Gender, Feminism, and Heroism in Joss Whedon and John ...

abnormally thin, have eyelash lines that are much thicker than the hero’s, or have
excessively long and delicate hands (Howard III & Prividera, 2008; Li-Collmer &
LaPointe, 2003).
In a society built by men and designed to sustain men’s power within it, that
extreme masculine physicality and behavior would be associated with heroes who save
their entire worlds from impending doom could only be described as logical. Of course a
patriarchal society will assign masculine traits to the heroes it constructs; those are the
traits most valued within patriarchal societies. In a cyclical fashion, the physicality and
behaviors the heroes represent will be reinforced as valuable to the culture within which
they reign simply because of the “hero” label. In this way, hero narratives function as
sites where existing societal power structures are reinforced and where modern
incarnations of those structures are constructed.
Just as heightened masculinity can be utilized to integrate into a hero role a
character that is in some way othered, emphasis on a female hero’s femininity can serve
to undermine her heroic nature, making her seem less threatening to the patriarchal order
within which she works (Brown, 2004; Durham, 2003; Hains, 2007; Howard III &
Prividera, 2008; Inness, 1999; Stablie, 2009). As explained in the introduction,
femininity has been incorporated into females in hero narratives in two heavily recurring
ways. Villains frequently capture female heroes, not unlike supporting female characters
in male heroes’ stories. These captive female heroes may find ways to escape on their
own, or, more commonly, male heroes may come to their rescue (Lavin, 1998; Tasker,
1993). These heroines leap to fight when trouble abounds, just like their male
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