets as @textuallimits.

Strong Female Protagonist

Yes, I found this by doing a lazy Google search after “decent webcomics that won’t make me scream” didn’t turn up anything useful. But it worked, and here we are. Strong Female Protagonist by Brennan Lee Mulligan (writer) and Molly Ostertag (art) is a superheroine comic about an American teenager trying to deal with being an ex-superhero, her former comrades and enemies, and going to university whilst still having epic superpowers.

There’s an X-Men-esque backdrop of mutation-hatred, and so she exists, like many superheroes, in a world that is not entirely happy about having superheroes. The black and white thick line art is really nice, I like the emphasis on characters’ faces and expressions rather than bodies, and the themes of power, responsibility and morality are something I think the “super” genre is well-placed to tackle.

The main exploration is, naturally enough, about what it means to be a Strong Female Protagonist, and links neatly to this nice article on the subject in the New Statesman recently. Yes, the lead character is “strong” – she’s a physical powerhouse, and strong-minded too. Her strength isn’t just physical, but also emerges in terms of her blunt decision-making and clearly held beliefs about right and wrong. Strength ostensibly defines her, but the comic is about the questions and complications behind what that might mean.

Delilah Dirk

I was absolutely bowled over by the quality of the artwork in Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant. The colouration is superb, and the detail in each of the panels makes the whole thing look absolutely lush: there’s a “classic story” feel to the whole piece, and the pages, like our titular heroine, are full of life and activity.

The comic is set in (sort of) Constantinople in 1805, and is very much in the style of The Mummy and Adele Blanc-Sec (watch the movie now, if you haven’t). I won’t lie, I do like a good swashbuckling, wisecracking character in a gung-ho Sinbad the Sailor-style universe, where bad guys are bad and the goodies might do slightly naughty things, but it’s all in a Robin Hood sort of way.

This is one of those narratives: Delilah is half English, half Greek, all Action Famous Adventure Lady, and all tongues should remain in cheeks, except when they’re lolling at the beautiful landscapes of Tony Cliff, whose work has also graced Flight. It’s not particularly deep or meaningful, but hey, not all narratives with female characters need to be about what it is to be a female character, right? It’s definitely a damn good yarn, and worth a look for the art if nothing else.

The Fox Sister

A fox-spirit comic? I don’t mind if I do.

Rather than the more familiar Japanese shapeshifter, The Fox Sister is about the Korean Kumiho. It’s another gorgeously-drawn webcomic and the product of a very welcome collaboration between Jayd Aït-Kaci and Christina Strain, who is departing from her usual colourist work to write this modern fairytale of two sisters.

The thick line-brush work and open panels sit well with the thoughtful, slow-paced writing in a landscape of snow and secrets. I love the way the fox spirit steps out of the panel on the page I’ve included here.

Something about the artwork reminds me of a pre-Blu-ray cleanup Disney’s 101 Dalmations, especially in the colour palette and faces of characters, but this is not a Disney story, though the elements make it appear like it might be – we have an all-American hero, and his ongoing terrible attempts at both speaking Korean and trying to get romantic with our heroine, Yun Mee, who is far more interested in fighting the fox-demon that took over her elder sister’s life.

Gunnerkrigg Court

A mysterious school, in a mysterious city, by a mysterious forest, separated by a large (mysterious) moat. This is a webcomic of teenagers, demons, spirits, folktales, ghosts, robots and the usual school-related growing pains. Gunnerkrigg Court is Harry Potter meets Malory Towers meets something deeper and darker altogether.

It’s a huge, sprawling world, crammed full of interesting female characters. The story focuses on the central pair of Antimony and Katriona, who are best friends, and their experiences going to school and becoming part of a magical/technological war which is threatening to move from cold to hot.

The comic is subtle, curious, funny and strange, with tones of Gloom Cookie, although the art is cleaner and more colourful; slightly French and manga-esque in feel. I particularly like the fact that the world has rules that are revealed as you go along, and how many things (and people) are left unexplained and without immediate resolution. Relationships are equally complicated – this is a world where love and feelings are explored in detail.

That’s all for the moment – more in the next post. Please share any webcomics you find with the team here, as we’re always looking for more reading material. For bonus points, here’s a link from the Mary Sue on Gail Simone’s griping about writing those troublesome male characters. Because it made me laugh this afternoon.

One of the most amazing things I saw was, without question, the screening of the Wonder Women! : the Untold Story of American Heroines documentary.

I’d never heard of it before to be honest, which is hardly surprising as it’s an independent release (no screening near you? Organise one – there’s a link at the bottom of this post!). It’s basically a visual look at the intersections of Women Woman iconography and certain aspects of Second Wave American feminism.

Did you know that Wonder Woman was regarded by quite a few feminists as the ‘face’of Second Wave American feminism? Neither did I. Quite frankly, being a Marvel girl rather than DC, I’d always thought of Wonder Woman as one of the more tame, conservative superheroes. Didn’t she spend most of her time being tied up?

Image from Flickr.com user bbaltimore, used under Creative Commons.

I’m now going to recount my new and shiny understanding of Wonder Woman, as gleaned from the documentary through a vague haze of alcohol. Bear with me.

The iconography of Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman, it turns out, is fairly awesome. She was developed during World War II, and was therefore off fighting the Nazis (alongside Captain America? That bit wasn’t very clear) after realising that she had to go off and save America. Because that’s what awesome heroes did. She even had to win some sort of Olympiad before she was able to do it! And then she fought some Nazis, and some criminals, and in the 50s this was deemed to be DREADFUL. So she was rewritten as having given up her powers. During this period she found she wanted to make cakes, and opened a beauty parlour. OF COURSE. Because nothing says ‘superhero’ like CUPCAKES!

Anyway, along came Second Wave feminism, looking for a face for the recently-launched Ms magazine. And there was poor Wonder Woman, an icon in need of reclaiming. Off came the apron and on went on the magic bracelets!

SURELY IT IS TIME FOR THE 70S?

I won’t recount the entire documentary. Suffice to say that when the 1970s and 1980s kicked off, along with them came a whole slew of female heroines, from Cagney and Lacey, Charlie’s Angels and Bionic Woman, straight through to the live-action Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter.

Here, have a photo of her being awesome:

Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. Photo from Flicker user shaunwong.

Here are some other 1970s (& 1980s) heroines.

Cagney & Lacey. Image from kaksplus.fi.

Charlie’s Angels, 1977. Image from Wikimedia Commons .

Notice anything?

Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley. Image from sabotagetimes.com.

