My feminist lens started early, though I didn't realize it at the time. I was nine years old, and when my friends and I played movies and TV shows, I didn't want to play a boy anymore. But that wasn't the result of my newly developing feminist lens, that was just a growing understanding of who I was as a person. I was a girl, not a boy, and I wanted to play girls. There wasn't anything wrong with my friends who still played boys, it just wasn't what I wanted. The problem with wanting to play a girl, however, soon became apparent to me. There weren't any girls in the shows and movies we played that I wanted to be. Not. A. One.
When my friends and I had played Robin Hood, I always played Robin Hood. When we played Star Wars, I was Hans Solo. I never wanted to play the princess/maiden/damsel-in-distress. Never. I wanted to play the rescuer, the one who challenged the powers-that-be. I was the one who lead our team through Nazi territory or successfully captained our ship through pirate infested waters. But when I considered the female characters on the TV shows and movies that I watched, none of them played these kind of roles. The heroes, whether primary or secondary, were all males. I didn't want to be rescued. I didn't want to be the girlfriend. I didn't want to be safely at home or on the periphery of the action. So what's a budding feminist to do?
I created my own characters.
