Not Your Movie Villain: Fighting The Masculinization & Vilification Of Women With Visible Scars
Dr. Poison. Nebula. Two-Face. Scar. In countless movies, comics, and TV Shows, villains are scarred –– often visibly. Facial scars are portrayed as the prerogative of soldiers and mafia bosses, damaged souls, and angry, bitter people. This kind of portrayal is so prevalent that it’s become a cliche.
How does this impact real-life men and women with visible scars? There are many answers to this question; unfortunately, they tend to be negative. In our current social climate, scars are a source of psychological pain and struggles with self esteem.
Historically speaking, scarring has been especially problematic for women and female-identifying people. Women with scars have been demonized, viewed as monstrous, and called ugly, damaged, or scary in a way that attacks their femininity and threatens their identities as women.
This labeling is unfair to women with scars and reflects poorly on our society. Stereotypes and typecasting aren’t easy topics to discuss, but the conversation is long overdue.
So, let’s come together today and shed some light on women, scars, and the way we define beauty.
Scars Weren’t Always Seen This Way––A Historical Look At Scarring And Body Modifications Among Women
When we think of scars, we tend to think of the kinds of scarring one receives from an accident or other traumatic event. This wasn’t always the case. Historically speaking, scars were often intentionally-made marks used to demonstrate, enhance, and empower a man or woman’s natural beauty and/or cultural identity. This practice is known as scarification.
In Nigeria, for example, the Tiv people have long practiced ritual scarification and consider scars to be erogenous zones for both men and women. Other indigenous peoples –– many of them living along Africa’s Ivory Coast –– have historically considered scarification a rite of passage for both sexes. They express resilience, beauty, and identity, and tribes such as the Igbo or Bini used scars to tell stories about who they were and what they valued.
Beyond intentional scarification, scars were generally seen as a practical reality among indigenous or pre-industrial peoples. We lived close to nature for most of human history, and there was a physicality to our lifestyles that is often forgotten. Scars were something that occurred naturally when you spent a lot of time hunting, foraging, and living off the land. It would have been extremely common for people to have a variety of scars on their bodies regardless of their sex or gender identity.
It was only later that standards shifted for women, and beauty became entwined with ideas of “flawlessness.” During the industrial era, Western ideals began to emphasize women’s softness, smoothness, and general lack of any physical signs that would indicate a physically difficult life. Scars became uncouth and low-class, indicating that a woman didn’t have a husband or male guardian willing to bear the brunt of life’s burdens on her behalf.
Looking more closely at these standards, one can’t help but realize that scars, on some level, indicated a woman who was “wild” and “out of control.” Scars meant that she had confronted life and had not been living under the “protective” wing of a male –– scars meant independence, grit, tenacity, and resilience. In highly patriarchal, post-industrial societies, these are all qualities that are viewed as male.
Scars became a firmly masculine feature in many places. Like strong arms or ambition, women weren’t supposed to have them.
This disregard for reality and the unique circumstances of each person’s life was, in essence, one more form of the dehumanization of women that became commonplace under patriarchy. Many of those ignorant assumptions and biases persist today, so it’s not surprising that this physical standard is one of them.
Now, at least, we have the chance to confront it.
Media And Symbolism––What Scars Have Been Used To Represent Within Our Social Consciousness
While many stereotypes and assumptions arise due to circumstance, they are often helped and reinforced by the media a given society chooses to consume. Scars have long been portrayed a certain way in our movies, books, comics, and TV shows, so is it any surprise that we’ve learned to view them that same way off-screen and off-page?
The main stereotypes regarding women with scars can be encapsulated in two types of media characters. On the one hand, we have the female villain, often a scientist or a post-apocalyptic bad guy (or, rather, bad gal) who is unfeeling, overly logical, and cruel.
