Real Female Action Heroes
Since I’ve been on the topic of female action characters in my own writing -- I sometimes get comments to the effect that ‘women just aren’t like that’. Well, let’s leave aside for a moment that most men aren’t like that either (it’s called fiction, get it?) and instead make a list of a few women I've found inspiring, because they are kinda like that.
TEN; Major Caroline Jensen
She’s the current female member of the USAF Thunderbirds display team, the third female display pilot and fourth female pilot overall. Like a lot of the women on this list, the fact that she’s a woman shouldn’t be a big deal -- women are fifty percent of the population, they should be fifty percent of the fighter pilots (and probably more than that, given that G-forces tend to favour women, more because of size than gender).
But society being what it is, women are only several percent of fighter pilots in the USAF -- the number has gone up, but remains very low overall. I’ve been interested in military aviation since I was little, so I know that what the Thunderbirds do is hard. Any significant mistake in display or practice is very likely fatal. Each pilot flies two years with the squadron, so women have flown four years total in the T-birds, about to be six following Major Jensen’s tour. It wasn’t long ago lots of people would have said women just physically can’t do this. But society’s been frequently wrong in the past, and continues to be.
NINE; Justine Henin
Yes, I know she’s retired, but she’s still my favorite female tennis player ever.
Justine’s unique. Conventional wisdom says women have to be big to hit the ball hard. Justine showed this is rubbish, it’s about technique and racquet-head speed, at 5-5 she frequently blew much larger women off the court. Sadly, very few young female players today, or their coaches, seem to have learned her lesson.
Conventional wisdom also says that women have to hit the ball flat to hit with power, because topspin means the ball goes up and down too much, meaning it takes longer to get to the target, and is thus slower. This is why most women’s tennis is so incredibly ugly, with hard winners one moment, then awful errors the next -- with no topspin there’s no margin for error, so the slightest mistake, or attack of nerves, will end with an error, which is of course also the reason the women’s game seems far more beset by nerves and poor temperament than the men’s. Justine showed the flat-hitting is rubbish too, because the whippy action that she used to put topspin on the ball also created more racquet head speed which also made her shots faster.
But of course, no one today seems to have learned that lesson either. I’ve had personal experience writing about women’s sports (basketball), and compared to the men, the coaching sucked. You have to wonder in how many other sports the women get stuck with loser, retread coaches who couldn’t make it in the men’s game, and how badly it’s affecting performance everywhere.
EIGHT; Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester
I’m hesitant to put Sergeant Hester up here, not because she doesn’t deserve it, but because like a lot of soldiers she’s a very reluctant hero. A sergeant in the military police from the Kentucky National Guard, she was awarded a bronze star for valour under fire in Iraq, 2005.
It’s also awkward to talk of real people who’ve fought in real wars in the context of ‘action heroes’, a fictional concept pedaled by people who perform a far less noble task than soldiers. And I’m sure any soldier who’s awarded anything will tell that it’s all just circumstance, it could have been anyone, lots of others who deserve equal or superior recognition who don’t get it, etc. And I’m sure they’d be right. So if you want to know how Hester got a bronze star, read about it here, and draw your own conclusions.
The point is not to single out any individual, more to use that individual’s example to be aware of what everyone else is doing. And ‘everyone else’, in the US military’s MPs, means a lot of women. Women end up there because it’s technically not a combat role, even though a lot of what they do is basically infantry with handcuffs. Does this mean current restrictions on women in combat should be lifted? The actions of one soldier can’t have any significant impact on a policy that large, nor should they -- the women in combat debate has always been as much cultural as technical, and by culture I mean military culture. And that’s not to dismiss it, culture is important. The military should be left its own space to do its own figuring out on this one. Just don’t presume the ban should stay because women fall apart when the shooting starts. That part of the debate, Hester and others have ended.
SEVEN; Elena Myers
No, she hasn’t done much yet -- except become the first woman to win a motorcycle road race in AMA history, at age 16. A junior race, against fellow teenagers, but even so.
