The “Women in Refrigerators” trope in literature
TRIGGER WARNING: dead bodies, mentions of sexual and physical assault, corpses, etc. SOURCE: “Women in Refrigerators” The term “Women in Refrigerators” or “Fridging” was most notably coined by female comic book writer Gail Simone. Simone is best known for her work on Birds of Prey, Deadpool, and Wonder Woman. The term came from Green Lantern #54, where Kyle Rayner is horrified to find his girlfriend, Alexandra DiWitt, murdered and stuffed into his refrigerator.
Kyle finds out she was killed by Major Force as a way to get under his skin. Simone was shocked to see Alexandra being used as little more than a plot point to further the story of the leading man, and was sick of women characters being treated like a dispensable commodity for writers. Many writers of all genders have taken her words to heart, and “Fridging” has become a topic of huge debate. The trope usually has 3 common occurrences 1. A female character (not just a love interest) is brutalized beyond repair in some way: killed, physically assaulted, mind broken, de-powered, or sexually assaulted. 2. A villain is responsible and only does it to provoke the hero. 3. The woman’s injury/death provides vengeful motivation for the hero to fight/kill/defeat the villain The reason “Fridging” is harmful trope is because it objectifies female characters, turns them into plastic story devices, and their character development just serves as motivation to the male protagonist. It’s the same reason why “damsels in distress” is a stereotypical trope; it gives the illusion that women cannot fight for themselves. These tropes are not just limited to love interests, but anyone woman in the male hero’s life. But the trope most often applies to a love interest. It’s considered more tragic and grief-inspiring for the hero to lose the women he’s devoted his life to. This isn’t a call for untouchable female characters; as long as the female’s death is more relevant to the story than just as the hero’s motivation. Regardless, I find it almost frightening to think about how common this is and how often it still happens. One counter-argument being made against the term “Fridging” is the idea that women do face these situations and it’s a real thing happening today. This argument is ridiculous, because the deaths of these women are never the central focus of the story, and their brutalization is never the theme. It’s the death of a woman for the interest of a plot point that makes it fridging. The other big counter-argument against the WiR trope is that men are killed all the time in literature, and singling out the deaths of females is simply being selective. This argument brought about the “Dead Men Defrosting” or “DMD” trope, designed to show how men being murdered as motivation and women being murdered for motivation were starkly different. Firstly, role-reversal (a super-heroine's love interest being killed off to further her story) is not half as common as those arguing this can make it sound. Additionally, men are not killed in the same manner as most female characters are. The death of a female character is far more often due to torture and/or exploitation or assault of a sexual nature than their male counterparts. Men that die often die in a very admirable or heroic manner, such as Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman (2017) who takes a plane full of explosives into the sky to save all the people below. Although it is used to further Wonder Woman’s anger so she can defeat Ares (the god of war), Steve sacrifices himself in a fiery explosion of glory and heroism, much unlike Alexandra DiWitt. The objectification of women in literature is a long-standing issue that needs to be far more seriously addressed. A woman is not just a love interest, not just a motive. It becomes extremely boring when female comic fans have to sit and read through 1-dimensional women after 1-dimensional women. Giving your female characters a personality and abstaining from reducing them to a plot device not only makes them far more interesting, it also forces you to come up with a better plot. Don’t write a female. Write a three-dimensional character.
