Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, pretty much everything you said there. I have issues with the way the writers can't seem to write a girl as being a. feminine and b. not a mother in some capacity at the same time. All girls must be Action Girls that can kill you with the blink of an eye, or else they are moms. Or Yue, who nobly sacrifices herself after being around for all of two episodes. Katara is the absolute worst example of that trend.
For the first season, she swung wildly between being annoying Team Mom and annoying tomboy who just wants to fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight omg healing is useless (but she'll take a class anyway just so it can come in handy in later episodes). I felt like she had some really stupid, annoying, selfish moments (like the thing with stealing the waterbending scroll from the pirates and the crap in The Great Divide) and they just were never reconciled with how we were *supposed* to view the character. Then the thing at the Northern Water Tribe just seemed so damn cliche. OMG Katara is fighting sexism by being an Action Girl who just wants to fiiiiiiiiight, healing is girly and anything less than kicking ass is stupid and undignified and beneath a STRONG GIRL like Katara!
The thing that got me about the temper tantrum she pitched in the Northern Water Tribe was that, yes, she *was* fighting sexism. It's just that the story was framed in such a very typical way (which... let's be honest, how many women in America today have literally been outright told "You can't do that because you're a girl"? I HAVE, but I grew up in the redneck South, so it's not THAT common). She wasn't going against the grain and being a rebel, she was conforming to our very Western expectations of what a girl should act like. I got the deep impression when watching those episodes that I was supposed to be going "You go girl, girl power!" at her, when all I felt was "Wow, way to belittle women who do 'girly' things that aren't manly and strong enough."
Then in the second season, she firmly gets squished into the role of annoying Team Mom because they added Toph, the resident tomboy. Any spunk she once had has been transferred to Toph and now Katara is pretty much just there to nag and remind everyone to be nice to each other. It felt like since they added more girl characters, they could stop shoehorning all the traits they thought little girls liked into one girl character and could specialize more, so that they're neatly split into a dichotomy of girly girl (which in this case means being motherly, because that is the ONLY ACCEPTABLE VERSION of being girly) and awesome tomboy.
So yeah, a lot of my problems with the series boiled down to two adult men not knowing how to write a believable woman that wasn't an Action Girl or a Mom. The closest they got was Ty Lee, but they just explained her behavior away in The Beach as her needing validation from as many boys as possible, teehee~ I still love the shit out of Mai and Ty Lee, though.
Completely agreed about Zuko, Zuko's fight with Azula, and Maiko, though. That is my ship, man.
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For the first season, she swung wildly between being annoying Team Mom and annoying tomboy who just wants to fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight omg healing is useless (but she'll take a class anyway just so it can come in handy in later episodes). I felt like she had some really stupid, annoying, selfish moments (like the thing with stealing the waterbending scroll from the pirates and the crap in The Great Divide) and they just were never reconciled with how we were *supposed* to view the character. Then the thing at the Northern Water Tribe just seemed so damn cliche. OMG Katara is fighting sexism by being an Action Girl who just wants to fiiiiiiiiight, healing is girly and anything less than kicking ass is stupid and undignified and beneath a STRONG GIRL like Katara!
The thing that got me about the temper tantrum she pitched in the Northern Water Tribe was that, yes, she *was* fighting sexism. It's just that the story was framed in such a very typical way (which... let's be honest, how many women in America today have literally been outright told "You can't do that because you're a girl"? I HAVE, but I grew up in the redneck South, so it's not THAT common). She wasn't going against the grain and being a rebel, she was conforming to our very Western expectations of what a girl should act like. I got the deep impression when watching those episodes that I was supposed to be going "You go girl, girl power!" at her, when all I felt was "Wow, way to belittle women who do 'girly' things that aren't manly and strong enough."
Then in the second season, she firmly gets squished into the role of annoying Team Mom because they added Toph, the resident tomboy. Any spunk she once had has been transferred to Toph and now Katara is pretty much just there to nag and remind everyone to be nice to each other. It felt like since they added more girl characters, they could stop shoehorning all the traits they thought little girls liked into one girl character and could specialize more, so that they're neatly split into a dichotomy of girly girl (which in this case means being motherly, because that is the ONLY ACCEPTABLE VERSION of being girly) and awesome tomboy.
So yeah, a lot of my problems with the series boiled down to two adult men not knowing how to write a believable woman that wasn't an Action Girl or a Mom. The closest they got was Ty Lee, but they just explained her behavior away in The Beach as her needing validation from as many boys as possible, teehee~ I still love the shit out of Mai and Ty Lee, though.
Completely agreed about Zuko, Zuko's fight with Azula, and Maiko, though. That is my ship, man.