There’s immediately far too much pressure on someone like Elena to do well. This is because she’s the only woman, pretty much anywhere, with a serious chance of making it big -- other women race, but to hit the big time you have to be a teenager winning top junior races, and no other girl has ever done it. If you’re watching a men’s race, most of those men aren’t going to become the next superstar. There might be twenty competitors, and out of those twenty, two or three may emerge. But with Elena, there’s just Elena, and if she doesn’t do it, well, serious female contenders aren’t exactly growing on trees. Unfortunately, if she fails, some idiots will blame her gender, because in any given race at that level, she's almost always her gender's only representative. If a man fails, there’s always a lot more men.
But if she DID make it to the very top... There are still lots of people who doubt women’s driving on four wheels, and think they’ll never conquer Nascar, F1, etc. But motorcycles are so much more physical than cars, MotoGP riders are to four wheel drivers what triathletes are to ten pin bowlers. On a bike you literally have to put your whole body into it -- if you don’t, the bike doesn’t turn corners, which could be a problem. Thus the reason motorcycle races don’t go for hours like car races, the riders would fall off from exhaustion. So if a woman can make it on two wheels, four wheels suddenly doesn’t look so hard.
Plus, look at that face. On top of a winner’s podium at MotoGP level, can you imagine the endorsements? And speaking of endorsements...
SIX; Danica Patrick
Yes, I know a lot won’t think her a great role model because her popularity is at least in part a victory of looks and marketing over performance. But she’s still worth a mention.
Why? Because she’s the first. Successful, popular female driver in an otherwise exclusively macho sport, that is. First is not the same as best, but first still isn’t nothing. The barriers were enormous, and marketing has always been at least as important in motorsport as performance anyway, for men or women. Plenty of drivers do averagely for years and years, then suddenly have a great run and win lots of races. Did they suddenly become more talented? No, their equipment improved. That means money, and sponsorship, and everything else. All the sport’s most legendary drivers would be unknowns today without good money and equipment, talent alone doesn’t make you fast.
So Danica deserves credit for being a ruthless pragmatist, and using her looks, and her image, to lock down that part of her performance. And yes, I do believe that ruthless pragmatism, in pursuit of a good cause, is something worth celebrating. Who knows, maybe she’ll even start winning a few more races soon.
FIVE; Samantha Stosur
I know, another tennis player. I actually don’t like women’s tennis much at the moment, for the reasons I outlined above. It can be terrific, and has been, but the way it’s played today, usually isn’t. But that’s why it’s so nice to see players, in the highest profile female pro sport, who do it differently.
Sam’s unique because she plays like a man. This shouldn’t be a novelty, in most sports women should play like men. The idea that there’s a different ‘female’ way to do it has ruined women’s sports before. As if female runners should be taught to hop on one leg, because the more logical two-legged solution is too masculine or something.
Sam doesn’t hit flat like most women, she uses massive topspin, and slice, and uses the same high-spinning string that Rafael Nadal does. To accommodate the huge, whipping action this requires, she’s built like the proverbial brick shithouse. She’s only 5-7, but will put a flat serve down the middle at 190kph, as fast as a lot of taller men. And much of the men’s tour would kill for her high kicking second serve.
Yes, she’s a bit of a headcase, and is capable of losing to pretty much anyone when she plays badly, which is sadly often. But on her day, and especially on clay, her best game is untouchable, and she usually only loses when she beats herself (again, sadly often). Better yet, she’s a tennis player, not a clothes horse, not a glamour princess, not a column-inch grabber in the tabloids. Not that she can’t look glamorous, she’s a great looking girl, she just couldn’t give a rats ass about that kind of thing. Because she’s a tennis player. Go figure.
FOUR; Meg Lanning
Exact details of Meg’s early cricketing career aren’t widely published, but she did play for Carey Grammar, a fairly exclusive high school in Victoria. Apparently she was one of their very best batsmen, right up until she graduated. This wouldn’t be so remarkable, except that she did it in the boys’ team, in a competition that produces some of Australia’s very best male cricketers.
