When Teenage Girls Save The Day: Or Why Krissy Chambers Rocks
Teenage girls who kick ass are, thankfully, not as rare as they used to be in fiction. Seems like the YA bookshelves these days overflow with new, interesting heroines, who run around having adventures and changing their world for the better. Even in Hollywood, we’re seeing more and more teenaged heroines, including Katniss Everdeen, Hermione Granger, Merida, and so on.
But let’s be real here. In a pure numbers sense, they’re still pretty damn rare—especially on television.
I mean, you have your Buffys and your Teen Wolfs, both of which feature empowered, competent teenage girls. Buffy, Willow, Cordelia, Allison and Lydia (well, at least in Season 1 she was powerful and competent) are all budding young women with their own special skill sets for which they are not denigrated, but celebrated. And while none of these women are all-powerful, they can and do influence the world around them in interesting and important ways.
But these are shows about teenagers, whose target audience is teenagers. Supernatural is neither.
A Show About Adults – Meaning, A Show About Men
Supernatural is a show for adults, about adults; as of Season 5, the average age of the Supernatural viewer was 36. And we see that target audience reflected in the stories told on screen: The story of Supernatural is one of men exploring adulthood (that is, manhood), and learning how to define it for himself. It’s put in a masculine context because men are the ones telling the story, and it’s for a mostly female audience because in a patriarchal society, women are trained to be more interested in the question of “what does it mean to be a man?” than men to be interested in the reverse, “what does it mean to be a woman?” (You can blame endless English classes in which young women are taught to identify with Huck Finn and Jim Hawkins, rather than Scout Finch or Jo March. But I digress.)
All the characters in the Supernatural universe – even the women — must grapple with masculinity and its effects on the world around them. Certainly most of the main and extended cast (Sam, Dean, John, Cas, Benny, the angels, and so on) all explore what manhood means to them.
But masculinity isn’t just a personal crisis in Supernatural – it’s a social and cultural one too. In Hunter culture particularly, manliness is a virtue next to godliness, and female Hunters must either mold their lives to that masculine ideal, as do Jo and Ellen, or reject the Hunt altogether, as do Jody and Bela.
Heaven’s organization is just as patriarchal. Awesome headcanons about Lucifer’s gender aside, the four archangels – the top brass, as it were – are all identified in the show as male, in that they are referred to over and over again as “brothers” (despite Raphael’s female vessel). Yes, Anna and Hester are commanders of ground troops, but angel entrusted with the orders to kickstart the Apocalypse? Male. The angel entrusted with speaking to God? Male. Even God is always talked about in male terms – the absent father, the deadbeat dad, the Lord, etc.
It is no coincidence that the one hierarchy* that truly empowers its women – Hell — is also considered the natural antagonist of Hunters and Heaven alike. Lilith, Abaddon, Meg – these are strong, powerful women not just embraced by their home team, but promoted to its highest ranks. Lilith was ruling Queen of Hell for a time. Abaddon is a Knight of Hell. And for a long time, Meg was Azazel’s second-in-command. Ruby, of course, was entrusted with the most sacred of missions, a secret so important that nobody else but she and the Queen of Hell knew the real truth.
This whole men-as-the-good-guys, women-as-the-bad-guys thing isn’t coincidental, and frankly, I think it’s done rather well. In lesser hands, Supernatural would devolve into hackneyed misogynist stereotypes. But so far the integrity of motivation on both sides – and the lack of any real moral high ground to be claimed by either — makes me believe this is meant to be understood less a battle of the sexes and more an subversion of typical gender roles. Personally, I find Supernatural’s Hell really feminist, the kind of brilliant, self-aware representation born out of a close reading of Simone Du Beauvoir. It’s one of the things that hooked me about the show.
And yet, for all the ways Supernatural can be marvelously feminist, sometimes it is not. Holy cow, sometimes, it is really, really not.
