*Spoilers for Breaking Bad, Buffy, Firefly, and Game of Thrones*

Sophia McDougall’s great article “I hate Strong Female Characters” has been posted all over my social networks in the past week. I agree that female characters in pop fiction rarely get to be full, complex people, and that “strength” often functions as another one-dimensional, unrealistic cliche.

I’ve been mulling over this topic, and it seems to me the problem involves more than just writers creating one-dimensional women. Women in the real world get pigeon-holed into impossibly contradictory stereotypes, too (virgin/whore) – I’m a woman and a feminist I know I work to be conscious of this kind of stereotyping, including of myself. Meanwhile, the actions of white men rarely limit ...