I’ve long been suspicious of cricket’s claims as an exclusively masculine sport up there with Australian football, or any of the world’s rough macho games that we all accept women can’t beat men at. Cricket is a judgement game, and what ball the batsman chooses to leave alone is as important as the one he chooses to hit. And faster bowling is actually easier to score off, all you need to do is lay bat on it and it goes to the fence. In the longer forms of cricket, all the best shots are style, not power. But until very recently, most high schools would never have dreamt of allowing a girl in the boys’ team, any more than an American school would let a girl quarterback their football team.
I don’t know what expectations Meg faced and faced down, but I can imagine the usual arguments -- she’ll be outsized by the time she turns seventeen, she might get hurt against big male bowlers, she won’t have the strength, or the speed between wickets, etc, etc. All nonsense, apparently. She’s now one of the Australian women’s team’s best players.
All of which raises a curious prospect. Most women’s sports are drastically under performing, because their participation rate isn’t very high. I still remember when Australian pioneer pole vaulter Emma George was setting world records at 4 meters 60. Everyone was amazed women could vault that high. Now Yelena Isinbayeva regularly jumps over 5 meters. More women started doing it, and the previous standard that had looked so good got blown away. Also not long ago, there couldn’t have been more than one female junior cricketer in Australia for every thirty or forty boys. So the standard today, the product of those juniors, is way below where it would be, if participation rates were equal. How far below?
Far enough to make you wonder if a female batsman couldn't keep facing men well beyond high school, at the highest level. Today's female players say male batsmen outdo them for arm and wrist strength, but that's the point -- women's cricket isn't attracting the highest quality athletes yet, though Meg and Ellyse Perry show that might be changing. And I'm quite certain the above mentioned Sam Stosur could beat the likes of Ricky Ponting or Michael Clarke in an arm wrestle (for non-cricketing Americans, two of Australia's best batsmen, neither particularly large or strong). I bet she could hit the cricket ball about as hard too... but she's playing tennis, where she makes millions. Female cricketers are lucky to break even.
Pity Meg didn’t keep playing coed for a few more years, it would have been interesting to see how well she did against men beyond high school -- her male highschool team mates probably did okay, and she was beating a lot of them, so why not her? But again, segregation is this society’s reflex, and potential is squashed by low expectations.
THREE; Gina Carano
Well obviously. And also obviously, the very first time the sport of mixed martial arts actually acquires a real female star, with looks, talent and personality in equal measure, she gets snapped up by Hollywood to become a movie star. So works society. And who can blame her, MMA stars don’t make that much money yet, let alone female ones. Get paid peanuts to be punched in the face, or paid lots to pretend to punch and be punched in the face on camera?
Either way, it’s cool she serves this purpose, of displaying the massive variability within each gender, not just between genders -- and to the more people the better. You sometimes read idiot males on the internet asserting that despite their lack of fighting skills, they could still take down Gina. If you’re driving a bulldozer, sure. With males who have proper fighting skills, and physique, they obviously get the advantage back, but unless they’re significantly better than the average part time scrapper, most men wouldn’t have a chance against her -- and that probably includes some of the lesser male MMA pros out there of her weight division or below.
Gina’s example is also curious in illustrating the gap between female expectations of male sexuality, and the reality. Lots of women presume men prefer skinny, delicate women, and do scary things like starving themselves to achieve that ideal. But Gina Carano has one of the lustiest, droolingest male fanboy followings of any woman anywhere. And this is a woman with arms like a construction worker.
TWO; Rear Admiral Norah Tyson
Okay, hands up if you knew that the US Navy had a carrier strike group commanded by a woman? No, I didn’t think so. Carrier Strike Group Two is led by USS George HW Bush, which operates Carrier Air Wing 8, a bunch of support vessels, and more firepower than a lot of mid-sized nations. It is commanded by Rear Admiral Norah Tyson. Now you know.
ONE; Who have I missed?
TEN; Major Caroline Jensen
She’s the current female member of the USAF Thunderbirds display team, the third female display pilot and fourth female pilot overall. Like a lot of the women on this list, the fact that she’s a woman shouldn’t be a big deal -- women are fifty percent of the population, they should be fifty percent of the fighter pilots (and probably more than that, given that G-forces tend to favour women, more because of size than gender).
