The pendulum of extreme feminism is swinging to the opposite side in young adult fantasy, taking female main characters back in time to where they are only viewed for their bodies, contaminating our young generation of readers.
Since the rise of feminism, YA books in the early 2000s/2010s featured overpowered female main characters who could beat up any person they ever came up against, usually with only a few months of training. These are fun, if unrealistic, reads to enjoy every so often. Recently I picked up the book “Powerless” by Lauren Roberts. It is a YA romance fantasy that blew up in 2023 on social media and was on the New York Times Bestseller list for 34 weeks. The third book of the series is coming out this spring, so I figured I should see what this book was about.
The story is supposed to be about how the main character Paedyn lives in a world where the majority of people have supernatural powers and hunt those who do not. Paedyn is powerless (hence the name of the book). Within the story, all the other characters fear Paedyn because of her capability for violence, but she never wins a single fight that the other person does not let her win. She is simply reduced to her body: the “violence” she can enact and the seductive way she interacts with the male characters. She is emotionless and not brilliant or smart in the least.
Unfortunately, this is a theme I’m seeing with the rise of BookTok and people having “Book-Boyfriends” who are unrealistic men to fantasize over. Authors are catering to that ideal unrealistic man, essentially taking popular literature back in time to where many of the women were weak characters and the focus of the story was found in the men.
This, I believe, is the consequence of the unrealistically strong and capable female characters of the past decades. Readers are sick of having the same female main character hero so now we are getting weak, pick-me main characters who are just there so the man of the book has someone to fall in love with. Women in YA fantasy books are only allowed to be violent or seductive, there is no diversity in character or personality. This view of women and men within fantasy leads to unrealistic expectations and the belittling of women.
Authors need to be willing to go against the grain and portray realistic personality traits in their books even if they are in an unrealistic world. Books, even written for pure entertainment, always portray a message. The message told now is that women live for their romances with men and not as individuals capable of friendship.