My opinion of stereotype is perhaps not as negative as many people’s, but I don’t see it as a positive either. How I view usage of stereotype is that it is simply lazy writing. It’s short hand so people don’t actually take the time and effort to actually work on developing characters. I however do think it is good to be aware of these stereotypes when creating a story so a writer can avoid falling into these pit falls.
I don’t actually think they are intentionally harmful though. For example, some feminists like to talk like there is a collective patriarchy that actively tries to put all women down. I don’t think this is true. Now it is true that there are some idiots on the internet who can’t seem to argue coherently when someone disagrees with them, but as far as actual creators of stories, I believe they just create the same stereotypical woman character designs because it has proven to be a financial success. Yes it isn’t good, but I highly doubt these writers are conspiring against all women kind. Granted as more varied and less stereotypical character designs are proven to be a success, writers in various media will be more willing to spread out.
For example, now Marvels main five characters, with the exception of Tony Stark, now feature a minority holding the identity. The role of Captain America is currently filled by Sam Wilson, a black man, and Thor is Jane Foster. Marvel has even gone further than this. The character of hulk in the new Hulk series is Amadeus Cho, a Korean American and after Marvel combined the ultimates verse with the 616 verse, there are two people as Spiderman, one of which is Miles Morales, a kid of Black Hispanic decent. Practically their entire team from the recent Young Avengers series falls somewhere in the LGBT spectrum. Marvel also had the Netflix tv show Jessica Jones come out recently. That one show is perhaps one of the most progressive pieces of television I have seen, featuring a very strong and un-stereotypical female protagonist, with a wide cast of minorities as secondary characters. The only major white male in that show is the villain and they even swapped the gender of a major male character, Hogarth, and made him a girl, while still keeping the relationships all the same, so it had three lesbian characters. Jessica Jones herself is in a relationship with Luke Cage, a black man, so it gives interracial couple. Yes, the movies are lacking, but in all other forms of media, they are trying hard to push representation.
Its only time before other writers pick up on the example Marvel is leading and follow in their footsteps. Captain Marvel is supposed to be Carol Danvers in that movie and Black Panther will be getting his own movie as well, so there is hope for them.
As far as if I believe if I have been affected by stereotype, the answer is mostly no. The only time I feel as if I have been pressured by a ‘girl stereotype’ is from my family and mostly that is only from the very conservative side and I feel that stems from more of society expectations as a whole rather than specific stereotypes. As far as outsider expectation, I never have felt pressure to act a certain way based on stereotype. I’ve even spent a lot of time in male dominated areas, via card game tournaments, gaming stores, and of course comic book stores. I’ve never gotten the impression people expect me to act a certain way based on a stereotypical representation.
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