But society being what it is, women are only several percent of fighter pilots in the USAF -- the number has gone up, but remains very low overall. I’ve been interested in military aviation since I was little, so I know that what the Thunderbirds do is hard. Any significant mistake in display or practice is very likely fatal. Each pilot flies two years with the squadron, so women have flown four years total in the T-birds, about to be six following Major Jensen’s tour. It wasn’t long ago lots of people would have said women just physically can’t do this. But society’s been frequently wrong in the past, and continues to be.
NINE; Justine Henin
Yes, I know she’s retired, but she’s still my favorite female tennis player ever.
Justine’s unique. Conventional wisdom says women have to be big to hit the ball hard. Justine showed this is rubbish, it’s about technique and racquet-head speed, at 5-5 she frequently blew much larger women off the court. Sadly, very few young female players today, or their coaches, seem to have learned her lesson.
Conventional wisdom also says that women have to hit the ball flat to hit with power, because topspin means the ball goes up and down too much, meaning it takes longer to get to the target, and is thus slower. This is why most women’s tennis is so incredibly ugly, with hard winners one moment, then awful errors the next -- with no topspin there’s no margin for error, so the slightest mistake, or attack of nerves, will end with an error, which is of course also the reason the women’s game seems far more beset by nerves and poor temperament than the men’s. Justine showed the flat-hitting is rubbish too, because the whippy action that she used to put topspin on the ball also created more racquet head speed which also made her shots faster.
But of course, no one today seems to have learned that lesson either. I’ve had personal experience writing about women’s sports (basketball), and compared to the men, the coaching sucked. You have to wonder in how many other sports the women get stuck with loser, retread coaches who couldn’t make it in the men’s game, and how badly it’s affecting performance everywhere.
EIGHT; Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester
I’m hesitant to put Sergeant Hester up here, not because she doesn’t deserve it, but because like a lot of soldiers she’s a very reluctant hero. A sergeant in the military police from the Kentucky National Guard, she was awarded a bronze star for valour under fire in Iraq, 2005.
It’s also awkward to talk of real people who’ve fought in real wars in the context of ‘action heroes’, a fictional concept pedaled by people who perform a far less noble task than soldiers. And I’m sure any soldier who’s awarded anything will tell that it’s all just circumstance, it could have been anyone, lots of others who deserve equal or superior recognition who don’t get it, etc. And I’m sure they’d be right. So if you want to know how Hester got a bronze star, read about it here, and draw your own conclusions.
The point is not to single out any individual, more to use that individual’s example to be aware of what everyone else is doing. And ‘everyone else’, in the US military’s MPs, means a lot of women. Women end up there because it’s technically not a combat role, even though a lot of what they do is basically infantry with handcuffs. Does this mean current restrictions on women in combat should be lifted? The actions of one soldier can’t have any significant impact on a policy that large, nor should they -- the women in combat debate has always been as much cultural as technical, and by culture I mean military culture. And that’s not to dismiss it, culture is important. The military should be left its own space to do its own figuring out on this one. Just don’t presume the ban should stay because women fall apart when the shooting starts. That part of the debate, Hester and others have ended.
SEVEN; Elena Myers
No, she hasn’t done much yet -- except become the first woman to win a motorcycle road race in AMA history, at age 16. A junior race, against fellow teenagers, but even so.
There’s immediately far too much pressure on someone like Elena to do well. This is because she’s the only woman, pretty much anywhere, with a serious chance of making it big -- other women race, but to hit the big time you have to be a teenager winning top junior races, and no other girl has ever done it. If you’re watching a men’s race, most of those men aren’t going to become the next superstar. There might be twenty competitors, and out of those twenty, two or three may emerge. But with Elena, there’s just Elena, and if she doesn’t do it, well, serious female contenders aren’t exactly growing on trees. Unfortunately, if she fails, some idiots will blame her gender, because in any given race at that level, she's almost always her gender's only representative. If a man fails, there’s always a lot more men.
