KICK BUTT HEROINES

In my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, my reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack pays homage to Stephanie Plum. They’re both Jersey girls, and as Anastasia finds herself mired deeper and deeper in caca, on several occasions she wonders, what would Stephanie do?

Personally, I thinks she’d be better off wondering, what would Fiona do? Not Shrek’s wife, although in the last movie Shrek's Fiona did let loose her inner kick-butt heroine. I'm talking about the other Fiona. Fiona Glenanne, the kick-butt love interest of Michael Westen in Burn Notice. Fiona is a former member of the IRA, a woman who cooks up explosives at her kitchen sink as easily as Anastasia scrambles an egg. Fiona is also a precision marksman (or markswoman) who is equally adept at picking locks, tracking down bad guys, and driving like the proverbial bat out of hell. You don’t want to mess with Fiona.

If Anastasia were more like Fiona, she’d have a lot less problems. Fiona wouldn’t put up with Ricardo the loan shark for more than five seconds. She also wouldn’t put up with all the family melodrama Anastasia deals with from her communist mother-in-law and her (supposedly) Russian princess Mama. Fiona believes in family, but she doesn’t believe in taking crap from anyone.

Most of all, Fiona doesn’t like being told what to do. Everyone is always telling Anastasia what to do.

Anastasia doesn’t get to watch much television, given her family and work schedule. However, I’m seriously thinking about sitting her down to watch a few episodes of Burn Notice. She might learn a thing or two that could help her deal with all that caca flying at her from every direction.


What about you? Do you have a favorite kick-butt heroine? Is it Katniss Everdeen or Lisbeth Salander? Or maybe it's the newly kick-butt version of Snow White from Snow White and the Huntsman? Then there's Merida, the heroine of the upcoming Brave. (Thank you, Pixar, for finally remembering the girls!)

Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series. The first book, Assault With A Deadly Glue Gun, was a January 2011 release and received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist and has been nominated for a Book of the Year Award by ForeWords Reviews and is a finalist for a Daphne du Maurier Award. Death by Killer Mop Doll, the second book in the series, was released in January. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com and Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog, http://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.

Wanted: Weak Female Characters by Vicki Doudera

Did anyone else read the New York Times article (July 3rd) by Carina Chocano in which she bemoaned the rise of women who are "tough, cold, terse, taciturn and prone to not saying goodbye when they hang up the phone"? In other words: strong female characters.

Cocano was speaking more about films than books, but I found her riff on the whole subject fascinating and pertinent nonetheless. She made the point that when people use the term "strong female character," they aren't really describing characters that are complex or well-written, nor are they referencing heroines who figure prominently in a story. What is really meant by "strong female character," she argues, is a female character with the gendered behavior taken out.

I've thought about this with regard to my mystery series and its heroine Darby Farr. Now Darby's not what I would call a "girly girl." She's an expert at Aikido, she's a loner, and she doesn't espouse too many qualities which we'd consider traditionally feminine (although she is a big believer in intuition.) When she acted a little impulsively at one point in the first book, A House to Die For, a reviewer gently chastised me for a "TSTL," or "too stupid to live" moment. You can bet I made sure Darby was a little more careful in Killer Listing, and she's downright precise in Deadly Offer, coming out in April. She is strong. She is invincible. She is Darby...

And yet, as Chocano argues in her article, isn't a little weakness "precisely what makes characters interesting, relatable, and funny"? If our strong female characters all act like Lisbeth Salander, aren't we contributing to the notion that for a female character to be worth identifying with, she can't be at all feminine?

On a personal level, I ask myself why it is that Darby can't make a few mistakes here and there? Might she shed a tear when she gets upset or hurt? And I'd like to see her make at least one close friend, for goodness sake, even if it's someone she meets in Aikido class.

I'll be the first to admit that I enjoy writing scenes in which Darby displays so-called "masculine" qualities. When she takes out a bad guy with an expert move, I feel nearly as proud as when my very beautiful daughter makes a killer kick in soccer. But Darby can have a softer side, too, and we may see it from time to time in future books. After all, she's evolving and growing.

Or would that be me?