4 Reasons "Megamind" is a Feminist Movie

I watched "Megamind" recently- a nontraditional superhero cartoon from 2010- and loved it!  It was very funny (I especially enjoyed the running joke about Megamind being unable to pronounce words- for example, he said "shool" instead of "school") and it had really good music ("Highway to Hell", Michael Jackson's "Bad", old songs like that).

But most importantly, it wasn't sexist!

Yep, as the movie started, and Megamind (the villain, but he's also the main character- it's complicated) was holding Roxanne, a beautiful woman, hostage, I was cringing and imagining what stupid sexist tropes were coming, and how after the movie I'd have to analyze it and point out all that stuff, to be sure I don't subconsciously accept it. 

Because kidnapping is sexy...?  Image source.

You've seen this trope before, right?  She's the damsel in distress, and the villain is about to start hitting on her.  Fantastic.

But I was wrong.  Instead the two of them started joking about how many times he's kidnapped her, and his plans always fail and she's totally not scared of him.

And from there, the movie subverted a ton of other tropes, and it was funny and unpredictable.  Here are my 4 reasons "Megamind" is a feminist movie:

1. Roxanne was absolutely not helpless.  She was incredibly dedicated to saving the city, fighting the damage that Megamind (and later Titan) had done.  She worked together with Megamind (yeah... I promise this does make sense- I'm not going to explain the whole plot now), and she was the force behind a lot of their ideas and plans.

2. Roxanne's coworker, Hal, makes a few failed attempts to ask her out at the beginning of the movie.  Later, he gets superpowers and becomes Titan, and he agrees to work towards "being a hero" only because "the hero gets the girl."  The movie makes it very obvious that Titan is a creepy sexist jerk, and quite directly mocks this whole "the hero gets the girl" thing.  (Megamind even laments that "the bad guy does not get the girl" when he is discouraged that he might never be with Roxanne.)  At one point, Titan grabs Roxanne and flies around over the city, expecting her to be impressed by his superpowers and immediately fall for him.  He even tells her "the hero gets the girl."  She rejects him (for obvious reasons, plus she already has a boyfriend) and he suggests maybe he should rescue her a few times and then she'll want him.  Yeah right.

3. For a while, Roxanne and Bernard are dating, but Bernard is actually Megamind in disguise.  (Also, can we give a shout-out for a nerdy guy having a girlfriend?  There's a stereotype that says that's bizarre or impossible.)

Bernard and Roxanne.  Image source.

When she finds out that he's lying to her, she dumps him.  Later, as Titan is destroying the city, Megamind comes back to ask for Roxanne's help to stop him.  He tells her "you're the smartest person I know" and they begin to work together again- not dating, just working as a team to figure things out and save the city.  Because, believe it or not, women can do other things besides be someone's girlfriend.  A man and woman can work together without a romantic connection between them.  He had lied to her- it's not like they're just automatically back together.  They rebuild trust and stuff as friends first.

4. Roxanne was beautiful throughout the whole movie- wearing clothes that were beautiful and feminine, ranging from a formal dress to a t-shirt.  Yes, she was beautiful even when she was working to solve the problem and figure out how to save the city.  The fact that I was surprised by this kind of scares me.  Because, you know, women should look beautiful and feminine when they're being captured by the bad guy, when they need to be rescued, and they should look not-that-beautiful and gender-neutral when they're thinking and being smart and figuring stuff out.  But in "Megamind", no matter what Roxanne was doing or wearing, she looked very feminine and hour-glass-y.

She's in this formal dress when she gets an epiphany about Titan.  Image source.

Again, I was surprised that a movie had a woman figuring things out and being beautiful AT THE SAME TIME.  This is why we need to look for these little patterns and stereotypes in media- it seems that I had just believed that one without realizing how totally sexist and messed-up it is.

(In fact, even as I do some image-searching on google and see her wearing those dresses, my reflex response is to question my conclusion that this is a feminist movie- because she looks beautiful and so clearly the movie must not have respected her as an actual human being.  But no, it did.  It's just my mind that's screwed up.)

And here's my last disclaimer:  Okay, so I'm afraid that when I use the term "feminist" I'll lose some people.  Because surely a "feminist movie" is about women getting all upset over some phantom sexism.  No.  "Megamind" is a nontraditional superhero movie.  It messes with a lot of the tropes from that genre, and I'm just happy it messed with the sexist ones.  I call it a "feminist movie" because as a feminist I can watch it without constantly cringing at predictable sexist tropes.

And no it doesn't pass the Bechdel test.  Roxanne is the only female character.

I'm happy to say I enjoyed this movie, and I'm sure my family members are glad I didn't need to debrief it afterwards.

Image source.