But if she DID make it to the very top... There are still lots of people who doubt women’s driving on four wheels, and think they’ll never conquer Nascar, F1, etc. But motorcycles are so much more physical than cars, MotoGP riders are to four wheel drivers what triathletes are to ten pin bowlers. On a bike you literally have to put your whole body into it -- if you don’t, the bike doesn’t turn corners, which could be a problem. Thus the reason motorcycle races don’t go for hours like car races, the riders would fall off from exhaustion. So if a woman can make it on two wheels, four wheels suddenly doesn’t look so hard.
Plus, look at that face. On top of a winner’s podium at MotoGP level, can you imagine the endorsements? And speaking of endorsements...
SIX; Danica Patrick
Yes, I know a lot won’t think her a great role model because her popularity is at least in part a victory of looks and marketing over performance. But she’s still worth a mention.
Why? Because she’s the first. Successful, popular female driver in an otherwise exclusively macho sport, that is. First is not the same as best, but first still isn’t nothing. The barriers were enormous, and marketing has always been at least as important in motorsport as performance anyway, for men or women. Plenty of drivers do averagely for years and years, then suddenly have a great run and win lots of races. Did they suddenly become more talented? No, their equipment improved. That means money, and sponsorship, and everything else. All the sport’s most legendary drivers would be unknowns today without good money and equipment, talent alone doesn’t make you fast.
So Danica deserves credit for being a ruthless pragmatist, and using her looks, and her image, to lock down that part of her performance. And yes, I do believe that ruthless pragmatism, in pursuit of a good cause, is something worth celebrating. Who knows, maybe she’ll even start winning a few more races soon.
FIVE; Samantha Stosur
I know, another tennis player. I actually don’t like women’s tennis much at the moment, for the reasons I outlined above. It can be terrific, and has been, but the way it’s played today, usually isn’t. But that’s why it’s so nice to see players, in the highest profile female pro sport, who do it differently.
Sam’s unique because she plays like a man. This shouldn’t be a novelty, in most sports women should play like men. The idea that there’s a different ‘female’ way to do it has ruined women’s sports before. As if female runners should be taught to hop on one leg, because the more logical two-legged solution is too masculine or something.
Sam doesn’t hit flat like most women, she uses massive topspin, and slice, and uses the same high-spinning string that Rafael Nadal does. To accommodate the huge, whipping action this requires, she’s built like the proverbial brick shithouse. She’s only 5-7, but will put a flat serve down the middle at 190kph, as fast as a lot of taller men. And much of the men’s tour would kill for her high kicking second serve.
Yes, she’s a bit of a headcase, and is capable of losing to pretty much anyone when she plays badly, which is sadly often. But on her day, and especially on clay, her best game is untouchable, and she usually only loses when she beats herself (again, sadly often). Better yet, she’s a tennis player, not a clothes horse, not a glamour princess, not a column-inch grabber in the tabloids. Not that she can’t look glamorous, she’s a great looking girl, she just couldn’t give a rats ass about that kind of thing. Because she’s a tennis player. Go figure.
FOUR; Meg Lanning
Exact details of Meg’s early cricketing career aren’t widely published, but she did play for Carey Grammar, a fairly exclusive high school in Victoria. Apparently she was one of their very best batsmen, right up until she graduated. This wouldn’t be so remarkable, except that she did it in the boys’ team, in a competition that produces some of Australia’s very best male cricketers.
I’ve long been suspicious of cricket’s claims as an exclusively masculine sport up there with Australian football, or any of the world’s rough macho games that we all accept women can’t beat men at. Cricket is a judgement game, and what ball the batsman chooses to leave alone is as important as the one he chooses to hit. And faster bowling is actually easier to score off, all you need to do is lay bat on it and it goes to the fence. In the longer forms of cricket, all the best shots are style, not power. But until very recently, most high schools would never have dreamt of allowing a girl in the boys’ team, any more than an American school would let a girl quarterback their football team.
I don’t know what expectations Meg faced and faced down, but I can imagine the usual arguments -- she’ll be outsized by the time she turns seventeen, she might get hurt against big male bowlers, she won’t have the strength, or the speed between wickets, etc, etc. All nonsense, apparently. She’s now one of the Australian women’s team’s best players.
