Sheroes

Something that keeps bouncing around in my brain are the fictional characters who have shaped me in some form or fashion over the years. I’m a bit of a broken record when it comes to things that I love, but it strikes me that I’ve never really sat down and analyzed what it is about these characters that draw me in and make me feel seen. What is it about them that I relate to? Is it a quality that I see in them that I possess or one that I wish to possess? Was it simple attraction and I was too blind to call it that correctly?

Initially, I was going to do this as a series. A string of several entries was going to catalog the myriad fictional characters I’ve idolized over my life. I realize that’s unnecessary. Ah the joys of self-editing. To make it easy on myself I’m going to do a top ten of the greatest hits, leaving the greatest of them all for her own separate post. Spoiler alert: It’s Princess Leia. More on her later though. In chronological order, my (s)heroes:

1.      You obviously have little regard for womanhood. You must learn respect.

I can say honestly, that it feels like I’ve been a Wonder Woman fan since birth. (I type this while wearing a Wonder Woman baseball cap.) When I was very small, my grandmother and I used to sit together and watch television. A wide variety of shows from the standard 80s cartoons, to her stories (soap operas), to Scarecrow and Mrs. King, I Love Lucy, and some shows from the 70s that played on rerun during the day. My favorite of those shows was Wonder Woman. Seeing Lynda Carter spin around and reveal her superhero self gave my tiny heart more joy than I could ever describe.

I remember running around with my grandma’s overlarge bangles around my wrists, pretending they were Wonder Woman’s gauntlets deflecting bullets (complete with sound effects). I didn’t have a Lasso of Truth so I used my little Velcro dart balls to pretend that they were Dart Balls of Truth, able to extract information from even the most stubborn of foes. I imagine I was quite the terror at three years old, running around with my limited dexterity capturing imaginary villains and sending them to bad guy jail. And then, like Diana, extolling the virtues of womankind with my clumsy parroting of her monologues and my own improvised life lessons for ne’er do wells.

I’ve grown out of love with a lot of things over the course of my life but Wonder Woman has remained. I was terrified when they finally made a Wonder Woman movie. I thought, how can they possibly give this woman who I have worshipped since I was a toddler the story she deserved? I’m so glad to say that I cried happy tears in the theater the day I saw the film.

But what is it about Diana Prince that spoke so strongly to a three-year-old that she instilled a lifelong love? Was it in part that I felt like my mother resembled Lynda Carter and so saw the potential that I might one day look like her too? Was it her shiny bracelets that I thought made her invincible? Was it the beauty of the transformation? The spinning to reveal her true self? Was it because she was stronger than all the boys? Was it the invisible jet?

I honestly can’t say what combination of things led me to my love for the character. Diana Prince was strong, beautiful, smart, cunning, and righteous. She had an arrow-straight moral compass. There was right and wrong, and Hera help you if you did wrong.

As an adult, I’ve learned much about the creation of the character, and the two women who were the inspiration for her. It makes sense that I found so much to cling to in the Princess of Themyscira. Diana led me down a path for several lesser obsessions in my early childhood who were similar to her, like She-Ra, and another character who will get her own entry in a little bit. She paved the path to my love of comics, storytelling, and Greek mythology.

Without the influence of Diana Prince, I’m honestly not certain who I would be. She set a table for me to find other women who were more than just pretty or strong. I learned that our ideals are something sacred that we should cling to but allow space for growth and change if we learned that those ideals weren’t perfect or, god-forbid, turned out to be harmful. Diana taught me that I could be the hero of the story. I didn’t have to be the damsel in distress. I could save myself. I was strong enough on my own to deflect whatever bullets came my way. Lessons like these, I had no idea at the time, would turn out to be lifelines to which I’d cling.

  

2.      Confidence is faith in oneself. It can't easily be given by another.

At six years old, I was introduced to Star Trek: The Next Generation. The best Star Trek of them all (argue with someone else). From the first episode I watched—which I realize now was actually in season 2—I was in love with Deanna Troi. I used to walk around the house trying to make my collarbones pop the way Marina Sirtis’ did.

If Diana Prince taught me strength and wisdom, Deanna Troi taught me compassion and empathy as superhuman abilities. I didn’t understand at the time, that the creators of the show relegated Deanna to eye candy and the occasional helpful line. I saw a woman who used her gifts to navigate the world, keeping herself and those she cared about safe.

That was very important to me at that point in my life. I tried to teach myself to develop the ability to read strong emotions. It wasn’t much of a stretch. It came naturally to be able to tell what people in the room were feeling. I pinged fear and anger more easily than joy. I still do though I’ve learned to also sense sadness in others. My mood naturally lifts when surrounded by joyful people though I don’t consciously recognize I’m holding other people’s joy until after the fact.

