Really interesting question and thank you for reading my meta :D
Due to the fact Millicent is the only female of the Trio gen described in ways which might imply she is heavy set and physically larger than other classmates - like Tam my head canon for her tends towards stocky - I suppose she was the obvious example to use for the point I wanted to make, quite possibly influenced by my own head canon for Millicent's physicality.
I could have used a number of other examples which may have been more accurate from a canon perspective to illustrate the point I really wanted to make, which was to question (in the broader context of that particular post about creator responsibility) whether there is a responsibility for female writers to give conscious thought, when describing female characters, to how far those characters reinforce the unrealistic and oppressive standard of beauty so often imposed on women by the media.
I didn't intend to imply that slimming down Millicent is a bad thing because it's not canon. I fully appreciate an adolescent physique will change as a character ages and the weight of characters will fluctuate, and as noted above the canon descriptions hardly paint a clear picture.
The point was simply that by embracing canon or secondary canon allusions to Millicent's physicality as opposed to dismissing them, writers (or artists) can call into question conventional standards of 'beauty'. When portraying female characters in fanworks there is an opportunity to be had to challenge the paradigm of the 'ideal woman' and call into question the value society places on what it deems to be 'attractive'.
I wonder if when people make those requests in exchanges, it's driven by some of the issues above as opposed to a desire for strict canon compliance. Fan communities tend to want to see representation of characters that might otherwise lack visibility in their canon. In fan communities with a gender bias towards female or female identified creators, the request to portray a canon female character physically one way or another might be less about the giftee wanting to see a strict adherence to canon, and more about a desire to see women represented in a way which is authentic and which celebrates all kinds of body types.
Does that make any sense? I may very well have gone off on a tangent here, apologies if so :D
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Date: 2015-03-25 12:19 am (UTC)Due to the fact Millicent is the only female of the Trio gen described in ways which might imply she is heavy set and physically larger than other classmates - like Tam my head canon for her tends towards stocky - I suppose she was the obvious example to use for the point I wanted to make, quite possibly influenced by my own head canon for Millicent's physicality.
I could have used a number of other examples which may have been more accurate from a canon perspective to illustrate the point I really wanted to make, which was to question (in the broader context of that particular post about creator responsibility) whether there is a responsibility for female writers to give conscious thought, when describing female characters, to how far those characters reinforce the unrealistic and oppressive standard of beauty so often imposed on women by the media.
I didn't intend to imply that slimming down Millicent is a bad thing because it's not canon. I fully appreciate an adolescent physique will change as a character ages and the weight of characters will fluctuate, and as noted above the canon descriptions hardly paint a clear picture.
The point was simply that by embracing canon or secondary canon allusions to Millicent's physicality as opposed to dismissing them, writers (or artists) can call into question conventional standards of 'beauty'. When portraying female characters in fanworks there is an opportunity to be had to challenge the paradigm of the 'ideal woman' and call into question the value society places on what it deems to be 'attractive'.
I wonder if when people make those requests in exchanges, it's driven by some of the issues above as opposed to a desire for strict canon compliance. Fan communities tend to want to see representation of characters that might otherwise lack visibility in their canon. In fan communities with a gender bias towards female or female identified creators, the request to portray a canon female character physically one way or another might be less about the giftee wanting to see a strict adherence to canon, and more about a desire to see women represented in a way which is authentic and which celebrates all kinds of body types.
Does that make any sense? I may very well have gone off on a tangent here, apologies if so :D