Ripley vs Van Damme

The 1980s also gave us hyper-masculinity along the lines of Van Damme, Schwarzenegger and Stallone. It also gave us Ellen Ripley and (in 1991 admittedly, therefore just in the 1990s) Sarah Connor. There are a bunch of others. The 1980s were pretty awesome for strong female heroines, which is a sentence I never thought I’d be writing. When I first saw Terminator 2 as a little girl, I didn’t even know that women could do chin-ups!

Grrrl Power dominoes

As well as the iconography of Wonder Woman herself, the documentary looked at the development of Grrrl Power. We are taken through the original use of the term through interviews with Kathleen Hanna, starting back with Riot Grrrl, and its appropriation by the Spice Girls into something commercial.

I’m not going to depress you by taking you through the deaths of all the ‘strong female characters’ on television in 2001. I think those of us in the UK were somewhat sheltered through the impact of that, having our reception of those shows delayed by several weeks or even months. We therefore did not experience their deaths as the American viewers would have: one after the other, falling down like dominoes in 2001.

Back to Wonder Woman…

Like this, only AWESOME.

… and to her fans, ages 2–99. In the documentary, there are interviews with small children and the role Wonder Woman has played in their lives. There are interviews with activists – up to and including Gloria Steinem – and their perspectives on how Wonder Woman influenced Second Wave (and in some case Third Wave) feminism – and vice versa. There are perspectives on women-saving-women and the creation of Wonder Woman Day. There’s even a Wonder-Woman-on-a-string-with-motor, making her fly around and around on a child’s ceiling. How awesome is that? I want one!

Not your grandmother’s feminism

Now let’s talk about what wasn’t there. The film isn’t marketed as a history of Second Wave Feminism, nor even the (entire) history of Wonder Woman. That’s important, because the intersections the film is talking about are intersections with white, heterosexual, cis feminism. It therefore falls down significantly on the feminism movement outside of that pretty narrowly defined range.

It was also a bit dispiriting to not have at least a mention that the original name for Ms. magazine was Sojourner. There is also little mention of the subversion of the Wonder Woman image and iconography outside of radfem activism.

That said, the film doesn’t pretend that it is in any way comprehensive, or representative of all feminism movements. And, as a look at the history of Wonder Woman and how she was reclaimed in the radfem part of Second (and Third) Wave American feminism… well, it’s pretty awesome.

Frankly, it’s worth watching for the interviews with her tiny modern-day fans alone. There is something deeply heartening about hearing a child draw strength from a feminist icon, however corrupted and reinterpreted that image has been over the years.

Not convinced? Have a look at the trailer:

See? Awesome.

• In the highly likely event that there are no screenings near you, you can contact the Outreach Coordinator at Wonder Women to arrange one.

BadRep: Tell us a little bit about the series in your own words.

Kathrynne Wolf: The Scarlet Line is an action-drama about a secret lineage of female bodyguards who are, when on active duty, code-named “Scarlet”.

Our premise is that the Line started with the famous “Jujitsuffragette” bodyguard team in Edwardian London. In the world of our story, after the First World War the organisation – ‘The Scarlet Line’ – went international and Scarlets have operated ever since then, protecting people who need their help.

“We blow the Bechdel test straight out of the water.”

Our main character, Amanda, is a retired Scarlet whose very ordinary life is suddenly thrown into chaos. Details of the reasons for this disruption, the purpose, history and future of the line get revealed throughout the season.

BR: What gave you the idea to do this?

KW: I was literally falling asleep one night when I had the idea for a secret lineage of female bodyguards, quietly going about the business of making the streets safer.

This is the sort of story I wanted to see on screen. It’s an old adage that you should write the story you want to read, be the change you want to see, and so on. I had been distressed by the narrow representation of women – and the UNDERrepresentation of interesting roles and stories for women in media – for a long time.

Two issues I find particularly insidious are the tendency for any female protagonist driving the story to be called a “Strong Female Character”, where this adjective seems unnecessary for a male protagonist, and the tendency for “Strong Female Characters” either to a) be somehow supernaturally or technologically augmented, or b) have a tendency to cry, even when on the job.

I wanted to see a story of a woman who kicks butt and takes names as a matter of course. It’s her job. She does her job, she does it well. The fact that she’s female is not excused, it’s not augmented, it’s not commented on; it is not, in fact, the point. The point is the story – there’s a crisis that needs solving, there are obstacles, stakes get raised, we wrestle with issues of morality, trust, crime, betrayal…

“The fact that she’s female is not excused, it’s not augmented, it’s not commented on; it is not, in fact, the point. The point is the story.”

The other major factor that made me want to tackle this project is that I come from a background of what is generally referred to as ‘Chicago Storefront Theatre’. We have over 150 small theatre companies in Chicago, producing shows in all kinds of spaces that weren’t originally intended to hold a theatre, because they have stories they want to tell. It’s very much a ‘do it yourself’ mindset.

That’s why I produced the web-series myself, rather than writing a screenplay and then sending it off to Hollywood, hoping it would catch someone’s eye and that it wouldn’t get lost in ‘option-land’… I wanted to see it happen.

BR: What made you decide to set the series in the US rather than Britain?

KW: The main factor is that I live in Chicago, and this is where I have connections, know the locations, and where it was, in fact, possible to produce the series.

That said, the ‘mythology’ of the Scarlet Line definitely lends itself to satellite stories. It would make a great CSI-style franchise. I would love to see The Scarlet Line: London, The Scarlet Line: Seattle, The Scarlet Line: Barcelona – I’d just need to figure out how to go about licensing the sucker.

BR: The lead Scarlet’s wig and makeup are very striking, and call to mind vigilante superheroes such as Catwoman, Silk Spectre from ‘Watchmen’ and Hit Girl from ‘Kick-Ass’. In other press, you’ve previously mentioned Wonder Woman in connection with the unusual ‘web’ weapon used by the Scarlets – are you inspired at all by comics, as well as martial arts and action cinema?

KW: I was raised on Wonder Woman and Kitty Pryde was my favourite X-Man. Like all storytellers, I can’t help but draw from everything I’ve studied, read and seen.

I would say the Scarlet character was drawn as much from The Equalizer and the Guardian Angels as from comic books and movies.

The lack of a current TV show like Wonder Woman is part of what goaded me into this. One of my oldest friends in the world had a baby daughter, and I had a “what will she WATCH???” moment of panic, as I considered the statistics that show that women’s representation in media has actually shrunk in the last few years.

I wanted to contribute to the ongoing development of a wider range of roles available to actresses and, therefore, role models available to young girls.

