Femininity =/= Weakness

Kingdom Hearts is one of my favorite video game franchises, possibly my favorite. In recent years, my time to game is very limited (Seriously, I haven’t even finished the Final Fantasy 7 remake yet, and although I bought the Guardians of the Galaxy game for myself, my husband has played it far more than I have). However, in the past few days, I did manage to carve out some time to play a little Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, a fun little rhythm game that lets you rhythmically beat down monsters in time with various Kingdom Hearts theme music. This caused me to reflect on the franchise in general and once again lament the choice to make Kairi a Keyblade warrior in Kingdom Hearts 3 — a pathetic attempt to make her “stronger.”

For those who don’t know, the Kingdom Hearts franchise is a collaboration between Disney and Square Enix and is meant to serve as a kind of Disney/Final Fantasy crossover, incorporating settings and characters from Disney, Final Fantasy, and plenty of original characters as well. The main character, a teenage boy named Sora who wields a magical key-shaped sword known as a Keyblade teams up with Donald Duck and Goofy and travels to different worlds and defends them from monsters known as the Heartless as well as Disney villains. Kairi is Sora’s childhood friend/love interest. She’s also a princess who frequently needs to be saved and protected by Sora and/or Riku, Sora’s male best friend, also a Keyblade wielder.

In Kingdom Hearts 3, however, Kairi becomes a Keyblade wielder too. Technically, she first gets a Keyblade towards the end of Kingdom Hearts 2 but really only “joins the team” in 3. The Kingdom Hearts games are Japanese in origin and directed by Tetsuya Nomura, and I wonder whether this development was his idea or Disney’s; with Disney’s growing obsession with OP Girl Bosses, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was their idea only. Regardless, giving Kairi a Keyblade didn’t fix the flaws with her character — because “weakness” wasn’t one of them.

In my opinion, Kairi was, not unlikable, but a bit dull due to lack of personality or real identity. A good character is 3-dimensional; I’d say Kairi is about a 2.5. However, she is not and was never weak. Yes, she’s a waif-ish young girl with little physical strength and no special abilities, but she is strong in the ways that, in my opinion, matter far more. In the first Kingdom Hearts game, when Sora is briefly turned into a Shadow heartless, Kairi shields him with her body from the other Shadows, and her love helps him turn back into himself. In Kingdom Hearts 2, since Sora and Riku have been gone a long time, Kairi sets off from their island home completely on her own to look for them. She ends up being kidnapped by Axel, but she mouths off to him rather than crumpling in tears. In short, Kairi is strong in a more traditionally feminine way.

Modern feminism doesn’t value feminine strength at all. If there is any Hollywood or video game heroine who is anything less than the aforementioned OP Girl Boss, powerful in all respects and better than the men in every way, there will be at least some feminist Internet scribblers or TikTok-ers who complain that this heroine’s portrayal is sexist. Funny how feminists will also complain about “unrealistic body standards” in Hollywood and the modeling industry and yet don’t complain about 12-year-old Wendy wielding a full-size sword and expertly dueling adult male pirates in the recent Peter Pan remake. Aren’t there enough sky-high expectations of women in our society without also adding things that are physically impossible?

Physical power, aggression, and a drive to fight and defend are forms of masculine strength. I’m not saying a woman can’t be a fighter (though even a physically strong woman would generally be forced to rely on other means than pure physical power) or that men can’t be protectors or provide strong emotional support. I’m just saying the two sexes are generally prone to different kinds of strength and that both are important.

There’s also the fact that the “scribblers” and “Tik-Tok-ers” I mentioned before generally don’t represent most women; they’re simply a vocal minority. Women in general don’t want to see “strong, female characters,” they want to see interesting, relatable ones. It’s much harder for the average woman to relate to a character who is flawless and/or whose strength is mostly of the masculine variety. A female character can need physical protection from a man and still be strong. A female action hero can have to compensate with weapons, superpowers, or ingenuity in order to be equal to male cohorts or opponents and still be strong. A female character also doesn’t need to be strong at all; she may be a weak coward and needs to overcome that by the end. Or not. The human experience, both male and female, is diverse and art should reflect that. It deeply disturbed me when Debra Soh wrote in her book, The End of Gender, that many of the girls who identified as boys or non-binary that she interviewed stated that they “didn’t want to be girls because women are weak.” We’re not weak, ladies! We’re just not men.