ok you know what’s best about olivia dunham?
it’s that she’s so unfriendly.
she doesn’t smile unless she wants to – to the point where her boss occasionally makes a quip about how she just did a great job and could smile about her achievement if she’s up for it maybe. she certainly doesn’t do the Obligatory Female Social Smiling thing.
she doesn’t wear makeup. i mean, obviously the actress is wearing makeup. but just enough that she shows up on camera. olivia’s look is pale and hard; her eyebrows kinda disappear; her lashes are short and blond, no mascara; her lips look a little chapped. this is a woman whose beauty routine consists entirely of using conditioner in the shower so her hair doesn’t turn into a static puff.
she doesn’t wear sexy underwear. we see her in undies every so often, when she gets in the suspension tank for the brain machine thingie, and it’s a plain black set of skivvies, and the camera doesn’t linger. she has no shame about it, either, no coy show of modesty. she just drops the robe and goes ‘hook me up’. the camera is more interested in the electrodes than the panty shot.
she doesn’t have to be twice as good as the guys. she doesn’t have that desperate drive to prove herself that female cops on tv always have. she’s not pushing back against sexism. she’s not even acknowleging it. she is a juggernaut. people can get on board, stand aside, or get run over. she is not asking your permission, and frankly isn’t interested in your opinion. when jackasses pull sexist shit, she either draws a battle line and dares them to step over it (”call me sweetheart again”) or just gives them that blank, eerie stare like she’s deciding whether to catch them under a cup and let them go in the bushes out back or just squash them with a rolled up newspaper.
she’s a misogynist’s worst nightmare: a woman who doesn’t even care that he exists, let alone what he thinks of her, and over whom he can exert no control whatsoever, not even if he’s technically above her in the chain of command, harris, you poor asshole, you are so doomed, i almost feel sorry for you.
