Feminist Fictional Characters I Look Up To

1. Betty Warren in Mona Lisa Smile - Smart, feminine and very much married, this college paper editor is the epitome of the ‘50s lady. A marriage groupie, she’s a staunch advocate of ‘women’s duty’ to be child-bearing Martha Stewarts. But when hubby cheats on her, she trades her M.R.S for a law degree, gets a divorce (the ultimate sin of a married woman) and eventually finds truth beyond tradition, beyond definition, beyond the image.

2. Betty Suarez in Ugly Betty – She pretty much challenged society’s perception of true beauty and showed the world that brains, hard work, and a good heart eventually triumph over physical perfection.

3. Josephine March in The Little Women – Luisa May Alcott described this quite decisive and assertive young woman who’s always ready to work out her plans and achieve her dreams despite her obscure status, birth and achievements. She has not lowered her standards in life despite the many contradicting aspects of her being a family girl, a friend and a lover. When she fell in love, she was in love but that doesn’t mean that she will totally give up her dreams.

4. Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice – Recalcitrant, ‘barely tolerable’, and very much loving. This lady opened my eyes to the perils of being the second class citizen in a patriarchal hemogenic society. In a graceful, feminine way, she has found her own true happiness, without ever relying to the riches of Mr. Darcy but to her own true conviction that she has what it takes to be free. She takes shit from no one, not even Lady Catherine de Burg.

5. Katarina Stratford in 10 Things I Hate About You – She’s totally not the girly-girl type and is looked down for not being feminine enough. She has done some things in the past she’s not proud of, slept with Joey Donner, lost her virginity but changed her life and lived in this mantra: “been there, done that, not going back”. She’s strong willed, self-confident, dresses up to her own accord, and nibbles classic literature like a literary glutton. She is famous for violating concepts of proper sex role behaviour (whatever that is!) because she wants to live her life of her own.

6. Sally Albright in When Harry Met Sally – I picture myself to be this independent. She lives on her own, spends her own cash, goes to work, has her own car and befriends male counterparts without compromising her being a woman. She has broken through the invisible bar of the professions. A good listener, smart and sensible woman in her late thirties, who has come to terms with her loneliness and imminent spinsterhood, but fate has a way to surprise her she meets again dear ol’ Harry.

7. Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones – Awkward, fat, boy-obsessed woman in her late thirties who ignore traumas, insults and unbelievably insufferable glares from people who doesn’t give a nod on her life choices. Plus factor that she’s a Mr. Darcy/Colin Firth Fan, drooled over The Lake Scene in the Pride and Prejudice 1996 version. And the diary jotting going on her life is so me. She has the courage to be her true self and proves that there is something liberating about not pretending. She dared me to embarrass myself. Take some risk.

I’m no to sit-ins, no to bra burning and definitely no to old school belief of some feminists that ‘we must all become lesbians because all guys suck’. To me, feminism is all about individual freedom and doing what you want to do. Think of the happy hippie’s ‘zero judgement, 100% tolerance’ attitude, mixed in with Madonna’s “Express Yourself” slogan, but minus the radical feminists view on “free love, sex and pot”. It is passion, conviction, and a strong sense of self that we enter the real world. Atta girls!