Teenage Boys Rule, Teenage Girls Drool
In particular, Supernatural has not been kind to its teenage girls. What few do appear – I mean those who aren’t victims, of course, and whew boy, are there a lot of those – generally cleave to one or more negative gendered stereotypes. Examining only the middle- and high-school aged girls, we see teenage girls who:
Are vapid and self-absorbed (the two teenage Paris Hilton fans from “Fallen Idols”; Kristen from “Live Free or Twihard”)
Are insecure (Jenny from “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester”)
Have their priorities all out of whack (Charley and Jill from “Bloody Mary”; Tracy from “Out With The Old”; Channing from “Reading is Fundamental”)
Hide a secret that could result or which has resulted in the death of a male character (Young Amy Pond in “The Girl Next Door”; Charley and Jill from “Bloody Mary”)
Are dumb or easily manipulated (Nora in “Swap Meat”; Polly in “Survival of the Fittest”; Donna from “Bloody Mary”)
Are catty and evil (Tracy in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester”; Channing reprised in “We Need to Talk About Kevin”)
Are manipulative and evil (Emma in “The Slice Girls”; The Whore of Babylon from “99 Problems”; Emily from “There Will Be Blood” – I’m counting her because she’s kept emotionally a 13 year old girl)
Are just plain evil (Missy Bender from “The Benders”)
Compare this to middle and high school aged teenage boys, who:
Save the day (Kevin Tran)
Offer the main male protagonist redemption (Ben Braeden)
Hold up a mirror to the main male protagonists (Ben Braeden; Barry Cook and Dirk MacGregor from “After School Special”)
Are very perceptive (Matthew Pike in “Bugs”, Danny Carter in “Family Remains”)
Are intelligent and competent beyond their years (Michael in “Something Wicked”; Gary from “Swap Meat”)
Are in possession of great powers (Jesse Turner from “I Believe the Children Are Our Future”; Todd from “Wishful Thinking” – maybe a little young, but you get the point)
Act as caretakers for their parents or their siblings (Aaron Birch from “The Third Man”, Young!Bobby in “Death’s Door”; Trevor in “Party On Garth”; Joe in “Mommie Dearest”)
Note that two of those teenaged boys – Kevin Tran and Ben Braeden – have been recurring cast members. Up to 8x16, no teenaged girl has reappeared except Channing, and she only appeared so as to be killed off and give Kevin believable motivation (a trope known as “fridging”).
Thus in Supernatural it is as it is elsewhere in speculative fiction TV shows: Teenage boys get to save the world, while teenage girls just get to watch it burn.**
It’s not a problem unique to Supernatural, but reflective of a greater cultural disdain for teenage girls and their stories. The dominant patriarchal paradigm marginalizes the teenage girl’s growing pains at the same time that it exalts those of the teenage boy. After all, the coming of age story is assumed, by default, to be a male story, even though every woman that ever lived must have also once come of age in her own way as well. Yet her experience is cast aside, her concerns ignored or trivialized. We don’t care about her story. She gets no respect, despite the fact that 50% of us were or are or will one day be teenage girls.
As an illustrative example, think the last story you saw in books***, TV or film that addresses menarche (first menstruation). This is a critical juncture for any teenage girl, but even stories about teenage girls for teenage girls, like Buffy and Teen Wolf — heck, even real-world stories like Glee — uphold the menstruation taboo. Fictional characters just don’t talk about getting their periods.
Of those that do talk about menarche, how many can you name that present first menses as something to be celebrated, and not as some kind of disgusting body horror that a woman must learn to live with if she is to function as an adult? From My Girl to Carrie, menstruation is considered gross, awful, disgusting, evil, a curse – above all, something to be avoided or hidden at all costs. 99% of all teenage girls bleed, yet they are shamed for doing so.
What further evidence do you need that we still live in a patriarchy than that women are given the power to perpetuate the species, yet we are taught to hide the evidence of it? Or that menarche still isn’t considered part of a traditional coming of age story, even though nature gives no clearer physical sign of maturity than bleeding out your uterine lining?
