Best. Starship Captain. Ever.

[note: a much shorter version of this essay is in this issue of Bitch Magazine]
She’s tough. She’s sexy. She even uses power tools. She’s Futurama’s Turanga Leela (aka “Leela”), and despite being a one-eyed cartoon mutant, she’s one of the most positive representations of women anywhere on television.
Unlike Wonder Woman, the feminist icon of the ‘70s, Leela has no super powers. As a mutant, she grew up in an orphanarium, bullied and rejected because of having only one eye. As an adult, she’s frustrated and dissatisfied with her love life: her standards are just “too high.” But far from making her seem less sympathetic, her weaknesses and mistakes make her character all the more, well, three-dimensional.
Still, Leela is a force to be reckoned with. As captain of the Planet Express Ship, she’s by far the most competent character on the show – and she knows it. Usually, Leela ends up saving Fry’s (ostensibly the main character’s) ass, instead of the other way around. She’s a master of Arcturan Kung Fu, despite having trained under the sexist Master Phnog (to quote Phnog: “You don’t have the will of the warrior. You have the will of the housewife, or at best, the schoolmarm”). When all of Earth’s men were drafted into Capt. Zapp Brannigan’s army, she dressed in drag and physically surpassed all the other, male, recruits.
But don’t get the wrong idea – Leela isn’t just a heartless fighting machine. As an animal rights activist, she’s protested her own employer’s irresponsible tanker route past an endangered penguin preserve on Pluto and flown dangerous missions to save innocent animals.
Leela isn’t the only female character on Futurama. Amy Wong, an uber-wealthy Asian-Martian, stands in for traditional notions of femininity. And as such, Amy is nearly always criticizing Leela: “you don’t really have the thighs for a miniskirt,” or “ooooh, cute boots; do those come in girls’ sizes?” Little wonder that in every what-if episode, Leela kills Amy.
But what’s really important about Leela is that in a media culture where “feminist” equals “unattractive” and confidence, at least in a woman, equals bitchiness, Leela is portrayed as strong, self-confident and desirable: the show’s main character, Fry, is desperately in love with her, and Zapp Brannigan (whom Leela once pity-fucked, to her everlasting regret) is obsessed with her.
It’s no wonder the feminist press hasn’t taken notice of Leela. The show’s target audience is 18- to 34-year-old men, and nerdy men at that – scripts regularly incorporate quantum mechanics, string theory and old Star Trek episodes. Though honestly, Groening’s female characters in “The Simpsons” are also strong, capable and intellegent, so he’s got some feminist cred already. But by portraying such an overtly feminist character in a show aimed at men, Simpsons creator Matt Groening has boldly gone where noone has gone before. Futurama airs on Comedy Central at 9:00 p.m. CST. Go check it out, seriously.

Women Bloggers

There has been some discussion about women bloggers on various e-mail lists I’m on, and as a blogger who has a vagina, I thought I’d – what else – post about it.
There is some disagreement about just how many women bloggers there are. Some sources say there aren’t enough of us; some say we’re actually the majority of bloggers. My own experience – a totally unscientific sample, I know – leads me to believe we are the majority. Women and girls have kept diaries and journals for generations. Blogs are just the next evolutionary phase of that phenomenon.
So does that mean that the conventional wisdom of “women are less likely to express their opinion as men are” is flat-out wrong? That’s a good question. I think part of finding the answer is to qualify the circumstances under which women express their opinion or not. In “person-on-the-street” interviews, women may be less likely to express themselves (as seems to be the case) because they might not feel that they are safe in doing so. In the relative anonymoty of a blog, they might feel safer and be more likely to express themselves, though this is just a hypothesis.
As a woman who has been opinionated and outspoken all her life, I often don’t understand why women would pull their punches or acquiese in silence to things they oppose. Don’t get me wrong – I often faced hostility, degradation, or dismissal because of my outspoken ways. It is absolutely true that in 21st century America, women are not supposed to be outspoken (unless they are speaking out against other women or feminism, then it’s OK).
I’d like to do a survey of men and women: do you ever feel afraid to express your opinion? How often? Why? I think the answers would be interesting.