I don’t only mean morally upright ‘ideals’, I mean characters that represent the spectrum – that model all kinds of ways of being and behaving, living in the world, experiencing victories and consequences. The wider the spectrum presented, the more agency is given to young girls to figure out how they want to live for themselves.

The other major factor involved in the Scarlet wig and makeup is modern surveillance technology. The Scarlets have to keep their true identities secret, and research on the advances in facial recognition software led me to take the disguise angle to more extreme lengths than I’d originally planned.

It turns out that software has gotten scarily good at working around minor augmentations. Diana Prince’s glasses were NOT going to cut it.

BR: You perform quite a bit of realistic fighting in the episodes, as well as very kinetic movement with the Web weapons. Is it difficult to find film or theatre roles for women which showcase more realistic techniques?

KW: It is maddeningly difficult. For 13 years, I belonged to Babes With Blades Theatre Company, which is a Chicago company whose mission is to ‘place women and their stories centre stage’ using combat as a major part of their expressive vocabulary.

To do this, they’ve focused on developing new work, and they include an all-female-cast Shakespeare in every other season, as there simply are not many plays out there where women get to explore this range of human expression.

Again, it’s ridiculously rare in Western cinema, TV, and theatre that a female character is allowed to simply be proficient at combat without being superhuman, having a ‘super suit’, or being the ‘chosen one’.

Again, it’s ridiculously rare in Western cinema, TV, and theatre that a female character is allowed to simply be proficient at combat without being superhuman, having a ‘super suit’, or being the ‘chosen one’.

Don’t get me wrong – I love superhero stories, and am always happy for any opportunity actresses get to be that kind of hero. I just wanted to help open up the field so that they didn’t have to be somehow ‘other’ in order to do so.

BR: There are more women in TV and film who are action heroines these days, but they’re still often lone figures. Already in the trailers for early episodes we’re seeing that relationships (such as the one between Amanda and Marcus) are a big part of the story – are the relationships between female characters also focused on, alongside the ass-kicking?

KW: Most of the major characters in the series are women. We blow the Bechdel test straight out of the water.

The relationships are very important, and they’re explored much more deeply in Season 2. Season 1 is very much the set-up – it’s where the ball gets rolling. We introduce the major players, the major conflicts, the major themes, and some things get resolved by the final episode, but not all.

BR: What were the challenges of creating a web-series? Did the format give you more freedom to pursue feminist themes?

KW: The fact that we’re doing it all ourselves means we have no one to answer to. There’s no studio executive or marketing department saying ‘You have to include a male authority figure! She has to cry or it’s not believable!’ or any such nonsense.

The challenge, of course, is that we do not have studio resources. The good side of that is that no one is working on this project for any reason other than that they want to.

BR: What do you hope the series will achieve?

KW: I would love to inspire other folks with good stories to stop waiting for permission and MAKE THEM. I think the online short-form potential is evolving rapidly. The democratization of access to technical production capability is an amazingly wonderful thing, if you’ve got a story to tell.

I’d also like to help raise some awareness of some of the ass-kicking women of history – in fact, that is the subject of a panel I am doing at GeekGirlCon in Seattle in October – drawing from history to find inspirational stories of “non-super” superheroines.

If the series reaches some young (or not so young) folks who hadn’t yet realised that they’re allowed to take charge of their own stories and get them out there, and maybe some who hadn’t considered that there might be more roles for women than eye candy, damsel in distress or obstacle, even better.

The Scarlet Line Trailer 1 from Wolf Point Media on Vimeo.

• Huge thanks to Kathrynne Wolf for the interview, and we wish her all the best with the series! There’s a kickass trailer for Season 1 over here, and more info on the Facebook group and Scarlet Line website.
• Thanks also to Kathrynne’s husband Tony Wolf who wrote the book about the life of Edith Garrud, which prompted the original piece in our 2011 ‘Revolting Women’ series. Tony is currently working on a three-part graphic novel series inspired by the Ju-jutsuffragettes titled Mrs Pankhurst’s Amazons, due in 2014.

Hopey and Maggie, Jaime Hernandez 1990

Love. And. Rockets.

If you’re at all interested in comics or graphic novels you’ve probably heard of Love & Rockets, and you’ve probably had someone like me tell you about how amazing it is and how you should read it immediately. I’ll try not to labour the point, but it is really, really worth having a look.

The scope of the series, which ran from 1981-1996 – with further stories being added since 2001 – can be a bit daunting, which is why Fantagraphics have produced a guide to how to read Love & Rockets.

In brief: the Love & Rockets title encompasses two separate but slenderly-connected worlds, with Gilbert Hernandez writing about the fictional Central American village Palomar and its inhabitants, and brother Jaime Hernandez writing about the adventures of two punkeras in 1980s California.

Both sets of stories span decades, with meandering plots, sprawling casts, and for my money, the emotional depth and philosophical reach of any ‘great’ work of literature. There are touches of magic realism, and sex and violence feature prominently, although they are hardly glamourised. If anything, the comics focus on the mundane, everyday details of two tangles of human lives with the occasional connecting thread.

Women and humans

What makes each half of the series so compelling (and they are – I have pulled more than one all-nighter working my way to the end of a story arc) is the incredible ability of both artists to give their characters life. And more than that, to make them human, with all the cruelty, confusion and compassion that that involves. I’m trying to pick my way through a bog of clichés here, but for me the Hernandez brothers are up there with Shakespeare and George Eliot in their characterization.

And a hugely important part of that for me is that both worlds have magnificent, believable, complex, varied and interesting female characters. Tons and tons of them, and they get plot. In fact, they get the bulk of the plot. Some are ‘strong female characters’ in the most literal sense (rather than the hilarious Hark! A Vagrant sense) as the cast includes a number of women wrestlers and superheroes. That may sound ridiculous, but trust me, they pull it off.

There’s no way I could do justice to the whole series in a single post (but Colourlines has a good introduction) so I’m going to zoom in on my favourite, the ‘Locas’ stories by Jaime Hernandez, starring two of the most brilliant comic book heroines of all time: kind, adventure-prone Maggie the Mechanic, and spiky, compulsively subversive Hopey Glass.

Maggie and Hopey

Jaime Hernandez, 2000

We meet best friends and occasional lovers Maggie and Hopey in their late teens, in the fictional town of Hoppers in California. The fact that the two main protagonists in this world-famous, best-selling comic book series are queer latinas is almost enough on its own to recommend reading it as I’m sure you’ve noticed that the comics world isn’t exactly overflowing with such characters. Incidentally, Geek Feminism has a short list of comics featuring women of colour.

