“The Female Gaze”, artist Ashly Lovett’s newest art project showcases some of the most dazzling strong female characters from our pop culture, from princess Leia, to the badass Sarah Connor or the Mother of Dragons, Daenerys Targaryen. There is something truly amazing to a strong female character, something that might have to do with our cultural inheritance. Females have always been portrayed as gentile, beautiful, fragile human beings, able to enchant and rule through the power of their wits and exquisite charm. True, there are a lot of female rulers in history, and here we are entering a quite “dangerous” terrain, but they have never been portrayed as warriors, extremely courageous and valiant and honorable like we see happened with men. So, our pop culture, also in the light of the ascendance of the feminism movement, created some really badass, kick-ass, strong female characters who posses both the physical agility and the wits, charm and temperament of a hero, ruler, warrior.
Strong female characters’ stories written right are amazing. For example, let’s take Ellen Ripley, often referred to simply as Ripley, the female protagonist of the Alien film series. The director of the series at that moment, Ridley Scott decided a heroine would play much better than the standard male action hero everyone was used to and he was right. Ripley is nowadays, one of the most important female protagonist in all of cinema and an outstanding figure in popular culture. She is also the protagonist of many novels, comic books and video games. Her character have transcended way past the original film franchise.
This fascination with strong women in popular culture has peaked with Game of Thones, for example, where we have a lot of strong female characters who rule the realm of men and know how to play the game of thrones. “Danny” is one of them and the most recent addition to the world’s “panoply” of strong female characters. She is both a warrior, a ruler, a merciful “breaker of chains” and “mother of dragons” and a mad ruler in the end. From the same series, we also have Cersei, Sansa, Yara Greyjoy, Lady Catelyn Stark and the list can go on.
So, we’ve picked some of the best illustrations of strong female characters created by artist Ashly Lovett for her new series called “Female Gaze”. They’re really good artworks to hang on your wall and thus have your favourite female character to look up to.
1. Queen Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, The rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, Queen of Dragonstone, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons, regent of the realm
2. X-23 Laura Kinney
3. Ellen Ripley, the protagonist of the Alien film series
4. Connor, another bad-ass fighting with cyborgs
5. Gamora
6. Nakia, dubbed as the smarterst person on the planet
7. The Goddess of Death
8. Elisa
9. The Princess