Ellen Ripley did not need a speech explaining why women were superior to men. Judi Dench’s M did not need James Bond to become useless before we could recognise her authority. Stella Gibson in The Fall could command a room without becoming an uncomplicated model of virtue.
These women were memorable because they were characters. They had particular temperaments, relationships, limitations and choices. Strength was part of who they were, rather than a substitute for everything else.
That is what makes the modern “strong independent woman” formula so frustrating. In its weakest form, it gives us a heroine whose competence is announced, whose superiority is repeatedly demonstrated, and whose surroundings are arranged to make her look impressive. Men become fools, obstacles or interchangeable villains. Female empowerment becomes the message; character development becomes optional.
The result can be predictable, less believable and, ultimately, boring.
We already knew how to write strong women
Ripley’s courage matters because danger is real to her. She experiences fear and loss, needs help and makes difficult decisions. Her survival is compelling because it is not emotionally effortless.
M’s authority rests on responsibility and judgment. Bond can be exceptionally capable while she remains his formidable superior. Neither character needs to become an idiot to validate the other.
Christine Baranski’s Diane Lockhart in The Good Wife is accomplished, proud and capable of miscalculation. Sarah Lancashire’s Catherine Cawood in Happy Valley is brave and resourceful, but also grieving, angry and sometimes overbearing. Eleanor Tomlinson’s Demelza in Poldark is resilient without being immune to insecurity, desire or consequential mistakes.
Gillian Anderson’s Stella Gibson offers another version of strength: professional command combined with emotional distance and a complicated personal life.
These are different women. That difference is the point. An interesting female character does not have to pass a single ideological audition in which she must be commanding, self-sufficient, physically dominant and beyond correction.
When the message takes over
The criticism is not confined to audiences who dislike the politics. Published reviews of several recent films identify the same problem: empowerment presented through thin characters and obvious messaging.
Reviewing The 355 (2022), Stephanie Zacharek in TIME distinguishes the film’s dutiful sisterhood statements from actual chemistry. Her criticism points to the gap between reassuring audiences about women’s capabilities and giving them an entertaining group of people to watch. TIME review
That gap matters. A cast of accomplished actresses cannot create convincing relationships from declarations alone. Being told that women support each other is not the same experience as watching loyalty develop, fracture and survive a test.
In his review of The Princess (2022), Brian Tallerico describes a thin framework around the action and an empowerment angle that feels manipulative. Its antagonists practically announce the theme through dialogue about the heroine knowing her place. RogerEbert.com review
There is little dramatic discovery when the script supplies an obvious sexist, has the heroine defeat him, and treats the outcome as a complete statement about her character. We know whom to oppose. We know whom to applaud. What remains to learn about either person?
Damsel (2024) attracted a related criticism from Den of Geek: its empowerment remains superficial, while the film repeatedly establishes the heroine’s intelligence and capabilities for the audience. The review also finds its other women poorly served. Den of Geek review
Elodie does struggle and suffer. Yet announcing an empowered woman can still take priority over discovering a distinctive person.
Making men smaller does not make women stronger
For a men’s advocacy publication, the treatment of the surrounding men is equally important.
In Gunpowder Milkshake (2021), the problem is unusually explicit. Nikki Baughan’s Sight and Sound review describes male opponents as “hapless men who can’t seem to land so much as a punch”. It also finds little exploration of the central mother–daughter relationships. Baughan enjoys the film’s stylised action, but still identifies the bluntness of its gender politics. Sight and Sound review
That combination deserves scrutiny. The women dominate physically; the men supply targets; the relationships remain underdeveloped. A display of superiority is doing work that personality and emotional substance should have done.
Male action films also give their heroes implausible victories over disposable opponents. That convention does not become better writing when repackaged as female empowerment. If defeating useless men is supposed to demonstrate exceptional female strength, the demonstration undermines itself. An achievement becomes less impressive when the opposition has been deliberately weakened.
Black Christmas (2019) supplies another revealing example. The Film Magazine criticises women reduced to feminist clichés and men rendered as cartoon villains. Slant likewise objects to its simplistic conflict between the sexes, while acknowledging a sympathetic male exception. The Film Magazine review, Slant review
An individual male villain is ordinary storytelling. A world populated with male caricatures to certify female righteousness is a different creative choice. It diminishes men and gives the women less interesting people to confront.
Barbie and the limits of reversal
Barbie (2023) belongs in this discussion because it makes gender hierarchy central to its comedy. Its reversal is deliberate: the Kens occupy subordinate positions in a world organised around the Barbies. Ken’s attempt to overturn that arrangement becomes a major part of the story.
Simply identifying the reversal does not settle whether it works. The question is what the film asks audiences to find funny, whose exclusion deserves concern, and whether male and female vulnerability receive comparable dignity.
In Vogue, Michelle Santiago Cortés questions the film’s broad stereotypes, simple binaries and generic explanatory speech. That criticism reaches beyond whether viewers agree with its intended message. It concerns the limitations of delivering that message through simplified people. Vogue review
Barbie experiences insecurity, and Ken is given a sympathetic search for an identity beyond her approval. Those elements should be acknowledged. They also make the central question more interesting: does the film consistently challenge gender hierarchy, or does it sometimes rely on the humiliation of men to make its point?
Calling something satire does not place that choice beyond criticism.
The loss of individuality
The problem reaches beyond action and physical dominance. Wendy Ide’s review of Persuasion (2022) criticises its substitution of a sassy romantic-comedy approach for Austen’s melancholy. The Guardian review
That raises a broader question about what contemporary entertainment permits a woman to be. Must quiet strength be translated into knowing confidence before an audience is trusted to recognise it? Must every heroine arrive with the same repertoire of assertiveness and knowing remarks?
Independence, ambition and leadership are worthwhile qualities. They become restrictive when treated as compulsory proof of a woman’s worth. Tenderness, uncertainty, love and accepting help need not diminish her. Neither does recognising another person’s greater experience or ability.
Better characters, not better slogans
Good female characters have not vanished. Blue Lights, which began in 2023, is one reminder. Nor were earlier stories devoid of politics: Prime Suspect, for example, made sexism part of its drama.
The target here is a particular formula: writing that treats a woman as a representative statement first and an individual second. These examples illustrate its weaknesses.
But the formula deserves a forceful challenge. When a script repeatedly protects its heroine’s superiority, meaningful failure becomes harder to explore. When the men around her are made foolish, relationships become less convincing. When the audience already knows who will be right, who will be humiliated and what lesson will be delivered, drama becomes an exercise in waiting for confirmation.
Men have reason to object to being reduced to fools. Women have reason to object to being reduced to slogans. Both deserve characters with enough individuality to surprise us.
The strongest female characters can be brave and frightened, capable and mistaken, independent and attached to other people. Their humanity gives their strength meaning.
If a woman’s strength depends on making every man around her smaller, how well have you actually written her?