At the start Maggie takes a job as a ‘pro-solar’ engineer, and her early stories feature spaceships, dinosaurs and female wrestlers who moonlight as superheroes (there are a lot of these) but when she returns to Hoppers the story sheds a lot of the B-movie trappings and focuses on more earthbound challenges, including love requited and unrequited, friends, enemies, and age.

We follow them, together and apart, over the next 30 years, during which time they change considerably, including their appearance. Most famously, Maggie puts on a lot of weight.

Bodies and sex

At the Comica event Hernandez spoke at recently, he was asked how he responded to some fans’ complaints about Maggie’s weight and their persistent hope that she would lose it and get ‘pretty’ again. He replied: “Oh, I just have to say ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’. Maggie is heavy. She is the only heavy person in comics, still. Why is she the only heavy person in comics?”

While Maggie does worry a little about her weight, it never bothers her lovers, and she is not ostracised or ridiculed or any of the other things we are taught to fear may befall us if we get fat.

That’s something else I love about the Locas stories: they can be a good antidote to body image argh, not just because there’s a huge range of body types on show (there is a lot of nudity – again, it doesn’t tend to be glamorous) but because they are drawn with such skill and honesty that it is impossible to be ashamed.

And, well, the comics are sexy. Not in a brittle, cookie-cutter, performative way (although that is examined too when some of the characters begin working in a strip club¹ ) but in the way that real people are sexy.

At the Comica event, Hernandez said he aims to treat sex just like anything else in the stories “because that’s how life is: you have sex, then make a sandwich. It’s that stream of life thing.” He added that even now he can’t draw a ‘pin up’ or deliberately ‘sexy’ female character without knowing anything about her.

Representation and truth

OMG OMG

This sensitivity and radical theme of ‘women as humans’ was continued in Hernandez’ comments about the decision to make Maggie and Hopey lovers.

At the start, the comic was in ‘freefall’, breaking all then rules and comic conventions, so it was about doing something different. But he explained that “I knew I had to back it up – I could put in as many Latinos as I wanted because I am one, I know that world. But with relationships between women I was aware of my responsibility to listen and understand.”

I’m just going to end up fangirling all over the shop, so I’ll end the post here. But really, seriously, get hold of a copy of the Locas stories; you won’t regret it. As Jaime said, Love & Rockets doesn’t aim to be realistic, but truthful.

1. YES, that’s right, it even portrays sex workers as real people!

She’s just a hungry girl,
In a post-apocalyptic wooooorld…

When The Hunger Games came out, we were faced with possibly the most ludicrous and yet most predictable controversy in recent film history: was Katniss Everdeen too fat? More specifically, was Jennifer Lawrence the wrong body-shape to play the protagonist of these phenomenally successful novels, as a number of critics and fans said? One quotation from the New York Times can stand in for a lot of others:

A few years ago Ms. Lawrence might have looked hungry enough to play Katniss, but now, at 21, her seductive, womanly figure makes a bad fit for a dystopian fantasy about a people starved into submission.

I’m not going to answer the question, because, y’know. But I do want to talk about why the question matters, because it’s not something so ludicrous we can dismiss it.¹

Cover design for an early UK release of the Hunger Games, by Jason Chan

Essentially, these readers were arguing the case for realism. Katniss has access to limited calories (though more than some other people, due to her own skills) – this is part of the plot, theme and indeed title of the novel – so an actor of a certain body type might be less able to inhabit the role convincingly onscreen. Just as Renee Zellweger visibly put on some weight to play Bridget Jones², Jennifer Lawrence was expected to appear strikingly underweight to embody the theme of the narrative. It’s a simple biological fact.

Except, of course, that fact assumes that the Hunger Games trilogy, beloved of teenage girls in particular, is taking place in a cultural vacuum. That it just happens to involve a young woman with a fraught relationship to food, who is contrasted to the decadence and self-indulgence of the inhabits of the Capitol and other characters. I’m absolutely not arguing that these are harmful books, or that they’re written thoughtlessly. Nor is it my place to tell young women how they should interact with art. But I am pointing out that novels don’t become popular for no reason, particularly YA novels with strong female leads.

The cultural factors which bear on the novels increase drastically when it comes to putting Katniss on screen. Again, there is an argument that the fictional situation happens to involve a character who would have a particular physical appearance. But that discourse of realism and “accuracy” totally ignores the hundreds of images which young women are bombarded with every day. It assumes that young women are never told they’re too fat or too skinny, that they lack self control or a sense of proportion, that their success in life is directly related to their dress size. It assumes that when actors like Jennifer Lawrence relax in between film-shoots, there aren’t packs of photographers with zoom-lenses feeding the websites which police their bodies and point out how they’ve “let themselves go”. Talk about “accuracy” is deeply naive because it ignores the way actors’ public personas are constructed, how their lifestyle is carefully confused with the roles they choose and how their bodies are used in advertising. It also ignores the power of performance to draw us into a fictional world and convince us of its reality, surely one of the main reasons anyone films a book in the first place.

So much for the hungry girl, but I don’t think we can ignore the post-apocalyptic world and its relevance to this controversy. Katniss isn’t just a young woman who finds herself short on nosh after the shops have shut, she’s the central figure in a futuristic wasteland. “Post-apocalyptic” has also come in for a bit of controversy recently, with Mark Kermode demanding with typically entertaining zeal that if the apocalypse is the end of the world, then how can a film be post-apocalyptic? If the apocalypse has happened, and there’s anything left to have a film about, then that my friend is a shoddy apocalypse and you want to demand another one, that works like it says on the packet. Highly pleasing as this is, and far be it from me to out-pedant the worshipful Doctor, but apocalypse does not mean the end of the world.

Apocalypse means “revelation” or the “lifting of the veil”. The book we get most of our apocalyptic imagery from – four horsemen, 666, Whore of Babylon riding on a seven-headed beast, you know the drill – is referred to as both the Apocalypse of St. John and the Book of Revelation. The fact that the most famous one is most frequently framed as a vision of the end of the world means that we tend to assume that they’re the same thing (if we’re not massive pedants and unhealthily obsessed with etymology – oh no, wait…). But the crucial aspect is the “lifting of the veil”, the revealing of a deeper reality which is obscured by the world around us.³

I’m not bringing this up for the sake of sheer quibble (though that would be reason enough), but because I think a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction still has this original meaning embedded in it. So many post-apocalyptic films and novels have this sense of being not only “after the disaster” but also “after the revelation”, trying to strip back the complexities and confusions of modern life to get to what is basic and essential about us. In The Road, that’s the emotional bond between father and son, in Mad Max the depravity of humans as pack animals, in Escape From New York it’s a macho code of integrity.⁴

And in The Hunger Games it’s a famished young woman. If a deeper reality is being revealed in this apocalypse, a profound truth about humanity which lies beneath the surface of modern life, then it’s one which looks very similar to the line peddled by fashion magazines, diet books and vast swathes of Hollywood’s output. That young women should look as if they’re slightly undernourished. The tendencies of post-apocalyptic fiction mean that this film risks holding that image up as not only an ideal to aspire to, but as the most “natural” and “essential” state for them to be in.

