Writing Alex Martin

I’ve talked a little bit about why I wrote the hero of Awake, Luke Reed, the way I did (in this guest post on “Good Guy Heroes” on the fabulous Nancy Kelley’s site), but I have yet to talk about the heroine Alexandra, and why she is the way she is.

The now infamous Bella Swan as played by Kristen Stewart

There is criticism, and some of it is rightly deserved, of Young Adult novels relying to heavily on the “smart and pretty girl who doesn’t realize she’s smart and pretty” trope.  Sometimes it’s called the “Bella Swan Model.”  It existed before Bella, and will probably continue to exist long after we are done with the Twilight phenomena.  The reason?  A lot of teenage girls are insecure.

I realize this is a ground-breaking revelation.

 

This is one of the more realistic depictions of Mara Jade I’ve seen. Though her arms would probably be a bit more muscular cause she kicks butt.

I love strong, confident, sexy heroines.  Seriously, if I could BE Mara Jade from the Timothy Zahn trilogy I would be the happiest little clam in the galaxy.  (Although, side note: honestly, for a strong, kick butt, sexy heroine she’s actually pretty insecure…cause you know, she’s human and stuff).  She’s also not a teenager.  For some reason we expect teen girl heroines to have the self-confidence of a successful thirty-five year old woman.  That’s just not realistic, no matter how strong said teenager is.

But let’s talk about Alex.  Does she fit the “smart and pretty but doesn’t know it” mold?  Eh, a bit.  Alex is smart.  Very smart.  And she actually knows this.  One doesn’t acquire an academic scholarship for a prestigious science program without having a clue that one is smart.  Alex is pretty.  She’s not super model material, but she’s attractive.  Does she realize this?  Not at all.  So I guess you could say she fits HALF the mold.

Why did I write a heroine who doesn’t realize she’s pretty?  Well, for one thing I thought it was realistic.  Especially because she’s smart.  But if she’s smart, wouldn’t she just objectively KNOW that she’s decent looking?

Um, no.  I’ve noticed this strange trend when talking to my friends.  Friends that I consider to be both gorgeous and kick ass smart.  Girls who were crazy smart as kids?  They mostly got complimented on their brains, not their looks.  To a person, they can hardly ever recall people (besides their mothers) telling them they were pretty.  It was always “you’re so smart,” or “you’re so good at math or reading or insert the academic subject here.”  And the thing is, they could hear other little girls getting complimented on physical features, but they never were.  Now you could argue that of course it’s better to get a compliment based on your brain than your face, but at 7 or 8, or even at 15, it can lead you to believe they’re complimenting your brain because you aren’t pretty.

I call it the “Smart Girl is Dumb About her Own Beauty” Syndrome.  It’s a thing.  As a mom I am totally aware of it.  I try to counteract it by always using a threefold compliment with my daughter…and I go in order of importance (in my personal opinion):  “You’re the kindest, the smartest, and the most pretty girl I know.”   I realize that I’m “just” mom, so I barely count in the compliment department, but it has to start somewhere.

It’s hard, really hard, to break out of this syndrome even as an adult, let alone as a teenager.  While talking through this subject with a close friend she told me, “Intellectually I know I’m beautiful, but I still don’t believe it.”

That’s totally heartbreaking.  But it’s also totally real.

In Alex’s case, she is even more clueless about her own physical worth because of her complete lack of strong male role models.  I tend to base little pieces of characters after people I know, so that each character is a mix of five or six different real life people.  Alex’s dad dying when she was very young was inspired by another close friend of mine.  I don’t spend a lot of time talking about it in the book, or having Alex think much about her loss.  I modeled that, again, on my friend.  She told me that because she had so few memories of her father, it seemed less weird to her as a teen that she didn’t have a dad and more surprising when her friends DID have a one.  That was just her reality.  For Alex, there’s no strong male presence in her life at all.  And the  boy she grew up idolizing betrayed her trust when she was relatively young.  These losses molded how she thinks about herself.

Another part of the “Bella Swan Model” is the klutziness, and you could totally accuse Alex of being a bit klutzy.  She does trip over her own feet twice (I think) in the book.  However, I don’t necessarily think of Alex as klutzy, but mostly as just really unsure of herself.  For example, she’s just not sure what to do with her hands when having a conversation with her super hot advisor.  She’s basically not confident in her use of the space around her.  If you were going to accuse me of writing Alex to be like myself, this is where you’d have your strongest shot.  Although I like to blame my spectacular lack of coordination on being overly tall and having gangly arms, while Alex is petite, I think the concept of not trusting yourself, or your body, to behave in a non-moron-like manner is the same.  Does it really matter what sandwich you order for lunch?  Is it worth spending five minutes agonizing over?  Objectively, no.  But when you have that seed of self-doubt planted in your head, it can take over in the weirdest of ways.

If you haven’t yet read Awake: A Fairytale you’re probably now thinking, “Omg, why do I want to read a book with a main character that’s smart but has zero self-confidence?  Boring.”  The answer is that Awake is Alex’s journey.  Yes, Lilia, the “Sleeping Beauty” princess, is awakened from her enchanted sleep, but the really exciting, and powerful, part of the story is Alex’s awakening.  In fact, that picture on the cover?  That’s not representing Lilia.  Alex learns not only about magic, and fairy tales, and what it means to be a part of a strong group of women, but about her own intrinsic value. I think it’s an awakening that we as women, no matter our age, need to experience, and it’s not necessarily one that happens in an instant.  We are all in different stages of that journey, and sometimes we let ourselves be lulled back into the sleep of self-doubt.  But I hope like Alex, we will continue to become “awake” to our own worth.

