How to create well-rounded female characters

In the year 2017, you wouldn't think that creating characters that represent about half of the world's population, and just over half of movie audiences, would be a difficult task. But showrunners and filmmakers seem to still have difficulties greenlighting well-rounded, diverse, accurate female characters. So, I thought I'd give them a handy-dandy checklist to go by from now on.

1. Get women involved

How do you write an accurate female character if all the people working on her are men? That's not saying that some male writers, directors and producers can't create good female characters, and some women can't create bad ones, but you have a better chance of creating an accurate depiction of a woman if a woman is involved. Despite attempts to bring a proper Wonder Woman to life in the past, it wasn't until Director Patty Jenkins came along that a box office hit was created. Only 27 percent of all key behind-the-scenes roles were filled by women in the 2016–2017 TV season, which is only 1 percent higher than in 2006–2007, according to "Boxed In 2016-17: Women On Screen and Behind the Scenes in Television" conducted annually by Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film at San Diego State University.

Creative Commons

2. Don't rely on stereotypes

Everyone can think of those characters that are such caricatures that you're embarrassed for the writer, director, producer and everyone else who has had to witness such a tragedy of a character. For me, it's Daphne Blake in nearly every iteration of "Scooby-Doo." Yes, she was a character written in the 1960s, so maybe I should be glad that the Scooby Gang included women at all, and the later versions of Daphne were not nearly as helpless and air-headed as the original "Scooby-Doo: Where are you?" one. However, "Scooby-Doo" was my favorite cartoon as a kid—and still is to be honest—and kids deserve more than a blonde stereotype (even though she had red hair) who gets kidnapped in every episode and brings nothing to the team except fashion sense. Now if we're going to talk un-stereotypical animated women, let's talk about Toph and Katara in "Avatar: The Last Airbender." Both are tough benders who are women of color, and Toph is 12 and blind and is the best Earth bender in the world.

Courtesy Nickelodeon

3. Get a little gay

The best shows and movies don't just have women in them, but they have ones who represent different types of women. Something that showrunners and filmmakers seem to just now be learning is that *gasp* a fair amount of women are queer. Sure, we had "The L Word" in 2004, Lindsay and Melanie on "Queer as Folk" in 2000, and Willow in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" who started dating Tara in about 2000. But those were still very limited instances of queer women on the small screen, and you'd be hard-pressed to recall any movies not from the last couple years that included queer women in more than a sidekick or punchline role. Today, we have Sophia on "Orange is the New Black"—who isn't the only LGBTQ character on the show—as a trans woman who isn't overtly mistreated by her writers; bisexual lawyer Annalise Keating on "How to Get Away with Murder"; Lena and Stef Adams Foster—married, gay, interracial parents—on "The Fosters"; we even had Voodoo on "Sirens," who was one of the only asexual characters on TV before the show was cancelled after two seasons. So, TV now is doing better than it was a decade ago, and movies need to catch up quick.

4. Where are all my women of color?

If you couldn't already tell, according to the "Boxed In" report, women of color are highly underrepresented on screen. Out of the female characters on TV, 19 percent are black, 6 percent are Asian and 5 percent are Latina. The numbers for movies aren't any better. According to "It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World: Portrayals of Female Characters in the Top 100 Films of 2016" released by the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film at San Diego State University, 14 percent of women in film are black, 6 percent are Asian and 3 percent are Latina. So we've got Jada Pinkett Smith as Fish Mooney on "Gotham," Camila Mendes as Veronica Lodge—who was originally white in "Archie Comics," so A+ for that casting for once—on "Riverdale," Priyanka Chopra as Alex Parrish on "Quantico" and Victoria Leeds on "Baywatch," and that's pretty much it. It's almost like it's a secret that women of color exist. Well, Hollywood, sorry I let the cat out of the bag.

5. Give her some friends

If you haven't heard of the Bechdel Test, it's pretty simple. It's an informal way of measuring whether a movie has decent female representation and asks three questions. 1: Is there more than one female character? 2: Do they appear in a scene together in which they talk? 3: Do they talk about something other than a man? Now, passing the Bechdel Test doesn't automatically mean the movie is a good one and losing doesn't automatically mean it's bad, but it is a good way to test whether a movie's female characters are real people or just convenient props to move a male character's storyline along. Case and point: "Charlie's Angels" isn't a cinematic masterpiece, but it passes the test many times over, even if it does play into a few stereotypes.

Courtesy Columbia Pictures

6. Stop all the swooning

There's nothing much that bothers me more about bad female characterization than when the character just can't stop swooning over the male love interest—even if he is *sigh* so dreamy and dangerous.

7. Dress her right

See: My previous post about allowing women to wear clothes.