Again, this doesn’t make The Hunger Games a bad book or a bad film, but it means that the way Katniss Everdeen is portrayed onscreen cannot be reduced to a question of “accuracy” to a description in the book. A film which presents a teenage girl as the prototypical member of humanity is a wonderful idea – not least because she’s active, intelligent and fighting on behalf of her people – but this one sits at the intersection of some very powerful cultural influences which we can’t ignore.

• Jem Bloomfield is an academic who works on theatre and performance. A longtime BadRep reader, he’s very excited to be on the other side of the line, and the references to gin and tea in the other team bios make him feel very at home. Four years working on The Duchess of Malfi has given him a taste for writing about other things, so he blogs on culture, politics and gender at Quite Irregular.

1. Though it is ludicrous. Let no doubt be left about that.
2. No, I know. It’s not like I don’t have a problem with that too, but it’s awful in a slightly different way…
3. The titles of The Vision of Ezra and the Sibylline Oracles – both around during the first centuries of Christianity though neither made it into the Bible(s) – underline this point.
4. And with more time we could read right back from Snake Plissken’s tattoo to the Man With No Name, and wonder how much the classic Western is also driven by a desire to get its characters out into the oddly moonscapey deserts, to strip away the civilization. Or look at the fistfight between two astronauts which starts Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers, suggesting that getting to the moon called earth morality into question…

When I think about everything about womanhood that hamstrung me with fear when I was thirteen it all came down, really, to princesses. I didn’t think I had to work hard to be a woman (which is scary but obviously eventually achievable). I thought I had to somehow magically – through superhuman psychic effort – transform into a princess instead. That’s how I’d get fallen in love with. That’s how I’d get along. That’s how the world would welcome me.

– Caitlin Moran, How to be a Woman

Welcome to part two of Kickass Princesses – a look at some subversive female protagonists in children’s literature. You can read Part 1 here.

The more children’s books I read and the more princesses I come to know, the more I realise that ‘kickass’ probably wasn’t the best term to use. Some of these characters do kick ass, but the main feature is turning out to be simply that they make unconventional princesses.

As the archetype of a fairytale princess is so ingrained, it takes looking at a wide variety of ‘unprincessy’ examples to unpick exactly what some of our starting assumptions are. A closer look at the ‘unconventional’ princesses here, and in my previous post, reveals that these women and girls have agency, interests, and are more than just a beautiful, delicate, unsullied physical appearance. Sometimes they aren’t even beautiful at all. What they are – what, we realise, makes them ‘unprincessy’ – is often simply the fact that they are two-dimensional characters.

Ouch. This stereotype needs subverting roughly forever ago. On with the show…

The Ordinary Princess

• Written and illustrated by MM Kaye, published in 1980 by Doubleday

At 107 pages, this one’s aimed at a slightly older age group than the rest of the books in this post, which are all picture books.

The plot begins when the seventh princess is born in the land of Phantasmorania, and even the fairies are invited to the Christening, despite the King’s reservations. The bad-tempered and seaweedy fairy Crustacea, pissed off by the bad journey in to the palace, gives the baby the gift of ordinariness. Instantly the baby cries for the first time, and becomes considerably less attractive. As she grows up, our girl Amethyst (known as Amy) doesn’t look great in fine gowns like her blonde, willowy, ethereal and frankly boring and unknowable sisters. Instead, she loves climbing down the wisteria which grows up the castle walls and sneaking out to the forest.

Thanks to her extremely ordinary looks, Amy turns out to be impossible to marry off. Oh, the shame of it all! Not that our girl is bothered, but the rest of the kingdom is. When she learns of a harebrained scheme to get her rescued from a dragon so a prince will be obliged to marry her, she runs away to the forest, where she lives happily until her clothes start falling apart. So, in need of money to buy a new dress, she goes and gets a job in another palace, living in disguise as an ordinary girl. Where she meets a prince – but I’ll leave some plot to those who want to read it.

The style of writing makes for a truly luscious fairytale, and the black and white line-drawn illustrations by the author are very pretty too (just the right side of twee). Plot-wise, this book is strongest in its treatment of Amy’s interaction with Crustacea, her Godmother, who is practical, warm-yet-tough, and advises her to get on with it.

It’s weakest – in my humble socialist opinion – when our girl loves every minute of working insane hours on the lowest rungs of the servant-ladder. C’mon, girlie, you’ve worked out it’ll take you roughly a year to earn enough to buy a new dress. Aren’t you a bit annoyed at the sucky pay? Also: the insinuation throughout the book that freckles and an upturned nose make someone undateable got on my nerves quite a bit. Freckles can be well hot, and don’t get me started on pixie faces…

(Interestingly, each book I’ve looked at for these posts has often pushed an idea of what a typical beautiful princess looks like, but none of them quite match.)

I was a little disappointed in how conventionally the ends got tied up, but I suppose how the plot came to be is more important than what came to be. Our girl has agency, there’s no doubt about it. And there’s nothing wrong with a happy ending.

Princess Pigsty

• By Cornelia Funke and Kerstin Meyer, Chickenhouse, 1997

In Princess Pigsty our girl is one of three sisters, who live the traditional fairytale princess life:

Their beautiful clothes filled thirty wardrobes. They had footmen to blow their noses for them and ladies-in-waiting to tidy up their rooms, hang up their clothes and polish their crowns until they shone.

Every morning, three teachers taught them royal behaviour – how to sit on a throne without fidgeting, how to curtsey without falling over, how to yawn with your mouth closed and how to smile for a whole hour without taking a break.

Isabella, the youngest, despite being perfectly capable of walking the princessy walk, is not happy, and makes her feelings known by waking up the whole castle shouting:

“I am tired of being a princess! It’s boring, boring, boring!”
Her older sisters looked up from their feather pillows in surprise.

“I want to get dirty!” cried Isabella, bouncing around on the bed. “I want to blow my own nose. I don’t want to smile all the time. I want to make my own sandwiches. I don’t want to have my hair curled ever again. I do not want to be a princess any more!”

