You are very right that my list doesn’t serve as a strong group of role models. But, as I set up at the top of my post, I was considering roles that are well written and that women would enjoy playing. I suppose my post title is misleading, but “ScreenwriterGuy’s Top Ten Female Characters Who Are Powerful Yet Still Feminine, in a Way That Is Well Written and That Actresses Would Kill to Play” was too many words.

For example, you held up Edith Bunker as an example of a character who belongs nowhere on the list of strong female characters, as she isn’t the brightest. But I very much considered her for this list, as her character is well developed and has a uniqueness. I know that she will struggle to be the peacemaker, she’ll kowtow and enable for Archie, but that when he goes way past the line she’ll stand up to him. Ultimately I decided that too much of who Edith is comes from playing against Archie and didn’t include her, but she IS the kind of person I was thinking about for my list. A strong woman she is not; a strong character she is.

Your suggestions are definitely much more in line with women I would respect and want to invite over for a dinner party. (Although no way is Chiana invited. She’s ANNOYING!)

Meanwhile, you are SO, SO RIGHT about Sally Rogers. I didn’t think of her, but she definitely qualifies. You are the winner of this week’s Proved-ScreenwriterGuy-Wrong Award. (Feel privileged. It’s not given out often.)

Thanks again for the feedback, and consider your blog subscribed to.

I’m afraid that very few of your characters match the ones I think of as strong, without giving up their femininity.

Sally Rogers (from The Dick Van Dyke Show). Perhaps this show was a little before your time. She’s the one I wanted to emulate when I was growing up. She was smart and funny, and could more than hold her own against the gang of guys she worked with. She was also one of the few independent, working, single women on television at the time. Many people tout Mary Richards from The Mary Tyler Moore Show as an admirable example, but I always thought she was a touch too whiney, and could be quite a push-over.

Murphy Brown.
She ruled the universe she inhabited, and was fearless. (It should be noted that Murphy Brown actually did play a backup singer to Aretha Franklin in an episode. Too bad she couldn’t sing.)

Shirley Schmidt (Boston Legal).
Another strong woman character, and coincidentally played by the same actress who played Murphy Brown, Candice Bergen. Shirley also holds her own against some pretty powerful characters. Indeed, Boston Legal was suffering a serious chromosonal and sanity imbalance until she showed up and gave some gravitas to the lunacy at the law firm.

Superintendant Jane Tennison (Prime Suspect).
Is there anyone who deals with the good ol’ boy network better than Jane Tennison? Or with nasty, gritty big city crimes? She makes Brenda Leigh Johnston seem like a mere dabbler in a cozy police procedural.

The entire female cast of characters on Farscape.
Scifi usually is laughably pathetic when it comes to women characters. I don’t know if it’s because most scifi writers (and producers) are socially inept, or if it’s simply the product of the masculine power structure in the studio system, or both. Whatever it is, it induces in me much eye-rolling and gnashing of teeth. It’s also one of the reasons why many women don’t care much for scifi. (There are others, but that’s for a later discussion.) However, Farscape’s women are radically different. They’re all strong and tough, and none of them have surrendered their feminity in order to be tough. Particularly fascinating is the masculine/feminine role reversal between the two leads. How they do this without either of them becoming wimpy or some sort of androgynous caricature is a mystery. (Probably, it has something to do with the sizzling chemistry between them. Really, it just burns up the screen.) These women are the only scifi women I’ve ever watched who I admired. I don’t know what this show did to break that mold, but finally there was a scifi show that I could enjoy watching.

Grace Kelly (Grace Under Fire).
Grace fought her battles against her white trash background with…as it says in the title…um, grace. Her life was a mess, but she faced her challenges with humor and worked through whatever roadblocks came her way. And unlike Roseanne, Grace did not flame out in a run of insanity — even if Brett Butler, the actress who played her did.

I agree with you about Veronica Mars, though. And Lois Wilkerson. And strongly disagree with you about Diane Chambers, who I thought was just about as stupid as stupid could be. Even Edith Bunker was smarter than Diane.