PJO & HP for Dummies

Strong Female Characters

WARNING: Rant at the end!

This is actually something both JKR and Rick Riordan failed on.

How? Internalized misogyny.

In Harry Potter, there's Hermione Granger. She's amazing really. She's a muggle-born girl living in a society where people like her are discriminated against, yet she rises up and not only becomes the smartest witch in her year, but also helps in taking down Voldemort, who's basically every blood supremacists' icon and hero.

So yes, Hermione is amazing 👏 but she's got her flaws too. One of them, that was never directly pointed out in the books but is kinda obvious to readers, is her internalized misogyny.

Look at how she treats the more girlier girls like Lavender, Parvati, and Fleur. She judged them based on their looks and their interests in gossip, fashion, and boys. She was especially cruel to Fleur in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince even though she barely knew anything about her other than that she was a "pretty French girl who's part Veela". There was also that small part where she mocked the Beauxbatons for being cold??? Like, sweetie, it's not their fault their uniforms don't include fur coats or whatever.

I don't think this was done on purpose, though. I don't think JKR was thinking "hmm, I should give Hermione a nice dose of internal misogyny and then do nothing about it". With the amount of issues JKR has, I wouldn't be surprised if she had internalized misogyny as well and just wrote Hermione like that without realizing it was harmful (remember, JKR said Hermione was based off of herself).

As for Rick Riordan... Yes, guys, he's not so great on writing "strong female characters" either. He did amazing for the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series though! His female characters Annabeth, Rachel, Thalia, Zoe, Silena, etc. were written beautifully.

But then the Heroes of Olympus happened...

(Tbh everything about that series was just weird for me lol)

Or to be more specific, Piper McLean happened. Like Hermione, she suffers with internalized misogyny too except it's A HELLUVA LOT MORE OBVIOUS!

I think Rick was trying to make a "strong daughter of Aphrodite" to tackle the stereotype that all Aphrodite kids couldn't fight, only cared about their looks, etc. etc. So he created Piper and purposely made her the exact opposite of her siblings. And that's perfectly fine, except he made Piper hate everything about them.

She hates girly-girls. She hates the color pink. She's got the dreaded 'I'm not like other girls' mentality because she dresses like a tomboy, has pimples, doesn't care about her appearance, and all that. She hates anything that has to do with femininity and that's... just plain fucking awful.

This sort of character is harmful because it's making the readers think that anything feminine is bad. There's nothing wrong with being pretty, or feminine, or being into fashion, or anything like that. Those are perfectly fine traits to have.

When people say "strong female characters", some dumbass authors seem to think that means:

- OC hates dresses, skirts, and the color pink

- OC hangs out with guys instead of girls

- OC hates shopping

- OC is the type to wear sneakers with dresses because they're ✨quirky✨

- OC isn't afraid to eat fattening foods (but doesn't gain any weight, wow)

- OC cusses like a sailor because they're "bADaSs"