All of which raises a curious prospect. Most women’s sports are drastically under performing, because their participation rate isn’t very high. I still remember when Australian pioneer pole vaulter Emma George was setting world records at 4 meters 60. Everyone was amazed women could vault that high. Now Yelena Isinbayeva regularly jumps over 5 meters. More women started doing it, and the previous standard that had looked so good got blown away. Also not long ago, there couldn’t have been more than one female junior cricketer in Australia for every thirty or forty boys. So the standard today, the product of those juniors, is way below where it would be, if participation rates were equal. How far below?
Far enough to make you wonder if a female batsman couldn't keep facing men well beyond high school, at the highest level. Today's female players say male batsmen outdo them for arm and wrist strength, but that's the point -- women's cricket isn't attracting the highest quality athletes yet, though Meg and Ellyse Perry show that might be changing. And I'm quite certain the above mentioned Sam Stosur could beat the likes of Ricky Ponting or Michael Clarke in an arm wrestle (for non-cricketing Americans, two of Australia's best batsmen, neither particularly large or strong). I bet she could hit the cricket ball about as hard too... but she's playing tennis, where she makes millions. Female cricketers are lucky to break even.
Pity Meg didn’t keep playing coed for a few more years, it would have been interesting to see how well she did against men beyond high school -- her male highschool team mates probably did okay, and she was beating a lot of them, so why not her? But again, segregation is this society’s reflex, and potential is squashed by low expectations.
THREE; Gina Carano
Well obviously. And also obviously, the very first time the sport of mixed martial arts actually acquires a real female star, with looks, talent and personality in equal measure, she gets snapped up by Hollywood to become a movie star. So works society. And who can blame her, MMA stars don’t make that much money yet, let alone female ones. Get paid peanuts to be punched in the face, or paid lots to pretend to punch and be punched in the face on camera?
Either way, it’s cool she serves this purpose, of displaying the massive variability within each gender, not just between genders -- and to the more people the better. You sometimes read idiot males on the internet asserting that despite their lack of fighting skills, they could still take down Gina. If you’re driving a bulldozer, sure. With males who have proper fighting skills, and physique, they obviously get the advantage back, but unless they’re significantly better than the average part time scrapper, most men wouldn’t have a chance against her -- and that probably includes some of the lesser male MMA pros out there of her weight division or below.
Gina’s example is also curious in illustrating the gap between female expectations of male sexuality, and the reality. Lots of women presume men prefer skinny, delicate women, and do scary things like starving themselves to achieve that ideal. But Gina Carano has one of the lustiest, droolingest male fanboy followings of any woman anywhere. And this is a woman with arms like a construction worker.
TWO; Rear Admiral Norah Tyson
Okay, hands up if you knew that the US Navy had a carrier strike group commanded by a woman? No, I didn’t think so. Carrier Strike Group Two is led by USS George HW Bush, which operates Carrier Air Wing 8, a bunch of support vessels, and more firepower than a lot of mid-sized nations. It is commanded by Rear Admiral Norah Tyson. Now you know.
ONE; Who have I missed?
posted by Joel Shepherd at 7:46 PM
5 Comments:
Great list!
Another name to possibly add is Kimberly Muson
Hey Linda
Can't say she rings a bell, I'll take your word for it :-)
It was great to see so many female vets on your list. The Air Force just selected the first female 4-star general, too, who went to the USAF Academy a couple of years before me. http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123289113
Hi Susan
Yeah, they've taken some time to climb through the ranks, but they're finally arriving. I'm pretty sure there's a carrier airwing commanded by a woman too (navy I know, but even an airforce vet has to admit that's pretty cool) :-). The Thunderbirds perform every year before some huge number of people, a lot of them little girls, surely all these female display pilots the last few years will have more of them dreaming of flying.
Could I suggest a good look at the list of badasses over at Badass Of The Week, which shares a multitudinous list of ass-kicking women from throughout history, combined with a big ol' steaming pile of hyperbole?
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