And with that she took her crown and threw it out of the window. Splash! It landed in the goldfish pond.

In the pitched battle of wills with the King that follows, Isabella is sent to work in the kitchens until she changes her mind. When she enjoys her work in the kitchens, learning about how their food is made and essentially having too much fun to relent, she’s sent to the pigsty – where she gets along with the pigs and enjoys their company even more.

Eventually, seeing there is no way around it, her father relents and says she doesn’t have to be all princessy if she doesn’t want to – but by now our girl likes the pigs and stays in the pigsty just as often as in her feather bed.

Though no mention is made of any innate unprincessy looks (beyond curled hair), Isabella rejects her princessy role in life quite actively. While Amy of The Ordinary Princess is a failure at traditional princessy things (but isn’t that bothered about it, either) Isabella has lots of guts and lots of agency, not to mention an upbeat and cheerful nature. Eventually her father is won round. The patriarch isn’t a baddie, and – once it’s clear she’s happier that way – he accepts her as she is. Tangled, mucky and doing things that interest her. Hip-hip hooray for doing what you want! Hip-hip hooray for converting people! Hip-hip hooray for male allies!

Shrek!

• William Steig, Macmillan, 1990

Didn’t know Shrek started out as a book? It did, and it was… not a huge amount like the movie franchise. (Have the first part read to you by Stanley Tucci here, though sadly without pictures.) Shrek, in both media, is a famously revolting and ugly character, who delights in his own disgustingness (“wherever Shrek went, every living creature fled. How it tickled him to be so repulsive”) – but that’s where most of the similarities end.

The book is a very short picture book with a quest narrative. A witch tells Shrek’s fortune: “Then you wed a princess who/Is even uglier than you.” Shrek decides this sounds great, and goes off in search of this princess.

He strode in and his fat lips fell open. There before him was the most stunningly ugly princess on the surface of the planet.

When they meet they declare their love for each other’s revoltingness, and live “horribly ever after.” But if you’ve seen any of the movies, you’ll know this wasn’t quite how it went down when Dreamworks got their hands on it.

In the movie Princess Fiona (who has a name, unlike in the book) is only ugly after dark, – during the day she appears as a beautiful woman, and during the night she is an ogre, and she’s self-conscious about it. The only way to cure this is with “true love’s kiss” – and it’s initially an unpleasant surprise for her to learn that when the spell is broken she’s actually stuck with ogre mode constantly.

While the movie does feature a green monster called Shrek and an (eventually) ‘ugly’ princess – their unconventionality is treated as something they’re both self-conscious about. Fiona, especially, with all the princessy expectations heaped upon her, needs reassurance that she’s loveable.

Alhough the movie doesn’t mention weight specifically, one of the main factors of Fiona’s transformation (apart from the green skin) is that she becomes considerably heavier. Fiona is more of an everywoman – learning that she doesn’t need to be a size 8 to find love – and literally kicking ass. Caitlin Moran tracks the rewrite as part of a post-feminist trend:

In the last decade the post-feminist reaction to princesses has been the creation of alternative princesses: the spunky chicks in Shrek and the newer Disney films who wear trousers, do kung fu and save the prince.

While some cool people (I’m looking at you, Babette Cole) have been subverting these roles for a long time, it takes a while before the effect trickles down to a Hollywood blockbuster and the much wider audience that a movie like Shrek can reach.

While the original very short picture book is more about two people with unconventional values and no qualms or neuroses about them – a la The Twits or The Addams Family – the movie Shrek presents Fiona as someone extremely kickass, but with a fairly conventional narrative of body issues (though admittedly hers are mythical ones) and a postmodern self-consciousness about breaking the known conventions of the ‘fairytale’ wedding.

In this way Fiona is far more relatable (and has infintely more agency) than the nameless princess in the book, but part of me is sad that she doesn’t start with the self-assurance of our happily ugly picturebook princess. After all – if this is a world where gingerbread men can talk and cats can fence – surely we can have a princess who can just get on with her thang without worrying about being pretty enough?

Coming up next time:

• “Rapunzel’s Revenge – Fairytales for Feminists”
• Tatterhood
• The Tough Princess
• And more…

***As is usual, dear readers, the BadRep pirate flag reading SPOILER WARNING – only mild to moderate this time, but still – is hereby hoisted here! ***

So, Britain’s most beloved animation house, Aardman Animations, the cheerful cohort behind treasured characters Wallace & Gromit and my personal comfort-watchers Chicken Run and Rex The Runt, really can’t go wrong with a film entitled The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists.  It’s adapted from Gideon Defoe’s series of childrens’ books of the same name and derivations thereof, one of which is called The Pirates! In An Adventure With Communists, and if that doesn’t make you deliriously excited, then I’m afraid we can’t be friends.  I haven’t read them yet, but I’ve made arrangements to get them into my eager paws as soon as possible because how can I not?  Pirates!  Everyone likes pirates.

It was the poster that drew my eye first.  Witness:

PIRATES! it says.  And there they are.  There’s a nice representation of different genders, ages, ethnicities and beards on the poster, and I was all excited for a nice diverse film – the sort I tend to dream about.

SHAME IT’S A LIE.

Well, no, I’m exaggerating – it’s not quite a bare-faced man-churned fictivated sin-speech, but it’s pretty fallacious.  The main character is that chap in the middle there, the Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant).  The pirate to the left of him, Cutlass Liz – voiced by the brilliant Salma Hayek – is an award-winning Pirate Of The Year, full of swash, buckle and plunder-power, and gets literally no screen-time in which she isn’t a sex object.  Seriously.  She turns up, wiggles, alludes to her piratical prowess and then… isn’t seen again!  She has, like, three scenes!  And one of them is in the dreams of the Pirate Captain where she’s all, “Ooh Pirate Captain, I am UNDONE”.

The pirate to the right of said Pirate Captain in the poster goes by the moniker Suspiciously Curvaceous Pirate (they’re all “[Adjective] Pirate”). Voiced by Ashley Jensen, she’s a dragged-up pirate with an amazing false beard and a sweet Scottish chirp – who also gets very little screen-time or lines, and whose characterisation appears to revolve around the fact that she likes sparkly jewels, pastel colours and fancies the captain a bit.  The humour of her character is almost exclusively that she’s a cross-dressing woman.  Now, I’m never okay with boys in drag being sent up purely for being boys in drag, so why would I be okay with it if the character’s female?

Not great, is it?

