Legend of Korra – Let’s hear it for the girls

Being a girl can be an extremely disheartening experience. Not because once a month your body betrays you in a mess of blood and hormones (though that’s never fun), but more because it often feels, especially lately, like you can’t wake up without some story about girls being harassed about anything from what hobbies they have to wanting to have access to birth control to the fact that now it is apparently wrong for us to even name the part of our bodies that makes us biologically female because ew, girl parts! Girls are super gross! And this is discounting sexist advertising (don’t get me started on sexist advertising), daily interactions with men who are creepy (inevitable), sexist movies, sexist TV shows, or even the super-sexist trending topics on twitter every single day.

It’s not just really, really, really nice to have things to remind you that everything gender-related sucks, but it’s remarkable that one of those things is a Saturday morning cartoon. I grew up on One Saturday Morning, which was pretty balanced, gender-wise. (Pepper Anne, Pepper Anne, she’s too cool for seventh grade!) It wasn’t until I was about thirteen and we got cable that I realized that cartoons were not usually very nice to girls. At all.

Part of the reason I liked the original Avatar was because the girls in it were so great. (I mean, there were a lot of reasons, but that was one of them.) That episode where Toph and Katara got makeovers and had fun being girly together but then also kicked ass? Super great! Suki’s line about being a warrior and a girl? Made me spontaneously burst into applause! And I can’t even begin to tell you how much I appreciate that the entire impetus behind creating Legend of Korra was the writers not only noting the giant female fanbase they’d acquired by creating these great girl characters, but deciding to throw conventional wisdom about Boys Only Care About Stories About Boys out the window and not only have a girl lead, but have the vast majority of the characters on their show be girls, and have them all be awesome. And, quite often, have them be awesomer than the dudes on the show. See also: this week’s episode.

Now I don’t want to belittle Tenzin, because he’s wonderful, and I certainly don’t want to belittle Meelo, because Meelo fartbends, which is awesome. But Bolin didn’t do a whole lot this week, and Mako continues to make a lot of terrible life choices that have very rightfully landed him in the doghouse. But every single woman this week was perfect. Ikki and Jinora beat the hell out of a bunch of Equalists attacking their home. Pema not only gives birth during an airstrike without her husband, but then fifteen minutes later is totally cool to travel. (If you don’t think this is amazing, you have clearly never thought through the logistics of childbirth. Trust me, it’s amazing.) Asami calls Mako out on his bullshit, and she makes it very, very clear that she’s mad at him. Not Korra, him. She’s not catty, she doesn’t think Korra “stole her man” or whatever, she is clear that Mako wasn’t honest about his feelings and that makes the blame lie with him and him alone. And none of that stops her from marching into battle when the time comes and doing her part. Korra is … well, she’s Korra, her default is awesome. And then there’s Lin Beifong, who I can’t coherently or rationally discuss yet because I have a lot of feelings, but I think we all stand with Meelo and agree that that lady is our hero. (Also, for those of you who are in the pits of despair over Lin losing her bending, I suggest you take a look at this fantastic theory that’s been going around tumblr, because I’m choosing to believe this is true until someone tells me otherwise.)

I often feel so sad for girls growing up today. I feel like in a lot of ways, we’ve stepped back from where we were when I was a kid and stuff is so much more divided along gender lines than it used to be. But shows like Legend of Korra and episodes like this give me hope. Because girls, as Beyonce, our lady in heaven, hallowed be her name, has taught us, run the world.

Clacked by Julia Hass
on Jun 18, 2012 @ 15:38 EST5EDT