His and Hers Stories
G irl Power movies or stories are “about a female character who starts off without any acceptance—be it social, intellectual, physical, economic, romantic or political—and spends the rest of the movie gaining it.” [1] It would seem that we don’t have boy power stories. Girl Power stories often make the claim that girls, at least the girl in the story, can do whatever the boys can do, only better because she can do it with makeup on. I don’t imagine there would be much interest in a story that showed a boy doing girl stuff. This is partly because guys already believe they could do the girl stuff, if they really wanted to, so they don’t need a story to tell them they can. The male counterpart to the Girl Power story is the Coming of Age story. Remember Karate Kid ? Of course we remember great lines like “wax on, wax off”, but when we look at the journey of the character, it is not one of gaining acceptance but gaining strength. In a Girl Power story, the female character already...