That said, it’s not all bad news for lady characters in this, but from a rather unexpected source: the villain, voiced by the legendary Imelda Staunton, Queen Victoria (“Look at my crest! What does it say?  I HATE PIRATES.”) is absolutely magnificent.  She’s perfect.  Stop making that face.  This is the badassest Queen Vic you have ever seen, and I don’t think it’s possible to not fancy her even a little bit after the credits roll.  She has a battle skirt that clanks aside to reveal a) jodphurs and b) TWO KATANAS.  Come on.  How many other films have had Queen Victoria fighting pirates with katanas before getting vanquished by GCSE-classroom science?  FUCKING ZERO.  THIS IS A UNIQUE CINEMATOGRAPHICAL EXPERIENCE.

OVERALL, the above issues aside, it’s a very funny film – the school of humour whereby if one joke doesn’t wash with you, never fear! there’ll be another one along in a tick – and it’s rich with classic Aardman background detail (the pirate ship has a fusebox, for example, and watch the faces of the taxidermy animals in Charles Darwin’s (David Tennant) house during the bathtub chase scene!).  Martin Freeman’s second-in-command pirate actually looks a bit like him, which is neatly appealing, and Brian Blessed’s megaphonic turn as the Pirate King is predictably godlike.  The dodo is gorgeously animated.  I wish there’d been more scientists doing science-y things, but then I was imagining something dreadful involving shiny gloves, tailored labcoats and experimentation, and there are reasons I haven’t been allowed to make films for children and that’s one of them.

But I did make a new poster, to give the neglected characters just a bit more attention. I made Cutlass Liz look a bit more badass, too, on account of her being badass and therefore deserving of a badass coat:

THERE.

YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

•  The best Queen Victoria you have literally ever seen
• It’s really painfully funny
• Who doesn’t want to see Brian Blessed being a pirate king, seriously
• There’s Flight Of The Concords on the soundtrack!
• Thank god for stop-motion claymation – surely the finest animation technique ever? THIS HOUSE BELIEVES: YES

YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• It promises a lot in the trailer and poster in terms of ethnic/gender representation and then doesn’t deliver
• I frankly wanted more science
• And more Brian Blessed
• More of everything that wasn’t the cis/white/male lead characters, actually, I mean they were great and all but I’m bored of cis/white/men being the… we’ve already had this discussion, internet, leave me be

In the world of children’s books there’s a double-whammy of bad female role models and massive under-representation. There’s only one female character to every 1.6 male characters. One of the few regular traditional roles for girls in children’s literature is that of the princess, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that the traditional princess trope doesn’t give girls many positive or useful goals to aim for: look pretty, be born into or marry into hereditary privilege and… uh… that’s it. Happily ever after. Forever. Are you bored yet? I am.

Yet plenty of little girls are still obsessed with princesses and being a princess. It might not appeal much to the grown-ups, but the trope remains strong – as does the lure of pretty things. (Personally, I still have to suppress a twinge of jealousy when I see a kid going by in a really good princess dress – with the layers of skirt and the faux-stays bodice and WHERE WERE THEY WHEN I WAS SMALL, HUH? – but it’s fine. I’m not jealous. I’m writing this wearing a £3 Claire’s Accessories tiara so it’s all OK.)

So, as it doesn’t look like we’ll escape the princess trope any time soon, it’s time to play with it instead. There’s no need to throw out the castles, dragons and bling along with the bathwater – there are plenty of good children’s books out there featuring kickass princesses who do more than just wear dresses. In this post, the first of a three parter, I’m going to give you the lowdown on some good princess role models for your sprogs/selves (delete as age-appropriate).

Disclaimer before we begin:
These books are primarily working from the Western European fairy tale trope, so whilst they may kick ass, some elements remain disappointingly similar throughout – namely that the princesses are often ‘conventionally beautiful’, often blonde, always Caucasian, and in this selection the tales all revolve around the marriage trope. I hope to uncover a wider variety of ass-kicking later, but in the meantime here are some nonetheless very good children’s books.

The Paper Bag Princess

• Written by Robert Munsch and illustrated by Michael Martchenko, published in 1980 by Annick Press

The Paper Bag Princess is a short, snappy children’s book aimed at the 3-5 age group. (Click here to hear it read to you by a kindly librarian.)

The book begins with a typical princess called Elizabeth who “lived in a castle and wore expensive princess clothes”. She plans to marry Prince Ronald, but when a dragon steals away the prince and scorches all the kingdom (including all her pretty clothes) she doesn’t waste a moment: she dons the eponymous paper bag (the only unscorched thing she could wear) and goes off to rescue her man, defeating the dragon using her wits.

Munsch has explained that he wrote the book on his wife’s suggestion:

One day my wife, who also worked at the daycare centre, came to me and said “How come you always have the prince save the princess? Why can’t the princess save the prince?” I thought about that and changed around the ending of one of my dragon stories. That made the adults a lot happier, and the kids did not mind.

(Of course the kids didn’t mind – they don’t have such strong pre-conceived ideas of narrative yet!)

But as well as the princess doing the rescuing, there’s also a brilliant message about self-esteem and moving on. The Prince, once rescued, turns out to be an ungrateful asshat, telling Elizabeth off for looking a mess: “Come back when you look like a real princess.” Upon hearing this the princess doesn’t get upset or angry. She tells the prince, “Your clothes are really pretty and your hair is very neat. You look like a real prince but you are a bum.” (or a toad if you have the UK version). The final line – “they didn’t get married after all” – is illustrated with the Paper Bag Princess dancing off into the sunset.

This book is a brilliant, simple primer for just about everyone. It teaches people that being brave, smart and kind are more important than how you look – and that when someone is mean to you, you can be the bigger person walk away. That’s a double-helix of kickass for all genders, packed into a very short picture book.

Princess Smartypants

• Written and illustrated by Babette Cole, pub. Hamish Hamilton 1986

Babette Cole has done a lot of awesome for children’s literature. Her drawings are warm, funny and just more than a bit gorgeous, and she’s also subverted Cinderella in Prince Cinders (and done plenty more amazing children’s books, but I’ll focus on this one.)

(Once again, you can have this book read to you on YouTube.)

Princess Smartypants (Best. Name. Ever.) is content with her own life: “She enjoyed being a Ms. Because she was pretty and rich, all the princes wanted her to be their Mrs.” Ten points to Cole for slipping in the Miss/Ms/Mrs thing in a fairly small, light way. Minus ten for having a princess who is both pretty and blonde.

However, wanting to put an end to the constant stream of suitors once and for all, Princess Smartypants says she will marry whoever can accomplish all the tasks she sets. This is where it gets badass – her tasks show her interests: gardening (an extreme sport when you see the slugs); feeding her monster pets; roller disco; motorbike riding – you get the idea. Princess Smartypants is accomplished, independent, and happy getting up to the stuff she enjoys.

