“The fandom is centering a man in a story about women, all they can talk about is the man, all they care about is the man and the romance.”
Actually no, what we care about is representation of a strong woman being portrayed as a whole person who can contain multitudes: able to be a mother, daughter, friend, fighter, leader AND a lover if she wants to be. A complexity the character used to be granted before the writers apparently somehow decided it wasn’t “feminist” (a fallacy, btw).
We care about the message it would have sent for the main character to have been allowed to choose for herself a love that makes her feel alive, grounds her and helps her to be the best version of herself as she continues her fight. For her to trust and follow her own heart, mind and gut, as opposed to caving to the societal pressure telling her what she should be and who she should be with.
Rather than the message we were given, which is that sexual desire and the love and companionship of a romantic partner is a distraction (a “flight of fancy”, even); that as a woman, you don’t get to have that if you want to be strong and independent and reach your true potential (think about how often media sends this same message about a male lead… yeah, not very).
We care about the fact that we wanted to fully emotionally immerse ourselves in an ending that involved beautiful female friendships we’ve been following for nearly 10 years and reflections on motherhood, family and resistance, but were too distracted by nonsensical, unsatisfying character choices, carelessly dropped plotlines and completely unrealistic and unearned moments shoehorned in at the last moment to enjoy the resolution as a whole.
We care about the fact that in the end they seem to have turned a main character we deeply cared about and rooted for into either a sociopath who doesn't care that the man she claimed to love* (at least as of 2 weeks ago) died horrifically, or else has become so fully numbed to death that she is unable to process it, and that this is yet another wound she will have to rip open at some point, another gut-wrenching loss she will have to mourn when she finally reckons with all the the lives needlessly lost over the years.
We care about the show staying even the littlest bit faithful to the spirit and the underlying themes of the source material (and not just in the literal words with which the first novel begins).
The reason we're talking about "the man" (aside from the fact that we appreciate this deeply layered and complex character, which yes, we're allowed to do even in a show centering on women) is that, in so fully and shockingly (the point, ostensibly) destroying not just the character but also apparently everything he had meant to the lead, it also inevitably denies the lead of one of the aspects that made her so relatable in all her messy humanity.
Can she be whole "without a man"? Yes, my god, of course. But she would also not be less with one, or even continuing to love one (or hell, even two) from afar. Was it really necessary to literally blow up the man she loved in order to deny her the choice, even at some potential point in the future beyond what we see after the screen goes black? Personally, I don't find that very "feminist", satisfying or hopeful, but hey that's just me.
*I won’t even get into the fact that we’re not even just talking about romantic love and sexual agency and desire here, we are also quite literally talking about familial love because this was *the father of one of her children*, because quite honestly my point here is that romantic love and sexual agency and desire actually do matter on their very own merit as well.
dailybridgerton
tangentwithtanner
titsay
prguitarman
blakekathryn
