Looking at these old comments reminded me of your story with the inappropriate aunt who teaches her niece how to pick locks and handcuffs and subdue a kidnapper.
THAT is the trope I was hoping someone will/would build for this! Everybody should teach their daughters to protect themselves the same way their sons do. I did. And I'm still not sorry.
I just had to say that now I want to name a band Ambassador Killbot.
I was thinking about this again just recently. How hard is it to build your own trope?
Like have a few stories where one of the badass characters is a girl. Have someone sort of probe towards the "I have brothers." excuse, and have her be baffled by it and answer "Both my parents thought everyone should know how to defend themselves," Or maybe "What. You didn't take Krav Maga while you were in junior high? I thought everyone did that." But basically say that there is no reason a girl has to be the damsel in distress. That needs to be a trope.
I really need to find more background on this. This sounds like the exact kind of 'proof-how-dumb-people-are' stuff that I frequently rant over. I'm surprised at how empty my memory banks are on this. I'm aware of way too many wars being fought to decide whose God was more peaceful, loving, and merciful. I'm also sadly aware of how rarely the leaders recognized the irony of that.
After reading this one, I have to say you like the orangutan shaped bag of rotting sweet potatoes that somehow took our highest office considerably more than I do. But that only makes sense. You don't have to live in the country that he plays with directly. Tragically, we seem to leave footprints all over the globe, so you won't be THAT much safer than we will when he inevitably causes the end of all things.
Okay. I try not to be bitter. Maybe it's not so inevitable as I think. Perhaps it's not much worse than giving a monkey a submachine gun, or choosing a toddler to do your heart surgery. But when I tried to point out to his supporters during the election that maybe a complete moron with the temperament of an elementary school bully and a complete lack of empathy, (and the complete lack of awareness that lacking empathy is a bad thing) was less than a wise choice to hold the launch codes, they would immediately spew venomous hatred about his opponent, describing her as a much greater threat to the nation because...well...something. I'm sure they'll have an actual reason any time now.
Okay. Maybe I'm a little bit bitter. I can't even point to the comparative sanity of my neighbors, because they insist on sending the second dumbest man in Congress back to office yet again. At least he's still smarter than Gohmert.
I probably WOULD have taught her a lot of self defense-type stuff because I think everyone should know how to protect themselves. But I'm not so sure I would have focused on the kind of things that I did, without the situation of the jerk brother five times her size.
Until one of her friends told me about her 'going all Batman on an attempted rapist' to protect her, I'd never really considered that she might still retain the stuff I'd told her as a first and second grader. I mean, how much do your kids REALLY keep of what you tell them? Apparently, when it involves pressure points and joint locks : more than you'd suspect.
I want the rest of this one, badly!
My daughter is the 'Enforcer' in her group of friends. She's a big girl, but not the biggest in the group. She and her brother are most of ten years apart. So when he got to the 'teenaged jerk' phase while she was still pretty small, I thought it worthwhile to teach her ways to deal with a larger stronger opponent, should physical mayhem arise. I thought these were generally useful things for a girl to know.
What I didn't figure was that at the age of twenty three, she's the one who protects everyone in the group, male AND female. She had a job for a while as a kickboxing teacher, until the man who ran the school discovered she had no actual formal training, just a dad who wanted his daughter to be safe. I don't see why that can't be a trope as-is. I'm not sure what you call it. But I can't be THAT unusual for doing it, can I?
Your example of Penelope Garcia from Criminal Minds is either excellent or wrong, depending on your viewpoint. The reason I say this is that one of may favorite things about Kirsten Vangsness (aside from being born on my birthday) is that her character's wardrobe is HER PERSONAL wardrobe. way back in the first season, before she became a full cast member, she had some kind of conflict with the producers because the real FBI would absolutely NOT let an employee get away with several of her clothing choices. They decided that, with her character being the Goddess of the computer world, that she'd be allowed more leeway than in real life. So she didn't know what to wear and just came in in her regular (for her) clothes. The show people said "Perfect!"
On the other side of the equation, I have noticed a few guys on TV who kind of look like me. My sister thought it was hilarious that 'Uncle Phil' from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air looked a lot like me, even though I'm an exceedingly pale white guy, and he was a medium-light black guy. I suspect it was the bald head, short beard, and general physical similarity she was pointing out. I've also noticed that TV guys who look like me are either 'married for decades - so don't think about them still doing it' or 'hopelessly, desperately alone till shortly after the end of the universe'. As you might guess, this bothers me. Sadly in real life, I'm both. I was happily married for twenty two years. And I've been morosely widowered for two and a half. Unfortunately, just like on TV, it's hard to get anyone to see any appeal in a 53 year old large bald guy as a romantic possibility.