Eventually Prince Swashbuckle does manage all the tasks, so this is where Princess Smartypants uses her plothammer card and turns him into a toad. Grumpy toad prince drives away in his red sports car, and no princes bother her again. (My plot spill is nothing without the illustrations – for the love of God, READ THIS BOOK.)

As with The Paper Bag Princess, the final frame page of this book combines the news that the protagonist doesn’t get married with an illustration of her looking very happy – in this instance, on a sun lounger, toasting the audience with a glass of something, and surrounded by her monster pets.

The message from both of these books is that you can create your own happily ever after.

The Practical Princess

• From The Practical Princess And Other Liberating Fairy Tales by Jay Williams, Scholastic 1978

Princess Bedelia is given common sense as a baby by a visiting fairy (the other two fairies bestow the more expected gifts of beauty and grace), despite her father’s complaint of “What good is common sense to a princess? All she needs is charm.”

However, when a hungry dragon demands Bedelia to eat and a dragon slayer can’t be found soon enough, the King and his advisors decide they’ll have to give her over to be eaten. Our girl takes control of her own fate with a kind of weary resignation when she realises no one else is up to the task. She makes a dummy from straw and one of her finest gowns, and stuffs it with gunpowder. Bye bye dragon.

When a powerful but age-inappropriate and unwanted suitor turns up, Bedelia sets him near-impossible tasks using her extensive knowledge of the surrounding kingdoms – and uses her sense to catch him out when he cheats. When our girl winds up in a tower with a male Rapunzel/Sleeping Beauty-type prince, she uses her common sense to undo the spell he is under, and rescue them both.

This story isn’t my favourite of the lot – I found the heroine very slightly prissy, and the details and language didn’t really warm my cockles. However, the moral of the story is pretty much ‘don’t panic, keep thinking, you’ll find a solution’, and ain’t no arguing with that. Hip-hip hooray for brains!

The Wrestling Princesss

• From The Wrestling Princess and Other Stories, written by Judy Corbalis, illustrated by Helen Craig, 1986, pub. Andre Deutsch

The Wrestling Princess takes place in a world where some gender roles are set in stone, but some are very altered. Princess Ermyntrude is either wrestling the guards or covered in axle grease, working on her tractors and helicopters – but the King tells her she has to find a husband for the succession. The princess’s resistance and her father’s weary insistence make for a good introduction to the debate on succession. Also, Ermyntrude’s father naming the ‘feminine’ traits she needs sets them up to be deconstructed/dismissed:

“To get a husband you must be enchantingly beautiful, dainty and weak,” said the king.
“Well, I’m not,” said Ermyntrude cheerfully. “I’m nothing to look at, I’m six feet tall and I’m certainly not weak. Why, Father, did you hear, this morning I wrestled with sixteen guards at once and I defeated them all?”
“Ermyntrude!” said the king sternly, as he rethreaded his needle with No. 9 blue tapestry cotton. “Ermyntrude, we are not having any more wrestling and no more forklift trucks either. If you want a husband you will have to become delicate and frail.”
“I don’t want a husband,” said the princess and she stamped her foot hard.

The ensuing prince/groom casting-call both plays to some gender norms (it’s a rule that the prince must be taller than her) and some non-norms (the prince must be able to match her in a face-pulling contest).

This princess does eventually get married, but to a short prince who has a shared love of mechanics and loves her for who she is, and vice versa.

“You’re too short,” said the king.
“He’s not,” said the princess.
“No, I’m not, I’m exactly right and so is she,” said Prince Florizel. “Then when I saw her pulling faces and shouting insults and throwing princes to the ground I knew she was the one person I could fall in love with.”
“Really?” asked the princess.
“Truly,” said Prince Florizel. “Now, come and see my mechanical digger.”

In this book, unlike the previous two, marriage doesn’t turn out to be a thing to be avoided – provided it’s with the right person. This story is about deconstructing the existing framework of helpless princesses and dashing princes – and it also becomes about two quirky, likeable people meeting and falling in love. And falling in love is totally punk rock.

Honourable mention: The Practical Princess

• Written by Rebecca Lisle, illustrated by Joëlle Dreidemy, pub. Andersen 2008

I actually picked this one up by accident when friends were singing the praises of the other Practical Princess book (see above) – but I thought it would be worth comparing and contrasting these different practical princesses.

This book is far more recent than most on this list (the others all being from the 1980s), and it is not particularly feminist, but it does play with the trope a little.

Having read it, I’m not quite sure why this one has the name: Molly, our protagonist, is only a bit practical and she’s not actually a princess. Molly is an ordinary (read: extraordinarily beautiful, but non-royal) girl who wants to be a princess, so she enters a casting-call to find Prince Percival a bride. Her farmer parents help her by making and buying pretty clothes and shoes at great expense, and her lovely boyfriend Stan makes her a crown.

That’s right, she has a boy back home who loves her already, and – though he doesn’t want her to go – he helps her because she has her heart set on becoming a princess. He even drives her to the competition. POOR LOVELY STAN.

I don’t want to go overboard in my criticisms/analysis of children’s books here (not like the Freudian interpretation of The Cat in the Hat – no, that would be silly) but ignoring her current relationship is massively problematic for me. As is the remarkably unsisterly attitude Molly displays towards the other (real) princesses in the competition. They’re all painted as vacuous fashion victims, but I find this attitude in the writing to be uncharitable and a little lazy – as if the other competitors’ one-dimensionality will add more depth to the protagonist by default.

That said, to give her her due, our girl does realize over the course of the book that there isn’t much to recommend becoming royalty and that Stan back home is kinder and cuter than Prince Percival. When the glass slippers moment happens, Molly sticks her toes out so the shoe doesn’t fit, and defenestrates herself to escape back to her old life and lovely, long-suffering Stan.

The plus points for this book are it has a trajectory which begins in the same place as a lot of the readers (‘I’m not a princess but I want to be one’), and the conclusion – that riches and status are hollow compared to people who really care about you – is pretty universal and good. I just wish there’d been less mention of tiny waists throughout the book (no girl ever needs more indoctrination on that shit) – and our protagonist doesn’t really ‘kick ass’ so much as ‘avoids falling into the same traps as the other women.’

Also: poor Stan! You’re not good enough for him, Molly. I’ll take him off your hands.

• There will be more kickass and subversive princesses from children’s books in future articles. Hannah has a few on the list, but if there are any you think she should know about/make sure she doesn’t miss then let us know in the comments section!