And I have to include this relevant xkcd...

I hate when sexism is actually practical

"The girls were going to paint their nails and talk about their feelings, and the boys were going to play football."

My sister said this recently when we were discussing gender and the church.  Apparently her thoughts on the subject were "and they wonder why I don't go to youth group."

I mean, clearly it's wrong because why do you assume all girls want to be boring and paint their nails?

Oh, actually.  I'll take this opportunity to mention I do like painting my nails.  I think they look really cool.  But if anyone is going to accuse me of liking it "because" I'm a girl, well ... I kinda don't want to paint my nails any more.

This is actually a far trickier question than I originally thought.  What if a lot of girls are more feminine (and less easily offended...) than me?  What if you were given the duty of planning an activity for the girls in the youth group, and you asked them what they wanted to do, and the majority said they wanted to do something stereotypically feminine, because THAT'S WHAT THEY ACTUALLY WANT TO DO.

I don't want to be so angry about sexism and assumptions that I forget that there are generalizations you can make about the differences between boys and girls, and those are true statements.  I'm actually imagining a graph with 2 bell curves on it:

See, for some attributes you measure, the graph will look like that- a statistically significant difference between the averages for men and women.  But look at the overlap in the tails of the distributions.

(And we could speculate about the reasons for the difference- is it because men and women are genetically different?  Is it because of what society says men and women are supposed to be like?  It doesn't matter the reason- the fact is that a lot of girls genuinely do like "girl things" and a lot of boys genuinely do like "boy things.")

But I really do wonder how much of it is that they actually like those things and how much is that everyone assumes they like those things.  Haha, I would love some real statistics on some of this stuff.  So I don't have to draw a bell curve in Paint like I did up there.

I present to you a hypothetical scenario:  Suppose you had 4 kids- 2 boys and 2 girls.  And you tell them they can do some extracurricular activities.  So each kid thinks about it and decides which one they want to do.  And both of the girls, completely independently and of their own free will, decided to take dance class.  And both of the boys, completely independently and of their own free will, decided to play soccer.

And then suppose somebody described the situation as "The girls take dance and the boys play sports."  Is that an accurate description?  I say no.  Because that makes it sound like "The girls take dance because they're girls.  You know how cute and one-dimensional girls are."

But Perfect Number, how can you have a problem with "The girls take dance and the boys play sports"?  It is a completely correct statement about those 4 hypothetical children.  How can you say it's not okay to say that?

I summarize it this way:  I have a problem with statements about how boys and girls are different, and with treating boys and girls differently, when I feel limited by it.  When people take the true statement that "boys and girls tend to be different in this particular characteristic" and from that conclude that we should make ALL the girls do this certain thing, and ALL the boys do that certain thing, and this is how boys and girls are SUPPOSED TO BE.

When other people notice that I'm doing something that doesn't match a feminine stereotype (like writing an equation to explain my feelings about dating- really though, how do people understand their feelings without a decent amount of algebra?), I feel good about that, because it means I'm independent and I make my own choices.  When people notice I'm doing something that IS "feminine", I don't like it, because although I chose to do that thing because I personally do actually like it, I feel like other people see it as "ah well obviously she likes cute kittens- all girls do- girls are all the same."

Women should go ahead and be as feminine as they want or as non-feminine as they want.

Let's not take generalizations about what boys/girls like and use them to tell boys/girls what they're supposed to like.  But in a practical way, how does this work?  What if you ARE planning an activity for the girls in the youth group?

I don't know.  That's tricky.  Does it actually make practical sense to treat everyone exactly the same?

All right, what does everyone else think?  Do other women feel the same way, or is this because I'm a nerd girl and for a long time I've felt the tension between my nerd cred and my femininity?  (Because if no one else feels the same way, maybe I'm just too sensitive?)

Do any men want to share if there's some sort of similar thing with stereotypes about men?  I'd expect it would play out differently- seems like it's way more socially acceptable for girls to be "not feminine" than for boys to be "not manly."  Tell me all about it.

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By the way, this week I am participating in Rachel Held Evans's "Week of Mutuality"- blogging about equality of women in the church. http://rachelheldevans.com/announcing-week-of-mutuality 

Also, here is one of her posts which relates to what I've written here. 

As a woman, I will read Esther on my own terms, thank you very much

Hey guess what.  There's a women's bible study starting at church.  We'll be reading Esther.  Or maybe Ruth.  Or maybe Proverbs 31.

And in this case, my rolling my eyes and being offended tends to overcome my enthusiasm for studying the bible.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with having bible studies just for women or just for men.  (And I really do have a great time there.)  There's nothing wrong with studying the book of Esther.  It's in the bible- if you study it, you're gonna find some good stuff.  There's nothing wrong with a group of women studying Esther.