What is far more common to a female coming of age story, however, is victimization as a rite of passage. Far more often, a teenage girl is initiated into the sisterhood of women through some first trauma – whether it be rape, assault, kidnapping, loss, whatever. We teach our young girls that to be a woman, one must first lose control and agency; being a woman means being stripped of what you value or what makes you powerful. And this we see time and time again in Supernatural, from Lily of the Psychic Children (who loses her girlfriend) to Emma of the Amazons (who loses her mother).
Which brings us to Krissy.
Krissy Chambers Is A Teenage Girl. Deal With It.
So into this environment and context, we introduce Krissy Chambers.
Krissy is 14. And she acts like it, unapologetically so. She’s has knowledge but not skill. She’s confident to the point of cockiness. She demands respect from Sam and Dean she hasn’t yet earned. She’s snide and sarcastic often just for the hell of it, because that’s what you do when you’re 14 and you’ve had to grow up too fast. She’s a teenage girl, through and through.
But remarkably, she’s also a very likable character. She’s perceptive and clever. She thinks quickly, but she doesn’t telegraph her moves in advance. She loves her family, and protects her father, and fist bumps a thirty-three year old man even though it’s totally lame, because she knows the gesture will mean a lot to him. And she’s courageous, so wonderfully courageous, in that way I think only teenagers can be – not because they don’t know the stakes, but because they feel those stakes so much more keenly than adults.
This is a show about grown men, yet here we have a fourteen year old girl who’s as complex and admirable as any man – or teenage boy – who’s ever appeared on the show.
Krissy possesses several characteristics usually reserved for Supernatural’s teenage boy characters: Cleverness; intelligence beyond her years; a need to caretake her father; etc. She also single-handedly saves the day, which several teenage boys (but no teenage girls) on the show have ever done. But it’s also important to note that Krissy is decidedly not just a teenage boy character walking around in a teenage girl’s skin. Indeed, several plot points are incumbent on the fact that she is a teenage girl:
She escapes her cuffs using a bobby pin (which is a traditionally feminine adornment).
She fools the Vetalae through her acting skills. (Teenage girls are often made fun of for being overly dramatic and manipulative)
At a critical moment, she pulls her knife from a hidden spot. (Remember what I said before about teenage girls often being portrayed as concealing dangerous secrets?)
She does not overpower Sally, but instead whirls under her, using her small, agile frame (a trait typical of young teenage girls) to her advantage.
Krissy Chambers doesn’t just save the day. She saves the day by virtue of being a teenage girl. That’s so fucking huge that I can’t think of any other show but Buffy that dares do something similar.
In many ways, “Adventures in Babysitting” is Krissy’s coming of age story, a story about what it means –and what it doesn’t mean – to be a woman.
First let’s consider the villains, the adult Vetalae. They are, literally, man-eaters who use sex to manipulate men (reinforcing the stereotype that beautiful women should be distrusted). They always come in pairs, the better to hunt their prey (reinforcing the stereotype that female friendship or ‘sisterhood’ should be distrusted). There are no mentions of male or child vetalae (reinforcing the stereotype that a strong woman without a family or man should be distrusted). And John and Sam both incorrectly believed vetalae to be “maladjusted loner types” (reinforcing the stereotype that adult women hide dangerous secrets). For a masculinity-obsessed culture, the Vetalae are the perfect beast, for they are a patriarchy’s fears about strong, beautiful women made incarnate.
It’s no coincidence that the only adult women in the episode are the Vetalae and Krissy’s dead mother, the victim of a brutal yet unspecified crime. These two examples are meant to represent Krissy’s two options of womanhood. Maturing into a woman must mean becoming a victim, like Krissy’s mother, or becoming a monster, like Sally and Marlene. Krissy must choose between the two.
This choice is reinforced by the climax of the episode, which sets up a classic scene of female victimization. In a set-up we’ve seen thousands of times before, Sally the Vetala grabs Krissy and holds her hostage. The teenage girl is now apparently left helpless, powerless. She is made a victim. Krissy reinforces that idea too, by whimpering, tearing up, and wailing for help, first to her father, then to Dean.
