Remember when Mako's grandma was complimenting Asami's beauty for 5 minutes and then all she said to Korra was that she was muscular for a woman ... the colorism is real also who tf would think that Asami was the Avatar
I think the way Korra was treated--from her conception of being seen as more “masculine” and that sometimes being a bad thing was um--it was bad. I liked that Korra was able to be more muscular and stuff becuase we got to see a type of girl that was usually shamed. However, her being juxtaposed to Asami in some instances and made to feel bad for her build, and in some cases being pressured to be more “feminine” was bad. What made it even worse was that Korra was the only brown female protagonist in LOK, the only prominent brown character--and the white creators decided it would be okay to make her masculine, aggressive, etc.--all stereotypes that literally harm brown women today. Especially brown native women. And to make matters worse, she was always being compared or indirectly compared to Asami. Asami who was obviously more petite, feminine and was clearly seen as more desirable because she was the “acceptable” type of femininty that made everyone comfortable. Light skinned, rich, skinny and extremely girly. And that writing was racist. The way Asami’s feminine beauty was seen as a positive where as Korra was hypermasculanized and seen as manly and in many cases undesirable was really gross.
Like Korra is the only one to get this type of treatment. Even Toph, who was arguably a more “masculine” female character if we’re going with that, still was allowed to be viewed as petite and beautiful to the audience and characters. Where as, Toph’s character from Ember Island was a dark skinned, muscular man dressed in clothes in a way to poke fun at, and shame masculine or gender non conforming women. And that whole stunt was also heavily transphobic.
Jump to LOK--the only other “masculine” or gender non conforming women we got was Korra and again while it was cool at first, it was a bad thing. She was shamed for it, propped up to Asami and torn down to the point where we realize in the show, she is portrayed in more feminine ways (whether it be her hair style, her outfits, etc.). Because this may just be me, but Korra’s original hair style was extremely gender neutral--hair up in the water tribe is gender neutral meaning men and women wore that hair style. Whereas while hair down was gender neutral, free flowing hair was seen as more feminine and “pretty”.
The point i’m trying to make is that, when trying to apply non-conventionally feminine features to women, or trying to dabble with gender non conforming women--Avatar sucks. Because if you aren’t like Toph--meaning you are still skinny, light skinned, pretty, petite and small but you have a personality and subscribe to habits that are seen as more “manly” than not--then you’re basically made the butt of a joke.
Korra and the dark skinned ember island actor playing toph is a great example of how the writers and the characters in general view muscular, gender nonconforming women and take things like masculinity seen in women as not just a negative thing, but something that is SPECIFICALLY negatively attributed to dark skinned women.
So like i know i went off but i’ve had these ideas.
And while I have my issues with Korra, I won’t deny that her writing was racist.
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