Rage Against the Patriarchy: Channeling My Daughter’s Frustration with Media into New Stories

And the questions begin. You know, the ones you are glad and sad that your daughter is asking all at once? The kind that mean she is learning to be a critical thinker and to question the world around her. Questions that will most certainly lead to heartache, frustration, and a bit of  helplessness. Questions that can inspire her to take action, create her own stories, and seek out entertainment that bucks this trend.

I know I didn’t start raging against the patriarchy by seven but I was certainly frustrated by these same discrepancies by age twelve. Perhaps I was slower going because I only had sisters. Maybe it was because my own mom wasn’t going through a sort of feminist awakening at 35. Once the questions came, though, they never stopped and they’re still coming.

Watching cartoons with her brothers is a source of frustration. Super Mario Brothers. One girl. Check. My Big Big Friend. One girl with an imaginary girl buddy. Check. Wild Kratts. One girl. Check. I can’t blame her. Just watching previews at the movie theater recently fed my rage. My husband thought Monument Men looked good and I didn’t disagree, but come on. One woman in a sea of male actors? He says tells me it’s historical, but I don’t care. It’s not as if movie makers have never taken liberties with history before.

Are we perhaps being a bit extreme? Do we expect every show to feature a female lead with boys as supporting cast? Certainly not. When data shows that there are roughly 3 male characters for every female character in family films and that group scenes are generally about 17% female, we’re not seeing a problem where it doesn’t exist.

A few weeks ago, a neighbor boy came over to play. My kids had Minecraft on, with Ella deftly navigating her own world. The neighbor immediately began instructing my daughter on how to play, automatically assuming her ignorance. She quickly set him straight, skillfully introducing him to her home, tools, and garden.

We finished Harry Potter this week, with Tim and I alternating reading aloud each night to Ella. Some of the later books taxed her comprehension, but who could stop the series halfway? While Harry is the central character in the book, I love that strong females are not simply the supporting cast. Hermoine, Ginny, and even Luna, could star in their own series and capture an audience.

Ella learned about Anne of Green Gables the other night and her father enthusiastically encouraged the books as our next series. I loved that her dad endorsed this female-centered series, sharing how much he enjoyed it. This idea that books are just books – not books for boys or books for girls – is such an important one. I think it’s even more significant that my daughter is receiving this message naturally from her father, who loves literature too much to be boxed in by literary gender stereotypes.

When we visit our local library on Friday nights, we often ask the librarian for recommendations. He extremely helpful, but was a bit stumped by requests for chapter books featuring female characters that aren’t overwhelmingly pink, about fairies or just for girls. We read plenty of books with male protagonists, of course,but  are longing for selections with an improved boy-girl ratio. I recently discovered the Book List from A Mighty Girl and, when I showed it to Ella, she whooped with joy. This will be our future guide to the library.

As for television shows and movies, well, I think the entertainment industry has a long way to go. A Mighty Girl has some suggestions here, too, but I don’t think they will satisfy my daughter’s longing for truly mainstream fare starring girls. So many movies send the message, Look at what a GIRL is doing! She’s an exception to all the other girls. A girl can do this too! 


We are looking for books and movies that take a different approach, representing girls and women as a diverse, active 50% of the population. We don’t want girls to be the exception or for boys to be lessened somehow to elevate girls. My daughter and I think many boy and girl characters could be interchangeable, like when this awesome little girl imagined Bilbo as a boy in Michelle Nijhuis’s One Weird Old Trick to Undermine the Patriarchy.

Recognition and dissatisfaction with the status quo is a start, but it doesn’t get you very far. Luckily, I believe in encouraging my kids to be problem solvers. I think this is the perfect issue for my imaginative girl to tackle. She loves creating stories, illustrations, even comics. I think we’ll start by asking a few questions about her favorite stories and going from there:

1. What do you like about this story?

2. What would you change?
3. What happens if you change the genders of the characters in this story? What works? What doesn’t? Why?
4. What makes a story for boys or for girls?
5. What does your perfect world look like? What can women and girls do in this world? What about men and boys?

There’s also a cool app from MIT called Scratch that invites kids to make and share stories, animations, and games. This is a fantastic template for creating her own worlds.

When Ella’s brothers are older, I plan to ask them the same questions. I also hope they will grow up in a household immersed in their sister’s stories and begin asking these questions on their own. More than anything, I want  my three children to know this: Question and frustration are often a perfect starting point for making real change. We  never have to accept the world just as it is. We can change it.

What are some of your favorite stories, comics, illustrations, television shows, and movies featuring strong female characters?