ineptshieldmaid: Language is my playground (Default)
ineptshieldmaid ([personal profile] ineptshieldmaid) wrote in [personal profile] be_themoon 2010-06-09 02:39 am (UTC)

Well, I'd prefer you just convert to thinking she is the awesomest, but I'll settle for disliking her for rational reasons that don't involve saying she dresses like a slut

This is reminding me of the Hair Debacle in STXI fandom last year, in which one side railed about Uhura's straight hair and how it was an insult to black women everywhere (and by extension, Uhura and/or Zoe were sellouts, etc), and the others railed about Uhura having the right to do whatever she damn well pleased with her hair, Zoe's hair being actually straight, and their personal straight hair. And what the former party failed to specify - or perhaps grasp - and the latter party either didn't understand or didn't care about, was that the problem isn't *one girl*'s appearance but ongoing tropes.

I don't have a problem with Amy - she's not my favourite companion yet (that would be Martha or Donna), but she's pretty awesome. As far as short-skirted TV women go, her costumes cool and I haven't had any reason to thing that the camera/directing's *exploiting* her skirt choices (we're not getting shots which focus primarily on her legs or hemline, for example).

But it would be a valid objection to the current series of Dr Who, as part of wider sci-fi culture (and maybe other TV as well?) to say that there's a problem when awesome female characters are usually only awesome when it comes with being attractive, sexually available, and dressed in ways which we know are going to appeal to a male audience's perve reflex (nevermind the lesbian audience, TV producers aren't usually thinking of them). I like *Amy* as a person, but I don't like the plot arc, the one that's forcing her to choose between two men in order to affirm one or other of them in their masculinity. That bugs me; the fact that she's clever and sexually confident and all of that is *cool*, but much of the plot purpose for establishing that about her seems to be (i'm only up to ep 8) to establish her as a better prize in the little game of Don't You Wish Your Boyfriend Was Hot Like Me that the Doctors' playing. And costuming choices are all a part of that.

Amy's not a person, not at the canon level. I think maybe the slut-shamers have forgotten that part, as well as many of Amy's defenders. She's a Stephen Moffat *creation*, one more piece in the big matrix of pop culture.

In other news, I signed up to beta for narnia_exchange!

Post a comment in response:

If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting