The Woman in the Story

by Helen Jacey

  Sometimes a heroine just can’t relate to men because her mother has instilled that the male sex is dangerous and threatening. The mother in Peruvian film The Milk of Sorrow teaches her daughter that men are brutally dangerous, will rape her, and must be avoided. Some heroines believe it’s a women’s versus men world, and that women should stick together for protection. German film A Question of Silence is another great example.

  Father Distance

  A father is probably your heroine’s first hero. What do I mean by hero? Well, in the case of a girl child her father is normally the first person who can help her loosen the bond and dependency on her mother. This might be stating the obvious but in your heroine’s life, her attitude toward men will be shaped by that first relationship. If your heroine has a father who provided all the nurturing warmth, intimacy, and care that a mother is expected to, then she probably is pretty balanced about men and women. She’s got a solid foundation of self-esteem that has been validated by the love she had from both parents. But many women’s experiences with fathers, however loving, are that they aren’t so available, are busy, work, or simply didn’t live in the family. Or women have absolutely no notion who their fathers are. Worse-case scenario, fathers are abusive, sexually, physically, or emotionally. Equally damaging is when a girl has Maternal Lessons that tell her men are bad in some way.

  All these can amount to girls sometimes feeling a kind of Father Distance. This can create a sense of hunger, dissatisfaction, or insecurity in your young heroine about men. She will show these feelings in different ways because every woman’s childhood is different, but they can manifest in a need to seek approval from men. The woman will have anger with men, low self-esteem, feelings of inner emptiness, fear of abandonment, and be prone to losing a sense of identity by looking after other people. A heroine might internalize some messages, like these:

  You will accept that you will be judged and defined for your looks.

  You will not grow old, and if you do, you will try to hide it for as long as possible.

  You will be the main caretaker of children.

  You will learn to put your own needs second.

  You will dread being called slut and modify your sexual behavior accordingly.

  You will feel inhibited about asking for what you really want in bed.

  The family come before your career.

  If you want your marriage to work, you will put your career second.

  Obviously, no man speaks like this, and many women certainly feel they live life on their own terms and with supportive men. But watching some films from world cinema, it is very clear that these messages still permeate women’s lives. These are the worst aspects of ways of being that keep women back. Even in the postfeminist West, sexist and subliminal messages can persist. This is what the Father Distance phase is all about, those moments or periods of time in the story when your heroine has issues with men because of masculine expectations. Let’s see how the Father Distance phase plays itself out in some movies.

  What does Bridget Jones verbally beat herself up for? Being fat and unsophisticated. She’s not so worried about the one thing she probably should worry about — her neurotic low self-esteem and desperation to marry. Mark Darcy is the ultimate romantic hero. Like a tolerant father he indulges, overlooks, and generally gets a kick out of his blonde bubble of naïveté. Even in the sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, patient Mark withstands all Bridget’s infantile testing. When you look at Bridget’s bumbling father and limited mother, you understand why she idolizes Mark for his extremely manly competence.

  Some films focus on women getting over the scars of Father Distance. Volver shows Raimunda coming to terms with the fact that Father Distance in the culture has left her working full time, cooking and cleaning for a male slob who tries to rape her daughter. Later Raimunda’s own childhood abuse by her father is revealed. In Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Vicky’s upscale fiancé promises a stability that is all about conventional roles. Ultimately, the promise of wealthy Manhattan marriage wins out over a high-octane fling with no guarantees. And free spirit Cristina? She realizes that whatever passion she finds with a man or woman (or both), it soon deflates back into the mundane.

  Father Distance is the principle behind the creation of every sensitive romantic hero, and every two-timing cheat. As a phase in your heroine’s story, Father Distance reflects a heroine projecting her deepest feelings about men onto another character, usually male. Sometimes, the Father Distance phase isn’t very romantic after all. That’s because it isn’t about real love at all, it’s about your heroine’s unresolved projections about men.

  On the positive side, many heroines don’t have any negative idea of Father Distance because they have loving and close relationships with their fathers, even if they don’t live with them. Andrea in The Devil Wears Prada has an emotionally supportive father and an absent mother. Her issues with mother figures are highlighted when she gains a ruthless female boss. For these heroines, Father Distance will only affect them in their external lives, for instance, if there is a glass ceiling at work.

  Many Fighting Femininity films weave in the Father Distance phase throughout the whole narrative. The Circle follows a group of women coping with the oppressive sexist society in Iran. Remember Josie Aimes taking out a class action suit about sexual harassment in the mining industry?

  Self-limiting attitudes prevent your heroine from real emotional growth. Think about the characters in your story that represent her internal Conflicts and projections. Who is going to help her solve her attitudes? Do you want her ideas about men to change over the course of the narrative or do you want the male-dominated world to change for your heroine?

  Adornment

  The huge emphasis on women’s looks affects all women, and it will also affect your heroine one way or another. Very often, her attitude to her self-image is given to your heroine in the form of a Maternal Lesson and Father Distance. How much you acknowledge this in your story is up to you, but it is a reality in all women’s lives. Far more than men ever will be, a woman is judged by her looks first and her brains second. We are all so conditioned to do this, it’s almost instinctive. Fiona in Shrek is a positive role model to us all for accepting how we look!

  You might notice that the first time you describe your heroine you have to stop yourself from defining her level of attractiveness. I do it all the time, and I have to question myself. Am I trying to appeal to a certain actress? Am I making my heroine more acceptable to others? It’s a familiar scenario, and one I’ve trained myself out of. Now I write her dominant attitude first. If I do describe looks, I try to avoid words such as attractive or beautiful because it isn’t how I’d describe a male character, at least not in the first instance.

  Our culture is hooked on female beauty. It’s very hard not to feel the pressure to look good. Not making an effort is seen as not doing your best. But why? What are we so scared of? As writers, can we be more imaginative with how concepts such as beauty and looking good affect our heroine? Maybe these questions clash with your own attitudes about image. Maybe you just think looking as good as possible is the right thing to do.

  The need to adorn is driven into women at younger and younger ages. Female attractiveness is a currency that young women quickly realize they are rich in, if not they better develop some other assets. The premium on women’s beauty is a hangover from less equal times, but it still can govern our daily lives and sense of identity. It’s why girls as young as six are getting anorexia and women as young as thirty are having brow lifts. It’s easy to forget that many girls — even most — have to get over difficult rites of passage during which they learn they are objects for general visual consumption. The girl has three choices: to collude with expectations of femininity, reject them, or somehow fudge the deal for some self-respect. Some teenage girls find the transition to being on the receiving end of objectification so painful, they hate their bodies and want to conceal them. The end result is a gr
eat deal of ambivalence and anxiety about their image that women learn to accept. The bottom line that our culture ignores is that it is undignified to be assessed and valued for your market rate in the looks department. We’ve forgotten feeling humiliated is a logical response to being objectified. We mask it by pretending it’s normal to define oneself by other people’s values. A woman can be the harshest judge of another woman’s looks, as much as any man. To what extent you let your looks rule your life is a personal decision, but for women, it’s still a bigger deal.

  I’m aware that by writing a screenwriting book for an industry in which actresses are routinely beautiful, and for the most part need to stay young looking in order to keep working, I’m touching on a paradoxical situation. Thankfully more and more stories are being written for women characters in which their conventional beauty isn’t top priority. What about Nanny McPhee? Now it would be truly amazing if a man fell in love with her!

  How can Adornment function as a phase in the story?

  Self-Consciousness

  The first and most obvious way is by having your heroine agonize over her self-image. This is the classic externalization of the desire to please along with a whole bunch of anxieties about projecting the wrong image. Your female audience will easily relate to this. It is also refreshing to have heroines who are remarkable by their confidence and love of their physical body, without being conventionally beautiful.

  Turning It Around

  You can also work out the things your heroine might find beautiful in a man. Objectification of men by heroines is still in its early days on screen, particularly in movies. Jane Campion and Nancy Meyers both are skilled in capturing individual male beauty from the point of view their heroines. In The Holiday, manipulative Jasper does have a boyish charm that renders Iris defenseless. As for Jude Law’s widower? He’s meltingly open and vulnerable, and that’s his facial features alone.

  Beauty Is in the Eye of the Culture

  Every culture has different attitudes about beauty. Think about what your story says about female beauty from a cultural point of view. Maybe you think it’s one of the most desirable assets for all women, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

  Ugly Ducklings

  In The Devil Wears Prada, heroine Andrea dips her toe in the sea of superficiality and doesn’t permanently transform. She reverts to her unfashionable image by the end of the film and reclaims that part of herself. But she still looks good; this is Ann Hathaway after all. It’s great when actresses can go all the way and genuinely transform, and you can write this into your script. Pull no punches about the reality of your heroine’s looks. Virginia Woolf had a big nose and messy hair. Frida Kahlo had a moustache and monobrow. Both women had their own forms of beauty that grew from their beautiful minds and refusal to accept conventional standards.

  Bigger Women

  Thankfully there’s been a rise in actresses who are naturally larger on our screens. Charlize Theron’s transformation in Monster, in which she piled on the pounds, made her female character all the more plausible.

  Precious is a groundbreaking film that I refer to a great deal. On the beauty front it leaves me in two minds. I understand that obesity in Precious reflects her self-hate and her mother’s force feeding, and maybe she is just one of these naturally larger women who are alienated because of their weight. I like the fact that as her self-esteem grows her outer self manifests her inner self. She looks happier and is out of the sweat pants and hoodies despite her total poverty. However, you can’t help but feel there’s a shock tactic going on, that her weight and size are on one level gratuitous for the audience, that there could be a correlation between her victim-status and her obesity. The first time I watched Precious I was with an audience of largely teenage girls (it was an educational screening). When Precious’ breast came out to feed the baby, the audience of girls screamed in repulsed horror. I thought it was sad that young girls are so image obsessed they couldn’t see it as a tender moment.

  Older Women

  If your heroine is older, the Adornment phase might reflect her feelings of redundancy in the looks department, or you might choose her to be a champion of self-love. If the latter, you can break a great deal of acceptable clichés! Nobody is happy about aging, men or women, but not everybody wants to drink at the Fountain of Eternal Youth either.

  Tips for Writing Identity Phases

  Introducing Your Heroine

  The first time she enters her story, make a point of mentioning her dominant attitude first, and then focus on her unique features. An actress will thank you for distinguishing features, not universally desired ones.

  Your Heroine’s Self-Esteem as a Woman

  Who were your heroine’s first female role models? What did they feel about her? How does she feel about being a woman? Did she internalize these values? Write a scene in which your heroine reveals how she feels about herself as a woman by action or attitudes.

  Remember the Maternal Lessons and Father Distance are metaphoric principles. You don’t have to give your character an actual mother in her story. Does your character feel comfortable around women, or does she prefer the company of men? Write a scene in which she is only with other women and focus on her conscious and unconscious attitudes toward these women. Remember the Maternal Lessons can be helpful and unhelpful to your heroine. Like Maternal Lessons, your heroine’s father doesn’t actually have to feature in your story.

  What are her values about women’s status in society? If your heroine was asked how she would describe sexism in her culture, what would she say? Is she a feminist, seeing misogyny and sexual double standards everywhere she looks? Is she ultrafeminine? Or does she consider herself as being just normal? How does her life mirror her mother’s, and how has she made changes? Write a scene in which she confronts her mother’s attitudes.

  An Identity Phase in Close-Up

  The Secret Life of Bees

  Lily creeps away from her abusive father’s house at night and runs to a private place in the garden. There, she secretly digs up some possessions of her dead mother. Lily has a ritual of putting on a pair of her mother’s gloves, taking out a photograph of her mother, and lying down on the ground. She then places the photograph on her bare stomach and holds it, as a pregnant woman holds her own baby inside her. Lily talks to her mother the whole time, almost conversationally, reminiscing about the way her mother used to care for her.

  In this scene, Lily’s Maternal Lessons that she tells herself are that her mother loved her, cared for her, and never wanted to be apart from her. A woman is a safe haven, someone who would never abandon or hurt her. Lily carries this lesson closely to her heart and on her journey. It makes the unbearable bearable, even the fact that Lily accidentally shot her mother dead when she was a baby. It shows Lily’s basic orientation toward women as one of trust and affinity. She literally craves the warmth of women described in her Maternal Lessons.

  THE RELATING PHASES

  The Relating phases relate to your heroine’s actions, attitudes, needs, and emotions about her relationships. They show how other people influence her sense of identity and the reasons behind her relationship choices. The Relating Phases are Self-Relegation, Desire for Union, Loving Too Much, and Retreat:

  The Self-Relegation phase reflects your heroine putting other people’s needs second to her own.

  The Desire for Union phase reflects your heroine’s need for intimacy and emotional support, whether platonic, romantic, or sexual.

  Loving Too Much is the phase in your story in which your heroine’s love of another has an overwhelming impact on her identity and decisions.

  Retreat is the phase in your story in which your heroine needs to hunker down into herself and only relate to herself

  Self-Relegation

  A major part of feminine identity is the requirement for a woman to put her needs second to those she loves, as well as people she doesn’t know so well. Men can do this too in relationships, but it isn’t such
a cultural expectation. That’s why we are fascinated and appalled by tough women who defy this and tread on everyone’s feelings, like Margaret in The Proposal. Being horrible isn’t desirable but neither is putting everyone else first — for men or women. With loved ones, the need to Self-Relegate usually is because women are conditioned to be nurturers, a lesson that can be passed on from mother to daughter. Young women in many cultures might feel strong and empowered. Feminism made a great deal of progress for girls who aren’t even aware of how things could be different. Sometimes it’s not until women become mothers and age that they begin to question the double standard.

  Try to work out how your heroine experiences this expectation of women to Self-Relegate. In an ideal world, a girl needs parents who are attune to this expectation of women and will help her build up a strong sense of identity. But in many parts of the world, the wider culture can remind women of their second-class status as citizens.

  This need to Self-Relegate one’s own needs to be better able to look after other people can pose major internal Conflicts for many women, who can feel split between wanting to do things for themselves (while fearing to be seen as selfish) and wanting to be reliable.

  Self-Relegation can be quite paralyzing for a girl or woman. It reflects loss of self-esteem for a whole range of reasons. Women who have been married for many years can sometimes develop a huge dependency on their husband for certain tasks, like driving or handling money. This can be disempowering for a woman, and she might not even recognize it until the marriage ends or her husband dies. Then the world can seem like a frightening place for your heroine. A young girl might self-relegate because she is being emotionally or physically abused.

  Being at the center of family life because she is the nurturer can lead a woman to overcontrol. When the children don’t need her any more it can be a major loss to a woman’s identity. The empty-nest syndrome is a painful process in which your heroine might literally feel like part of her has died. This is because the conditioning to look after others is so strong that when your heroine is finally confronted with herself, she finds that there isn’t much there.