But what's wrong is that HOW COMPLETELY DISPROPORTIONATE that is.  Why does it seem like EVERY SINGLE TIME, the women's bible study is studying one of those "women" passages?

I mean, just because Ruth is a woman, her story is somehow more important to women than the average bible story is?

I mean, is it?  This is a valid question.  Is there a reason it would be particularly important to women?  Women want female role models or something?  Can we avoid the extreme of "the church only talks about the men in the bible" without going to the other extreme, "Christian women should only study the passages specifically about women"?

"Oh, you're a girl.  Here, you should read, out of the hundreds of pages in the bible, these particular couple pages, about a few slightly obscure women.  Have at it."  Dude, I'm not dumb.  I'm gonna read the entire thing.

Or maybe it's because obviously, if a group of Christians is going to study Ruth, it has to be a women's group.  I mean, it doesn't make sense that men would read that.  OH WAIT.  IT'S THE BIBLE.

(When I mentioned this over in a comment on Rachel Held Evans's blog, another commenter had the idea of challenging Christian men to study and learn from the "women" passages in the bible.  I love it.  Because every Christian studies Jesus and Paul and David, but only women study Esther and Ruth.  What's with that?  If they're really such good role models, aren't they good for both men and women?  Or is it "we needed to come up with SOMEONE for the women... eh, Esther's kinda lame but it's the best we got"?  Because no matter how you interpret this, it's offensive.)

Oh and here's a wild idea: Can the Proverbs 31 woman also be a role model for men?  Not "this is the kind of wife you should look for" but "you should be like her"?  Wow I'm gonna have to go think about that.  That has totally never occurred to me before.

You know what I want to see?  A women's conference whose advertising flier has a picture of a dragon.  Because dude, I want to fight dragons.  If your women's bible study or Christian conference even marginally associates itself with dragons, SIGN ME UP!

(The dragon is a metaphor for... ummm... well it doesn't matter.  Dragons are awesome.  Don't question it.)

Like dude, don't get me wrong, the conferences that advertise with flowers and pastels are great and God speaks to people there and everything, but really, why do the fliers need to look all "feminine"?  To make sure men don't sign up?

I'm not particularly interested in "being a godly woman."  I want to be awesome and follow Jesus, and it just so happens that if I do that, I am technically a "godly woman" but that's so not my goal.

So I want to know: How do the majority of Christian women feel about this?  Is everyone else happy with the flowers and lack of dragons?  Is it because I'm a nerd girl that I feel this way?

Do we really need to study Ruth that much?  Like, is there a valid reason why the story of Ruth would be particularly important/meaningful for women? 

Is there some sort of equivalent thing the church does to men?

Feminine role models in math/science: It's not very effective

Found an interesting article: My fair physicist? Feminine math, science role models do not motivate girls (posted April 24, 2012)

Summary: Presenting women engineers/scientists as feminine results in girls having less interest in math/science/etc.  This was determined in a study involving middle school girls who identified themselves as liking math and science.  The girls then read articles about female college students, some of which were described in feminine ways (for example, wearing makeup) and some described in neutral ways, and some were described as successful in a science-related field, while the others were described as successful in their classes in general.  The "feminine" "STEM role models" resulted in the study participants being less interested in pursuing science-related fields.

It seems to me like the stereotype "you can't be feminine and good at math/science/engineering" is working from several different angles here.

Oh, and by the way, I'm a female engineering student.

Is it that girls themselves subconsciously believe that feminine women won't be good at engineering?  So when they see the example "role model" who likes to wear pink, she appears less like a real engineer and more like a cute gimmick?  So instead of "look, you can be feminine AND an engineer" it comes across as "girls have to be feminine like this, even if they're engineers, so they can't be real engineers"?

I'm speculating here, but I know that I subconsciously have that stereotype too- I tend to think that if some female professor or engineering student seems more feminine, she's not as smart.  WHICH IS WRONG OF COURSE- dude, I'm a freaking female engineering student, and I want to be beautiful and feminine and awesome, and write code forever.  And I still subconsciously believe that stereotype.  That's so DUMB.

No seriously, how do I get rid of that?  That's the dumbest thing ever.  Of all people...

I've always said the "we need to get more girls in math/science/etc" thing seemed dumb- as if there's some God-ordained magical quota.  If girls want to do science, great, if not, great- people should pursue what they're interested in, and who knows how the ratios will work out.

But the problem is when girls who are interested in science and would be really good at it decide not to, through some combination of cultural influences, sexism, assumptions, and personal choice. 

My question for you: How do you interpret the results of the study in the article?  What is your experience with the stereotype that femininity and engineering skill are opposed?  What is the effect of this stereotype on society?