“We’re seeing ‘strong female character’ taken to a whole new, more literal level”
AS I TYPE the words “strong female character”, I can practically hear your eyes rolling. For decades, as the calls for better, wider representation in film and TV have got louder, Hollywood’s primary solution to more varied characters outside of the most common white male protagonist appears to have been just that: a woman who is fierce, badass, or “feisty”. A woman who is “strong”.
Time and time again, we’ve been given “strong” female leads who are undoubtedly cool, but always conventional — think Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow in the MCU, or Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. But with the arrival of Love Lies Bleeding, from Saint Maud director Rose Glass, we’re seeing the concept taken to a whole new, more literal level. It follows Jackie (Katy O’brian), a female bodybuilder whose dreams of competing in Vegas are derailed by a romance with gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart). O’brian has reallife bodybuilding experience, and Jackie is, truly, jacked. All bulging biceps and rock-hard abs, it’s a female body type we’re not used to seeing, and is still, as Glass tells Empire, “inherently punk”.
The small screen, too, is delivering on this front. The latest season of True Detective, Night Country, sees Jodie Foster’s Alaskan police chief Liz Danvers team up with State Trooper Evangeline Navarro, played by professional boxing champion Kali Reis. Navarro is a stoic presence, exerting strength through her work and mission against misogyny in their small town, and showing her physical dominance during sex with local bar owner Qavvik (Joel D. Montgrand). Sex is important here. Both True Detective and Love Lies Bleeding subvert stereotypes in their intimate scenes — the former in how the woman is in control, and the latter in its depiction of sexual power dynamics — and their foregrounding of visibly physically strong women signifies a move away from a traditional heterosexual male gaze towards a more queer female one.
This kind of character harks all the way back to someone like Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies, transformed from the ingénue of the first film to a ripped, revenge-seeking Sarah Connor in Judgment Day, but has gathered momentum in the past few years. Recent examples include Michelle Rodriguez as burly barbarian Holga in last year’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, and Viola Davis and Lashana Lynch as fearsome, musclebound Dahomey warriors in 2022’s The Woman King. Looking ahead, relevant projects include UFC fighter drama Starweight starring Lupita Nyong’o and Chloë Grace Moretz, and Queen Of The Ring, a biopic about first-ever milliondollar female athlete Mildred Burke. Time to renew that gym membership...