Motherhood and speculative fiction
Jul. 11th, 2008 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dickensI've had a couple posts simmering since Wiscon, but haven't had the time to sit down and write it. (The contract is over now, so woo!) Here's #1. (Interestingly, the other post comes from the same panel.)
A panel I slipped into toward the end was talking about depictions of women in media. Based on the characters being discussed, I made a comment that you see young women and post-menopausal women in most stories, but you don't seem to see mothers. (I've mentioned this before...) Are mothers so difficult to portray?
One of the panelists shot me down with "Please, I'm so tired of female characters being limited by their parenting choices." I was too shocked by her response to speak.
[Insert 6 weeks of stewing here.]
Hah! What choices? How many childless heroines do you see considering the possibility of motherhood (except in an occasional shout-out to birth control)? How many heroines have children who weren't fathered by an alien/fairy/demon/god AND/OR aren't the Chosenboy One?
Let's take the example that came up both in my previous post and in the panel.
Sarah Connor. Yes, she becomes kick-ass in T2. But the point of her character is that she is the mother of the Chosen One, who is conceived after Sarah has a one-night-stand with a soldier sent back in time, by her son, to rescue her. Um.
I won't start on the dead-mother and mothers-conveniently-out-of-the-way tropes in YA fiction (and MOST chosen one stories, what's up with that? Being a poor motherless babe makes you studly?). Okay, I started, but I'm stopping now.
Thank goodness for Nanny Ogg.
A panel I slipped into toward the end was talking about depictions of women in media. Based on the characters being discussed, I made a comment that you see young women and post-menopausal women in most stories, but you don't seem to see mothers. (I've mentioned this before...) Are mothers so difficult to portray?
One of the panelists shot me down with "Please, I'm so tired of female characters being limited by their parenting choices." I was too shocked by her response to speak.
[Insert 6 weeks of stewing here.]
Hah! What choices? How many childless heroines do you see considering the possibility of motherhood (except in an occasional shout-out to birth control)? How many heroines have children who weren't fathered by an alien/fairy/demon/god AND/OR aren't the Chosen
Let's take the example that came up both in my previous post and in the panel.
Sarah Connor. Yes, she becomes kick-ass in T2. But the point of her character is that she is the mother of the Chosen One, who is conceived after Sarah has a one-night-stand with a soldier sent back in time, by her son, to rescue her. Um.
I won't start on the dead-mother and mothers-conveniently-out-of-the-way tropes in YA fiction (and MOST chosen one stories, what's up with that? Being a poor motherless babe makes you studly?). Okay, I started, but I'm stopping now.
Thank goodness for Nanny Ogg.
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Date: 2008-07-12 04:01 am (UTC)i'd like to see mothers in books where they are mothers, but the part where they are mothers is not the point, you know? i am all full of oh sainted motherhood stories. i would like to see some "she saves the world and then figures out which kindergarten she's sending the kids to" stories.