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As a young girl, I loved a scrappy heroine who could beat a boy in a fight. I was a gangly late bloomer, and I loved the idea that if I trained, I could win. After all, I saw it on the screen all the time.
Growing up and learning about the very real differences between men and women tempered those expectations, but I confess I still didn’t think the differences in strength were that drastic, until I jokingly challenged my then-boyfriend (now husband) to arm wrestle. He wasn’t keen on it, but rather than slam my arm down the second the match started, he very gently pushed it down.
I asked him if he’d even put out 20% effort to beat my 100%. Nope. My loss wasn’t a surprise, but the extreme difference in our strength was. I didn’t think watching thin, beautiful actresses take down full-grown men in a fight had skewed my view, but clearly it had.
There’s a growing consensus among some of my friends that it’s uncomfortable watching fight scenes between men and women on screen, especially when women come out on top, even if they have supposed superpowers. That’s because it’s so far from reality.
Scarlett Johansson, who plays Black Widow (not a superhero, just a really good assassin) regularly leaves grown men groaning on their back after a fight with her. The slender Anne Hathaway as Cat Woman also fights men with relative ease in The Dark Knight Rises. The new Supergirl movie I expect will have more of the same, although she at least has superpowers that explain her ability to take out men twice her size.
Are there some women who might be able to beat some men in a fight? Sure, but they’re not normal, and I’m sure as heck not one of them. It’s a little frightening that I thought I was at one point.
I recognize I’m ruining the suspension of disbelief that movies are supposed to conjure inside us, but there’s a subtle messaging in these films that tells women, “you’re as strong as a man, you could beat them if you really try.”
And that’s a dangerous message to young girls and women.
I loved the “fighting girls” growing up, but my absolute favorite was Disney's Princess Ariel — the red hair and living underwater really spoke to me. Ariel rescues her prince from drowning, but in the very end, it’s the prince who rescues her. Little girls being told that it’s okay to rely on the bigger, stronger of the sexes isn’t a bad message to walk away with.
You won’t be able to beat a boy in a fight, and that’s okay. A good man knows this and knows it’s his job to protect you. Little girls should see that on the screen too. Being as strong as a man isn’t the calling of women.
Feminism has often told women that their worth depends on being just like men while somehow still being a woman. But this disregards women’s unique strengths.
The strongest moment in the first Wonder Woman movie was when her nurturing tenderness was on display — that’s what compels her to action.
Once when I was young, I hopped off a bus in downtown Denver at the wrong stop, not realizing my family hadn’t followed me. I realized I was alone just as the bus pulled away, fearful tears erupting. A woman with her husband swept up beside me, immediately sorting out what had happened.
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“We won’t leave you until your family comes and finds you,” she reassured me. At that moment, I didn’t need the muscles of a man. I needed someone nurturing and tender, and that’s exactly what a woman’s strength is.
And our world needs that just as much as the muscle to fight “bad guys.”
Ali Holcomb is the Communications Advisor and Foreign Policy Fellow at Advancing American Freedom Foundation.
