Where are all the emo immortal chicks?
Sep. 10th, 2008 06:09 pmHighlander. Torchwood. New Amsterdam. The Man from Earth. What do all of these recent pop cultural offerings have in common? All feature people--specifically men--who are, for various reasons, immortal. Where are all the immortal women in pop culture, eh? It seems they only get the live-forever feature if they're already supernatural, like goddesses or superheroes (Wonder Woman). Why don't normal, everyday women ever get blessed/cursed this way? Notice too that all the above examples feature white, European men. Perhaps this is a dumb thing to complain about, since the overwhelming majority of pop culture in Western society features white European men in leading roles, and the immortality bit is but a subgenre with an already narrow genre. But still. As a female and a fan of that subgenre, it bugs me that the guys are the ones hogging all the fun. After all, what a woman do with immortality? Make sandwiches for an endless series of husbands? *shakes feminist stick*
In my limited amount of research for this post, I can actually think of two immortal characters who were NOT white men, and both were protagonists in Wild Seed, the first (according to in-universe chronology) book in Octavia Butler's Patternist series.
...Okay, well, I can think of another. The Kirsten Dunst character in Interview with a Vampire. However, as a rule, I'm not counting vampires in this post because they have an entirely different set of complications beyond the simple live-forever motif. Vampires have their own category, whereas this one is "ordinary person discovers he is/becomes unable to die."
So, what do you say, ladies? Can you find me more chick immortals out there who aren't gods, vamps or superheroes?
In my limited amount of research for this post, I can actually think of two immortal characters who were NOT white men, and both were protagonists in Wild Seed, the first (according to in-universe chronology) book in Octavia Butler's Patternist series.
...Okay, well, I can think of another. The Kirsten Dunst character in Interview with a Vampire. However, as a rule, I'm not counting vampires in this post because they have an entirely different set of complications beyond the simple live-forever motif. Vampires have their own category, whereas this one is "ordinary person discovers he is/becomes unable to die."
So, what do you say, ladies? Can you find me more chick immortals out there who aren't gods, vamps or superheroes?