Welcome to the Fourteenth Century

I wrote this back in May on my personal blog.  I thought it would be fun to revisit now that I’m getting closer to releasing my retelling of Sleeping Beauty.

 

Honestly, girls like me who like Disney princesses tend to get a lot of flak, especially if they happen to be English majors. Most feminist professors are not really fans. Even among the average, every-day “Mom of Girls” there tends to spring up anti-Disney Princess viewpoints. The problem most of these women have with how Disney portrayed these princesses is that in their view the women are weak, unable to do anything for themselves, relying on a man to save them, yadda, yadda, yadda.

There is even a poster floating around that has each princess labeled with the “bad” message she is supposedly indoctrinating our daughters with. I’d show it here, but it would just cheese me off, I’d have to dispute it point by point, and this post would get even longer than it already is destined to be. I’ll save that for another day.

This poster even shows up sometimes where it surprises me, and I feel suddenly judged for liking the princess movies, and worse, exposing my impressionable young daughter to them (gasp). I suppose it doesn’t matter that her favorite movie is Superman, or that her mom’s favorite female heroines are scrappy, tough-talking, kick-butt kinda girls like Mara Jade from Zahn’s extended Star Wars universe. I’ve let her watch a princess dancing about in a dress and singing and therefore my poor, sweet girl is destined to play second fiddle to men for the rest of her life.

 

Here is the main problem with this school of thought: If you are being honest, it’s not the women in these Disney stories who are getting short-changed.

It’s the men.

Snow White: Say what you will about Disney’s first heroine, she’s obviously not the strongest of the princesses (likely a result of being the first, we often forget the point of Snow White was that it was the first movie of its kind, no one had ever attempted a full length animation before, so everyone who excuses the weak story line of Avatar because it’s revolutionary needs to pay attention here), but she at least has several good qualities. She makes friends easily, she cares for nature, she has a name. Not so the big, strong, man who “saves her” with a kiss. First name Prince, last name Charming. So glad a really fleshed out character was important here. Obviously Disney was conspiring to destroy the confidence of a generation of young men, oh wait, I mean women. Yes, that is what I mean.

Cinderella: She needs a man to save her! The poor thing can’t do anything for herself (except, you know, like persevere in adverse circumstances, while not letting them poison her attitude or change her character) and needs a man to come and save her. Except not. Pretty sure it’s another woman that performs the getting out of dodge magic (Cinderella’s goal was never to leave her step-mother’s house for good, just for the night.) And again here we have Prince Charming. Dear writers, please lay off the steam rollers. I believe this character is flat enough. Oh wait, he doesn’t want to get married just to please his father. Look, there’s a slight bump, we need to iron it out some more.

These men exist only to serve the princess and her story line. Without the princess they are just nameless, faceless heirs to a throne no one really sees or knows about. Even with the princess they are still pretty much nameless, although they have faces. Very smooth, expressionless faces. Poor schmucks.

Which brings me to Prince Phillip in Sleeping Beauty. The first really fleshed out prince character in Disney animated movies. Mothers of boys everywhere rejoice. Importantly, we notice he has a name! This is a pretty big deal to me, because, in my opinion, naming connotes personhood. Prince Phillip is more than just the prince, the heir to the throne, the one promised to marry the Princess Aurora, he’s also Phillip. And it’s as Phillip that he meets the lovely peasant girl in the woods, and falls in love with her, and it’s because he’s Phillip that he fights an evil fairy in the form of a dragon. I doubt his responsibility to the throne is what’s really on his mind as he battles to save his true love.

 

Another really important aspect of the Phillip character is he is loved by Briar Rose/Aurora not because he is a prince, and not because he can save her. Briar Rose has no idea she needs saving at all. She doesn’t realize that she is royalty (although as such she will be elevated to equal footing with Prince Phillip without having to marry him), nor does she’s realize that he is royalty, and she also has no idea she is in danger. She doesn’t see him as a savior, she sees him just as a young man that she is in love with, a young man that she has dreamed about.

Phillip has some pretty modern views about who young royals (male or female) should be allowed to marry. He is all for marrying for true love, and not overly concerned about defying his father on this matter. “After all, this is the fourteenth century” he tells his father as he rushes off to meet Briar Rose. Even though his views on marriage are modern, he also exemplifies the sort of chivalrous qualities that I hope my daughter looks for in a man, and that I hope my son learns as part of his character. Phillip is brave and courageous, he would lay his life down to save his love.

I don’t know any mother who doesn’t want that for her daughter. Do I want my daughter to be strong and courageous as well? Of course. I want her to be brave, to be thoughtful, to care about others, to be able to meet life’s challenges while never losing sight of who she is. I want her to have all of the qualities that make a truly fleshed out, complete person. And I want her to expect that from any man that comes into her life.

She should demand a Prince Phillip and nothing less.