Sally mutters in Krissy’s ear, “He can’t help you. No one can help you.”
That these words are uttered by an older woman make them all the more powerful. This is one woman victimizing another as a rite of passage; an adult woman forcibly ushering a girl into maturity by the usual brutal means. In Sally’s world, in our world, women are either merciless or helpless; predators or prey. Man-eaters or prizes. Monsters or victims. And because Krissy was not born a monster, because Krissy is not strong enough to overpower Sally, it is obvious which of the two she is destined to become.
She whirls around and stabs the vetala right in the fucking heart.
“Guess I’ll have to help myself then,” she says, twisting the knife.
Krissy rejects the false dichotomy presented to her. She decides to be neither victim nor monster, but instead an agent of her own destiny. She does not succumb to the vetala — as a victim does — but kills her; and she does so not out of revenge or anger – as a monster kills – but to protect her family. She is in control. In fact, she has been from the start.
And when Krissy removes the knife, the Vetala withers into ash and dust, an apt metaphor for the ugliness and ultimate powerlessness of this illusion of womanhood she represented.
What’s more, Krissy’s bravery empowers Dean; by watching her, he is able to overcome his fear, grab a knife, and charge the other vetala. And she frees Sam and gives him her knife, which he uses to kill Marlene. That means that not only did Krissy single-handedly eliminate one threat, through her own choices she empowered the grown men around her to eliminate the other threat.
I mean, Krissy doesn’t just save the day in a token way. She really saves the fucking day here.
And note that she didn’t have to reject the feminine to do it. Quite the opposite: She had to embrace it; she had to use her “feminine wiles”, in a manner of speaking, in order to reveal and reject the false womanhood presented to her. Krissy is a woman now, a woman of her own making. And that is presented in the denouement as an unqualified positive, something to be proud of, to acknowledge; something to celebrate.
Again, that’s so huge that I can’t think of any other show that’s ever pulled off something similar, besides maybe Buffy. That this story appeared on Supernatural of all places, given its troubled history with teenage girls – and in an episode written by a man nonetheless– well, consider me overjoyed.
At the end of the episode, Dean tries to get Krissy to reject the Hunt – not too surprising, all things considered. You can read his concern as his paternal instincts kicking in, or as a patriarchal norm attempting to reassert itself. Either way, Krissy doesn’t seem all that swayed. Sure, she says she’s retiring; she even offers Dean a line about going to Stanford someday. But she also fiercely reminds Dean – and us – of her competence as a Hunter (“I saved your bacon”) and reinforces the similarity between her and Dean (“we’re so lame”). She ain’t giving up the Hunt, not in the slightest.
What she might do, however, is pull off what no other Hunter has managed before her – that is, strike a balance between the Hunting Life and real life. She might go to college, and hunt on the side. I could believe it.
After all, she is woman. Hear her roar.
*For their part, the beings of Purgatory don’t really seem to care over much about this battle of the sexes. Monsters each seem to have their own unique hierarchy, some with male Alphas and some with female Alphas. The Leviathan are represented as genderless beings of infinite hunger, who show equal scorn for humanity, Heaven and Hell alike.
** There are a few exceptions, of course. If the protagonist is female, then she’ll likely be allowed to save the world – as long as she’s surrounded by and mentored by men. (Think Buffy, who’s mentored by Giles). If she’s the Token Girl, who’s usually the love interest of either the hero or his best friend, she gets to stick around to offer Vitally Important Assistance at Crucial Junctures But Not Do Anything That Might Overshadow Or Otherwise Detract From The Hero Being Heroic. (Think Allison, whose heroics only go so far as when Scott needs help, especially in Season 2.)
*** Books are a little different, because you can get away with a lot more in literature. Even still, a joyful, unqualified celebration of menarche is rare. Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.
