More Than Just Perfect Hair

Damsels in distress aren’t always my favorite characters. A lot of the time, they kind of annoy me. It’s just so hard to believe that anyone really needs someone else to cover their mouth so they don’t scream and alert the knife-wielding murderer of their location. Or, my least favorite attribute, the old ‘this door looks creepy and scary, why don’t I open it and see what’s inside, letting no one else know where I’ve gone.’ Everyone makes a dumb choice now and again, but damsels in distress tend not to make any smart choices.

Unfortunately, sometimes they are necessary. After all, you can’t create a hero without giving them someone to save. And if that hero just so happens to be in love with the girl in trouble, well, then there is all the more emotional reward when they escape danger unharmed. So I get the damsel’s role, I respect her purpose to the plot. I just don’t always respect her.

That’s why I really enjoy stories that have a damsel I can root for. Someone whose talent is more than just perfect hair no matter what the weather or situation. I want a damsel who is brave and smart but just has bad luck. Or, even better, a damsel who knowingly puts herself in danger in order to do something heroic herself.

 

The Amazing Spider-Man’s Gwen Stacey, played by the consistently brilliant Emma Stone, falls into this category. Spidey’s leading lady in this year’s revamping of Spider-Man is intelligent, confident and just quirky and vulnerable enough for you to fall in love with her as much as Peter Parker does. More importantly, she has none of the characteristics of your typical damsel. For one thing, she’s not helpless, nor is she clueless to the hero’s secret and yet-oh-so-obvious identity. And when the time comes to face the bad guy, she has as much courage as the hero. In fact, Gwen is more like a partner to the web-slinger, helping him to stop the enemy, not hindering him.

It would have been easy to slap the pretty actress on a gossamer web and let her scream for help while the hero swung around, took down his nemesis and then swung back over for a kiss. But the movie, rather smartly, sucked fans in by giving us more than one heroic character to root for. At the same time they did something rarely done, they gave us a damsel in distress that we could respect.

Helping Hand

There are many great things about The Help, both the book and the movie: the topics explored, the emotions provoked, and the rich plot that seamlessly takes you to 1960’s Jackson, Mississippi. With all that oomph behind it, Kathryn Stockett could have just let the plot take its course, horrifying the reader with the travesties of America’s past; but she went beyond that , showing not only the human element but the female one as well.

While there are many things to take away from The Help’s story, for me what really stood out was the relationships between women, and how we can just as easily raise one another up as push one another other down. It seems that “The Mean Girl” is a phenomenon that women will never escape from. In The Help no one gets more mean than Hilly Holbrook, played to grotesque perfection by the otherwise seemingly lovely Bryce Dallas Howard. Hilly’s evil isn’t just for the maids of Jackson, it’s for anyone that doesn’t put her on her self-made pedestal. It’s the fear of her wrath and not admiration that  allows Hilly to be the Queen Bee of Jackson at the story’s beginning.

Even the gawky smart girl Skeeter, played by the always charming Emma Stone,  falls under her rule. Given Skeeter’s unruly hair, gangly stature and overall awkwardness, it’s surprising that Hilly would even consider a friendship with Skeeter. But Hilly has the wannabes of the town flocking around her without so much as Hilly having to crock her finger, and Skeeter is a challenge. She is a prize for Hilly, because Skeeter is a thinker, not a natural follower. In other words, if Hilly can keep Skeeter in her fold and even make Skeeter into something more like Hilly herself, then Hilly’s pedestal will rise that much higher over everyone else, Skeeter included.

In a society ruled by men, demeaning the women around her is the only way that Hilly can obtain any kind of power. But that kind of power, as Hilly learns by the end of the story, can be fleeting.

The only way to take down one power-hungry mean girl is to form an even more powerful collective of smart girls. Stockett’s smart girls are some of the most captivating characters in literature and in film, portrayed perfectly by the Oscar-nominated powerhouses Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain. With Skeeter providing the means, Aibileen, Minny and Celia, along with the other maids of Jackson, slowly unravel Hilly’s hold over the town. And it can be said, slowly unravel Hilly’s hold over herself.

The power of a mean girl is intense but it can not withstand the strength generated by a group of good women. The Help shows that while one woman can be powerful, nothing can beat the force of a sisterhood. As women, we just need a helping hand from one another to rise above all of the mean girls of this world.