On the other hand, we have what I call the “Rambette,” or female Rambo-type character. She is often a soldier or warrior of some kind, single-minded and aggressive. She’s “one of the boys” and can throw punches or shoot a big gun with as much sure-sighted confidence as her male counterparts, if not better. She’s usually a tough-talker, and you can find her smoking cigarettes or casually hoisting up a grenade launcher in your typical action movie.
Other media portrayals of women with scars tend to be variations of these themes. We essentially have a quintessentially “male” character wrapped up in a female body. Most patriarchal societies view logic, lack of emotion, violence, aggression, pride, assertiveness, and dominance as inherently masculine qualities. Scars are simply an outward symbol of a woman who is not really “female” as far as writers or producers are concerned.
She is often a token character, typecast and locked into a predictable identity that rarely has much substance besides a potentially tragic backstory and a possibly heroic, dramatic, or cathartic (in the case of villains) death.
There are plenty of issues with this typecasting, but the most poignant one is arguably how these portrayals impact real women who happen to have visible scars. Like so many unfair standards, this one boxes them in and causes them to face biases that many of us don’t even realize we have.
Women with visible scarring have a harder time getting past the interview stage when searching for jobs. School-aged girls with scars are more likely to face bullying and social ostracization from their peers than those without scarring. Young or old, women and girls with scars are more likely to develop a poor body image and struggle with self-esteem.
Changing For The Better – How The Body Positivity Movement Is Healing Mental Scars And Embracing Physical Ones
In recent years we’ve begun to confront many of the unfair beauty standards imposed on women. Advocacy in the form of body positivity and acceptance has become more widespread, and many young women and girls are growing up in a climate that encourages them to love their bodies and respect them as they are.
There are two or three main “brands” of body positivity out there, and all of them can be empowering for women and girls with visible scars. One movement emphasizes beauty as a diverse, all-encompassing quality that all of us possess. This vein of positivity has given rise to organizations and projects with names such as “Burns Are Beautiful” or “Fat Bodies Are Beautiful.”
The other type of movement is more concerned with acceptance on both a personal and societal level. Advocates of this sort of body positivity are more concerned with fighting biases, providing mental health resources, and encouraging women with scars or other non-traditional bodies to talk about their experiences and heal from the stigmas they’ve faced.
Both forms of body positivity are important and aren’t mutually exclusive. They intersect in many ways, and one organization may combine the two views into one cohesive philosophy.
The point here is that our perspectives and attitudes toward beauty are changing, and those of us with scars can access plenty of online and offline resources, groups, forums, and support groups that weren’t available before. There are also more opportunities than ever to talk about your scars and what they mean to you –– and to confront those who continue to tout harmful stereotypes or unfair beauty standards.
Unfortunately, movies and television still have a long way to go, no matter how you look at it. Mass media still tends to push dominant narratives and promote specific, often limiting beauty standards through all kinds of content.
The film industry needs to make an effort to cast characters with visible scars in roles that don’t propagate these biases. Women with scars can be CEOs or grocery clerks, cab drivers and artists – they can fill any number of roles, and their scars have nothing to do with it.
At the end of the day, it isn’t the job of people with scars to change the way society views them. It’s up to those without visible scarring – those who fit the standard of “normal” or traditionally beautiful – to fight our own biases and confront stereotypes wherever we find them. It can be as simple as calling out typecasting when you review a movie or offering genuine words of support and encouragement to friends and family members who have visible scarring.
Beauty has never had one definition, and it never will. Our worth, our value as human beings, isn’t dependent on whether or not we fit one a shifting definition of femininity or beauty. The more we embrace and foster an inclusive attitude in ourselves, the better off all of us will be.
THIS ARTICLE WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY OUR PARTNERS AT DAHIYA FACIAL PLASTIC SURGERY & LASER CENTER. THEY’RE HERE TO START CONVERSATIONS AND CHANGE PERSPECTIVES ABOUT WOMEN, BEAUTY, AND THE SOCIETY WE LIVE IN. THANK YOU TO DR. DAHIYA AND HIS TEAM!
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