If I look back, I would also say that Deanna Troi was one of the first (if not the first) crushes I ever experienced. I was obsessed in a way that was different from other characters I’d loved before. I knew I was supposed to like Wesley Crusher in that way, and I knew well enough to say that he was the one I liked. The heteronormativity of Southern Kentucky left me with no concept of a language for the love I felt for Deanna. It was the age-old queer problem of “do I have a crush on you, or do I want to be you?”

Some of my confusion about Deanna (and frankly for as much as I loved her, she also made me uncomfortable) could be distilled down to being a child, but much of it came from being in a hyper-conservative community. I remember in elementary school, calling a girl named Elizabeth, Lizzie. Completely innocuous to me, but the chastisement I got for it from her and other kids was alarming. How dare I call her something so close to the word lezzie. Which, I was told, was the worst thing a woman could be, next to a prostitute. I didn’t understand really what that meant. I just knew that I needed to make sure that I never was that. I didn’t want to go to hell. And that was a ticket straight to the flames.

I never asked anyone about that word and what it meant. I was too scared. They might assume I was asking because I was one. The culture I grew up in was in some ways typical of Appalachia and in some ways atypical. Not everyone from Appalachia was raised in a church that was tantamount to a cult. So I used my empath abilities and read the room. Thanks to Deanna I learned to keep myself safe and hidden.

Deanna, in part, led me to my degrees in psychology and social work. I’ve always wanted to help people. To protect people. She was a counselor and so to me, that was the logical leap in order to care for people. While not my dream job, it was certainly a decent backup.

3.      People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven’t you?

One year later, I found Anne Shirley. I found her in the form of a Canadian miniseries. Anne of Green Gables. For the first time in my short life, I felt absolutely and wholly seen. I was/am Anne Shirley. This girl was weird and wonderful. Her imagination was her superpower. Her ability to dream away the darkness, her ability to tell stories to keep herself from falling apart. The stories and the dreams didn’t just keep her from falling apart though, they also glued her more together. She was smart, and kind, and hopeful.

As soon as I saw the first miniseries, I had to read the books. I don’t remember if I checked them out from the library first or if my mom bought them for me, but I do remember the little paperback copies I had of the entire series. I read them over and over. I was young enough that there were some words I didn’t fully understand. It was slightly advanced for a seven-year-old, but Anne I understood in my bones. I had a soul deep knowing of the girl who wanted nothing more than a home and a bosom friend.

If it isn’t obvious by now, I was a unique kid. I struggled to make friends. I talked way too much or not at all. When I did talk, I talked weird. I put phrases together differently. What makes sense to me in my head is often not easy for others to follow. I realize now that it was Anne that made me feel normal in my speech. That she found a Diana who loved and appreciated her for exactly how she was, gave me hope that someday I’d have one friend who just understood me. Or at least, like Diana, loved the weirdness in me and accepted it fully and freely and allowed me to be exactly myself and no one else.

Anne Shirley was the epitome of creative. My first dream for myself was to be a writer. It’s the only dream I’ve ever consistently had for myself since I was old enough to hold a marker and scribble wordless stories. I read the series all the way through (except the last book) and hoped I could grow up and be like Anne. I didn’t know there existed in the world someone so like me. To get to read her story through her whole life felt like reading what my life could be. This Anne girl was a mirror to me. The first and only mirror I ever found that reflected nearly all of myself back to me.

4.      You look as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs.

X-Men: The Animated Series premiered when I was ten years old. My uncle and I sat down together on Saturday mornings when we were able to watch the series. I loved it and all the misfits I found there. The most important of them to me was Rogue. At first glance, one could say I only loved her because she had brown-ish hair, green eyes, and a thick southern drawl. It was rare that I felt physically represented by characters I saw on tv. They were all either blonde or way too pretty. By this time in my life, I had mostly grown out of the hopes that I’d mature into someone pretty. Not that Rogue was ugly, but she was different.

I don’t know if I can talk about Rogue as openly as I would like. She was near invincible. And god help you if you touched her skin. She could kill you near instantly. It was a power that troubled Rogue, but it was a power that called to me like a siren song. I ached for that kind of power. Jean’s ability to read mind and move things telekinetically did nothing for me. Jubilee was fun shooting fireworks from her fingertips, I guess. Storm was a boss and honestly the power to control the weather is still one of the coolest superpowers that I can imagine but it didn’t speak to me. The power to dictate who could touch you and punish those who did so without permission was everything I dreamed of at that point in my life.

