You people condescendingly bark about the right flavor of feminist Naruto discourse or whatever and then pretend Ino doesn't have a mean girl bone in her body, give me a break! Don't think people won't see your snide pretentious comments next time
For one thing, it'd help me understand where you're coming from if you referenced the offending "snide, pretentious comment" of mine which has drawn your ire.
For another thing, only one flavor of Naruto discourse worthy of the descriptor "feminist" exists, and it's whichever one that isn't automatically assuming {Kishimoto is a misogynist who writes women badly}™ as an excuse for having failed to engage rigorously with a femme character or for hating a femme character for coming across a certain way. I'm tired of seeing parroted talking points and canned phrases about Kishimoto being a supposed raging misogynist that are included in posts which are not backed up with interpretations of the femme characters done to any notable depth of reasoning, and I'm not going to stand for it. So much of it seems like a series of excuses meant to give Naruto fans who view themselves as feminists an excuse to hate Sakura like the rest of the fandom does. Catch yourselves on, will you?
I'm not the only one who has a problem with this phenomenon in the discourse, and if you are so very incensed by our perspectives, refute said perspectives. Analyse and critique our arguments and present your reasoned alternative. Discourse is precisely what Tumblr is built to enable.
You wanna give my posts a cursory viewing and come crabbing at me and shaking your rhetorical fist in my Ask Box about being snide and pretentious, whatever. You wanna keep believing that Ino is nothing more than a bratty, b*tchy fanservice b*mbo like any dudebro might, fine.
I don't intend to suffer asks with such rudeness and Animus and a dearth of dialectic content, but I'll indulge yours as many times as Sasuke has to die on his way to Orochimaru.
The truth is that Ino was nothing but a wonderful friend to Sakura from the minute they met to the minute Sakura broke it off. So far, I somehow seem to be the only person pointing out that this portion of Ino's and Sakura's relationship—which we can assume lasted at least ~2-3 years, based on depictions in the manga of physical growth and hair growth in panels showing the initial meeting and the declaration of rivalry on the bench under the tree—passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors. It was a solidly wholesome relationship for a while. Imagine my incredulity one day seeing someone make the claim on here that the friendship began with the rivalry. Good goddess, y'all need to touch more printed paper….
At that point, Sakura made it clear that she wasn't interested in a friendly relationship with Ino anymore, but rather in a relationship of comparisons and competition. Ino was hurt by this development, and why wouldn't she be? She tried to impress upon Sakura that those are not the right ways to interact as girls/women:
Mean Girls don't believe that way. Part of what makes them Mean Girls is that they believe in just the opposite. By this standard, Sakura is the one with the Mean Girl bone(s) in her body, not Ino. Sakura has a lot of issues that hinder her growth and make her come off as irksome; no wonder fans dislike her and sometimes for je-ne-se-quoi reasons they can't or won't quantify. But bad writing by a supposedly misogynistic mangaka is not a sufficiently nuanced analysis of Sakura and instead it is largely used as a license to not engage with Sakura enough to understand why she is who she is. She's not badly written; she needs to see a therapist. But that's its own analysis post.
From that point of the rivalry being declared, Ino performs rivalry, playing along with Sakura's decision. Ino rarely initiates rival behavior, most often responding to Sakura when the latter mentions another thing she can/will supposedly do better/win more at than Ino. Occasionally Ino will goad Sakura just to get a reaction, but she doesn't ever really put Sakura down. When Sakura gets to the Animus level of name-calling, Ino sticks to calling Sakura "Forehead"/"Billboard Brow", and we already know that in her heart, Ino wants Sakura to be proud of her forehead. Why would we think she's changed? Because of Sasuke; really? Why do we give him so much credit for this? What would give anyone the impression that Ino is anywhere near as serious about Sasuke as Sakura is? As I said, there's a lot of performative behavior on Ino's part, and she only ever resembles a "Mean Girl" when she's bickering with Sakura—during which, mind you, she only has Sakura's best interests in mind. She wants to see Sakura bloom in a flower even prettier than a cosmos, which—mind you also that Ino compared herself to the cosmos flower—is code for hoping Sakura surpasses her. In truth, Ino supports Sakura to Toneri's dyson sphere and back.
Ino has never held the attitudes of those actual Mean Girls who bullied Sakura in the Academy. Ino never treats other girls that way, either. If she were a Mean Girl, Ino would be noticeably unkind to frumpy, shy, stammering, awkward Hinata; she isn't. She doesn't get bitchy with Kin in the Forest of Death, either. We never see her acting like a Mean Girl to anyone other than Sakura, and Ino's tone in that regard never becomes serious until Sakura comes right out in their prelim match and calls Ino, essentially, a vain, shallow b*mbo who cares only about her appearance—at this point Sakura is openly insulting Ino's feminine identity and body image and isn't pulling the rhetorical punch. That's when Ino actually gets angry, and when her body language changes with regard to Sakura. There's an analysis on here—I will comment on this post and tag you once I manage to locate it—that lays this dynamic out pretty well.
My overarching point is that if we give these girls/women the benefit of a deep analysis, analysis we owe them if we are to believe ourselves feminists; a helluva lot more nuance comes to light with regard to Ino's relationship with Sakura and to who Ino is as a person in general. Ino is not a Mean Girl; in fact, she's pretty feckin' nice if you take her friendship seriously.
And also, don't call me "you people". Unlike Sakura, I'm not a system.
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