​What We Learned From the Women Who Kick Ass Panel at Comic-Con

Some pretty amazing things things happened at San Diego Comic-Con this year. Along with the debut of Wonder Woman’s new costume, it’s been announced that Spider Woman will be receiving her own solo comic, and the awesome lady geek apparel company Her Universe will be launching a Studio Ghibli fashion collection. Also, for those who care, Arrow’s Stephen Amell randomly gave fans a peek at his abs (because a fan asked him to).

SDCC and Entertainment Weekly also brought together various badass women on television including American Horror Story‘s Sarah Paulson, Sleepy Hollow‘s Nicole Beharie, Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer and Maisie Williams, Sons of Anarchy’s Katey Sagal, and Orphan Black‘s Tatiana Maslany for the Women Who Kick Ass panel discussion. They ruminated on their experiences as, well, kickass women and various topics like beauty standards.

Dormer: “I don’t think that it’s healthy for young girls to be looking at these beauty magazines and watching TV and these shows and thinking [that’s the standard]… there’s more European attitude — you look at French film, Spanish film, they’re a little more open to quirks and human nature. That we’re not all symmetrical, not all the same shape… we need more of that.”

Sagal: “And it’s OK to get older.” Ageism has played a factor in casting for far too long in America and “there needs to be a realistic view, and send a realistic message. It seems that in Europe, you can get older.”

Dormer: “The best female roles are in television at the moment. Katniss Everdeen — as popular as she is — is an anomaly. She really is.”

…

Dormer: “Where television is fantastic — and is way ahead of film — is it doesn’t feel the need to polarize women so much… Male writers — and I say this with all love and respect — often want to make a woman either the angel or the whore, make her the witch, or put her on the pedestal. When people ask me about Margaery [on ‘Game of Thrones’], I say they’re not mutually exclusive. You don’t have to be practical and politically savvy and not be a good person. You can be a good human being and just be shrewd.”

Nicole Baharie added her experience of being able to assert a sort of authority instead of heeding gender-based expectations:

“A lot of different men will come on as day players or guest parts, and I recognize that there’s a certain strength that I have now, or a certain command that I have being one of the leads on the show that I hadn’t had before…. Just owning that space and not being expected, as a woman, to shrink, or curtsy, or any of those sort of things.”

Image via Getty.