Rogue was bodily autonomy. She was judge, jury, and executioner at times. I used to put gloves on my hands and pretend that anyone who dared look at me wrong could be drained of their entire life with the simple touch of my finger against their cheek. When I found out they were making movies, I was so excited. I went to the theater dressed as Rogue. I had elbow length white gloves on and I bought, from either Claire’s or Hot Topic, some temporary white hair paste. It wasn’t even dye. Just a thick matted paste that sat in my hair like glue. I had just graduated high school. As I sat in the theater, I grew livid with each passing second. I despised what they did to Rogue. And I hated Anna Paquin.

In the cartoon, and in the comic books, Rogue had the powers of Carol Danvers running through her veins. She could fly and had superhuman strength in addition to her own innate powers. Through touch, she could take on the powers of others when she needed them. She was a self-possessed woman who you did not fuck with. In the movie Rogue was my age or younger. She was terrified of herself, relied on others to save her, and in the big crux of the plot, had another’s powers forced into her with the intent to destroy the world. She was used as a weapon against her will.

The Rogue I knew and loved was well and truly dead. In the second movie, she hated herself so fully that she willingly gave up her power to be “normal.” I don’t think I had ever felt so betrayed by a character in my life. I spent a long time blaming Anna for Rogue rather than the writers. I thought there had to have been something she could’ve done to put my Rogue in her Rogue. It was so naïve and immature. The 11-year-old in me was betrayed and I wanted a face to blame.

Not that she’d ever read this or care, but for what it’s worth, I’m so sorry that I spent so long blaming and hating Anna for what the writers and producers did to assassinate Rogue. You just did your job. You had no idea that another girl your age was watching one of her first saving graces being obliterated on the movie screen. Nor were you ever responsible for any part in my feelings of betrayal. I’m sorry I put that responsibility on your shoulders.

It took a long time for me to reclaim Rogue. Too many people now knew her as this weak and fragile thing. I didn’t want to be associated with that. It would take another five years for me to come back to Rogue and forgive my own hatred of myself enough to look at all Rogue’s iterations and see someone complex and scarred and yet still capable.

5.      Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the earth.

I saw Jurassic Park in the theaters at least four times. I read the kids’ adaptation book at least five times and the full adult book three times. I was in 4^th grade. I loved Dr. Ellie Sattler. I would dig for dinosaur bones and plant fossils in my backyard. I wore a purple tank top, one of my mom’s pink button ups, and my khaki shorts. I quoted her relentlessly as I pretended to run from imaginary dinosaurs in my backyard. I wrote fan mail to Laura Dern (which I don’t think I ever sent).

Intelligence was something that always drew me into a character. She had to be as smart, if not smarter, than the men around her. Dr. Sattler was just that. She did not wait to be saved from the dinosaurs. She fought through her fear to do everything in her power to get off the island safely with as many people as she could get out. She was never out of her depth. She was brought to the island because she was an expert herself, not just because Dr. Grant was a paleontologist. She was a doctor in her own right. Her expertise was required the same as Dr. Grant.

She was not sneered at because she was a woman. She was not assumed incapable…that I recall. She proved herself to be an asset. She brought power back to the island to get them home. The way my heart pounded in my tiny little chest as she made her way out of the electrical building chased by a velociraptor. I can still hear her listing off all the park locations as she flips the switches.

I loved the movie so much that the theme song was my piano recital piece the year the movie came out.

As I entered pre-teen and teenage years, the characters I loved took a decidedly more aggressive turn. They were largely angry for some, usually valid, reason. Sarah Connor, Susan Ivanova, Seven of Nine, and Aeryn Sun all expressed things that I couldn’t or didn’t have the words for. They gave me similar escape. I saw what I wanted to be: strong, fearless, sarcastic, and smart. I recently saw the new Terminator movie and 14-year-old me SHRIEKED every time Linda Hamilton did something badass. It was mostly sci-fi women that I found appealing. They were beautiful so I also harbored small crushes on them all though I still didn’t’ have the language to identify it as such at the time. They made me feel things I couldn’t describe or understand. The character Evelyn Carnahan from the Mummy movies, I think, was an awakening for a LOT of queer women of a certain age.

The characters here all have some similarities. They are all strong and smart. Most of them are also smartasses. They speak their minds, they stand up for what is right, and they know themselves. They know what they want and most of them go after it with fervor and won’t be swayed by anyone who might get in their way. The character that epitomizes all this and more for me and for a lot of women I know is Princess Leia Organa. I’ve rambled for over 3,000 words about all these women and I could say even more just about Leia and Carrie Fisher. I’m going to try and wrangle my thoughts into a fairly concise, hopefully coherent piece for next time. If I can get through it without crying.

Who are some of the characters that have shaped you? Who have you seen either yourself in or who you hoped you would be? Nerd away, fellow nerds.