How watching a serial killer series made me comfortable with my own femininity
My appreciation for cinema has been unfettered since childhood. Spending endless summer vacations rewatching the same movies till I recited dialogues, laughing prematurely and managing to tear up the same emotional scenes. It’s no surprise that the movies I watched influenced me and yet I never related to most on-screen portrayal of young women in movies.
Bend it like Beckham was my unrivaled favorite for the longest time. It was directed by Gurinder Chadha, who captures the complexity between societal expectations and personal goals beautifully. It had the core element for it to become a girl power cult classic- A determined, defiant rebellious protagonist. As the younger daughter, Jess is expected to help her mother with chores, learn how to cook, get good grades, much like the expectations of my Indian family. When her family and other Indian families gather, she is expected to be deferential, obedient, and pleasant. She, although brushing it off as culture, feels restrained by it. I shared the same feeling of feeling suffocated by the existing norms around how women should behave. With adolescent angst, I couldn’t strike a balance between embracing my feminine side and the familial/societal expectations and eventually began resenting everything and anyone that tried to impose those on me-which came with the cost of losing out on many what could have been shared experiences with my mother.
The teenage angst coupled with my strong inclination to defying everything feminine created space to eagerly accept strong female characters. Which was great because by then. there were enough “strong female leads” in mainstream movies. All of them with perfectly blow-dried hair after a fight, superhuman strength, and a mandatory snug attire which inadvertently called for a pan shot from bottom to top. This placate my conflicted femininity. They were perfectly superficial representations because they thwarted the expectations of the stale damsel in distress trope, which I hated with a passion. Instead these characters were powerful, merciless and gained admiration from her male counterparts, and was fatally underestimated by the villains of the movie. (Think: Tomb Raider who I regretfully cosplayed in my first year of undergrad)
Trinity from The Matrix Trilogy being one of my key inspirations during these years, her androgynous, Agent butt-kicking character was a breath of fresh air. She was a smart, unemotional badass hacker. Everything I aspired to be. (minus the hacker, obviously)
I reached my undergraduate college, and the feeling of being foreign to my own femininity started to shift. I was in a predominantly female college and lived in an all-girls dormitory which made me realize that I do have a proclivity for feminine sensibility. (who knew?) I took my time to get comfortable with this whole new side of me that I had been forced to be dormant throughout these years.
My childhood heroes were extremely one-dimensional, often poorly written by men who obviously didn’t understand the nuances of femininity. They were so hyper-focused on giving them physical strength, by the end of it that’s all they had. These characters were merely a token representation, not a fully fleshed-out character. These tropes were a direct appropriation of typical “masculinity”. Cold-blooded, male-coded female heroes that only end up undermining typically female traits. And unfortunately, end up serving the patriarchy by marginalizing non-male identities.
Trinity from the Matrix, although starting off as a brilliant character with immense potential, ends up subservient to the main character. Her contributions end up being marginal even though, she’s more capable than the main character.
I didn’t notice these things till I watched Killing Eve-the ultimate cat and mouse spy thriller, directed by the supremely talented Pheobe Waller-Bridge. It had everything that a typical Bond movie would have- picturesque destinations, skilled combat scenes, dapper-looking people-and yet It was so different.
Characters weren’t merely executing missions. We got a glance at the messiness behind these characters. Stories were led through emotions, something that Jill Soloway calls, Female Gaze (with a ze and not a ys). And it’s not as easy as flipping the existing male gaze to the female one, where you objectify men instead of women or have female characters with male traits.
Men think that women want to be like them, but women do not want to be men. Killing Eve captures this beautifully.
*spoiler alert!*
When Eve commits her first murder, we expect her to end up as a cold, unfeeling being but instead, she’s mortified and disgusted by herself. Even though she is lawful, she’s morally complex. Villanelle (the serial killer) isn’t your typical serial killer either she’s childish, humane, feels lonely, and even flounces around in a pink Molly Goddard tulle dress (iconic). More importantly, both of them really see each other for who they are, their nuances, their flaws, their messiness which only validates my human experience.
It reminded me that my feminity is also a spectrum, and I wish more people represented it that way.
Femininity is complex, it’s vulnerable, emotional and powerful.
Bend it like Beckham was my unrivaled favorite for the longest time. It was directed by Gurinder Chadha, who captures the complexity between societal expectations and personal goals beautifully. It had the core element for it to become a girl power cult classic- A determined, defiant rebellious protagonist. As the younger daughter, Jess is expected to help her mother with chores, learn how to cook, get good grades, much like the expectations of my Indian family. When her family and other Indian families gather, she is expected to be deferential, obedient, and pleasant. She, although brushing it off as culture, feels restrained by it. I shared the same feeling of feeling suffocated by the existing norms around how women should behave. With adolescent angst, I couldn’t strike a balance between embracing my feminine side and the familial/societal expectations and eventually began resenting everything and anyone that tried to impose those on me-which came with the cost of losing out on many what could have been shared experiences with my mother.
The teenage angst coupled with my strong inclination to defying everything feminine created space to eagerly accept strong female characters. Which was great because by then. there were enough “strong female leads” in mainstream movies. All of them with perfectly blow-dried hair after a fight, superhuman strength, and a mandatory snug attire which inadvertently called for a pan shot from bottom to top. This placate my conflicted femininity. They were perfectly superficial representations because they thwarted the expectations of the stale damsel in distress trope, which I hated with a passion. Instead these characters were powerful, merciless and gained admiration from her male counterparts, and was fatally underestimated by the villains of the movie. (Think: Tomb Raider who I regretfully cosplayed in my first year of undergrad)
Trinity from The Matrix Trilogy being one of my key inspirations during these years, her androgynous, Agent butt-kicking character was a breath of fresh air. She was a smart, unemotional badass hacker. Everything I aspired to be. (minus the hacker, obviously)
I reached my undergraduate college, and the feeling of being foreign to my own femininity started to shift. I was in a predominantly female college and lived in an all-girls dormitory which made me realize that I do have a proclivity for feminine sensibility. (who knew?) I took my time to get comfortable with this whole new side of me that I had been forced to be dormant throughout these years.
My childhood heroes were extremely one-dimensional, often poorly written by men who obviously didn’t understand the nuances of femininity. They were so hyper-focused on giving them physical strength, by the end of it that’s all they had. These characters were merely a token representation, not a fully fleshed-out character. These tropes were a direct appropriation of typical “masculinity”. Cold-blooded, male-coded female heroes that only end up undermining typically female traits. And unfortunately, end up serving the patriarchy by marginalizing non-male identities.
Trinity from the Matrix, although starting off as a brilliant character with immense potential, ends up subservient to the main character. Her contributions end up being marginal even though, she’s more capable than the main character.
I didn’t notice these things till I watched Killing Eve-the ultimate cat and mouse spy thriller, directed by the supremely talented Pheobe Waller-Bridge. It had everything that a typical Bond movie would have- picturesque destinations, skilled combat scenes, dapper-looking people-and yet It was so different.
Characters weren’t merely executing missions. We got a glance at the messiness behind these characters. Stories were led through emotions, something that Jill Soloway calls, Female Gaze (with a ze and not a ys). And it’s not as easy as flipping the existing male gaze to the female one, where you objectify men instead of women or have female characters with male traits.
Men think that women want to be like them, but women do not want to be men. Killing Eve captures this beautifully.
*spoiler alert!*
When Eve commits her first murder, we expect her to end up as a cold, unfeeling being but instead, she’s mortified and disgusted by herself. Even though she is lawful, she’s morally complex. Villanelle (the serial killer) isn’t your typical serial killer either she’s childish, humane, feels lonely, and even flounces around in a pink Molly Goddard tulle dress (iconic). More importantly, both of them really see each other for who they are, their nuances, their flaws, their messiness which only validates my human experience.
It reminded me that my feminity is also a spectrum, and I wish more people represented it that way.
Femininity is complex, it’s vulnerable, emotional and powerful.