Stuff that makes Britta Perry TV’s best feminist icon
- She is portrayed as gentle, good natured, loving, and kind, and yet she is still sexually liberated and has admitted to numerous one night stands and an active sex life, inverting the whole virginity=purity trope completely.
- Unlike the majority of females on TV, she doesn’t play “the straight man”, “the smart/stuffy one”, or “the buzzkill”. In fact, she took all three of those tropes and flipped them upside down at the end of the first season.
- She smokes, drinks, doesn’t believe in god, and is generally “hedonistic” in the classical sense without being portrayed as “trashy”, “bitchy”, etc.
- She is intelligent and independent. Most of her story lines are self contained, and she doesn’t need to ride on the coattails or emotions of male characters to enjoy herself.
- Awkward girls on TV are usually painted as manic pixie dream girls, but Britta is a truly awkward character. She has no sense of fashion. People don’t fall all over her or think she is cute. She is constantly picked on and rarely lands cleaver lines. She’s nobody’s ideal women. She is completely weird and truly socially awkward as opposed to “hollywood” awkward.
- Despite this, she is constantly pushing forward and truly is the heart of the group. She is always forgiving, always loving, and if willing to put other people first all of the time. She is a great role model with awesome (and sort of misguided) values and is an incredibly strong and well crafted character despite her flaws.
- Bringing me to my last point. She actually has flaws. Not cute flaws. Not flaws you can gloss over. Not flaws that were created just so Dan Harmon and point and go “LOOK SHE ISN’T PERFECT”. She can annoy the crap out of you. She can piss you off to no end. She’s the closest thing to a real life girl I’ve seen on TV. Yes, even though she can act like a complete cartoon, because so can A LOT of weird socially awkward stoner girls that just want everyone to like them. I say this from personal experience of course :3
If she wasn’t tailor made to be a role model for women in an age when comedy tends to write female characters with the accuracy of a historical Disney movie, I don’t what is real anymore.