So, the scene above is from the anime ‘May I Ask For One Final Thing?’ and the protagonist is the woman in red.  Basically, Scarlet’s abusive arranged fiancée announced he was calling it off to be with the pink-haired girl who joins in the mocking.  In response, Scarlet does what she does for the entire series.  Beats the living crap out of those who piss her off.  It was a fun series that got me thinking about female brawlers and how they might be harder to write than we think.

I think part of the challenge is that we typically associate throwdown, bare-knuckle brawling with men.  Big, beefy, testosterone-oozing bruisers start wailing on each other without holding back.  It doesn’t bring to make anyone with a lighter frame, which makes women, especially those with Scarlet’s build, not come to mind.  You can start adding agility and speed to the mix, but you lose part of the fighter type as you turn away from brute force.  Hence, a big challenge with a female brawler.

Authors have found ways around it though.  Magical enhancement is an easy way if you don’t want to give the characters muscles.  That’s kind of a cop out unless you add it to training in hand-to-hand combat.  More often, a female brawler is made to be more muscular and less feminine.  Unfortunately, this can go to the extreme and erase nearly all traces of them being women.  It works if that’s what the character wants, but it creates the idea that brawling is truly only for men.  Personally, I feel like there has to be a way to have a feminine brawler.

Then again, there is the issue of brawlers needing more than strength.  Another aspect of their style and persona is durability.  They hit hard without shattering their knuckles and can take blows without slowing down.  One could say that’s what a fistfight is about.  It’s about whoever can stay standing after getting hit.  Most people feel that a woman would fall before a man due to muscle density and other biological differences.  I do feel like each gender is designed to handle different types and sources of pain, but there should be a way to avoid this issue.  It really might come down to adding dodging to the mix.  My brain keeps going to a barfight though, which tends to be a slugfest.

Even with all of these challenges, I think the female brawler should be used more often in fiction.  Mostly because I remember there being a lot of tough, female protagonists that would hit as hard as they received.  I’ll touch on this later, but growing up with Ripley, Sarah Connor, Xena, Samus, Wonder Woman . . . My point is that I’m so used to seeing badass women throwing down with people that I have trouble imagining it being very hard to create.  In my own series, I had Nyx (a caster) be a brawler without making her big and burly.  She was scrappy and willing to take a punch to get in close enough to wail on a person.  So, I know it’s possible without making the female character simply be a woman’s head on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s body.

Now, I’m not saying go skinny and lean.  Some muscle is needed even with men.  There’s just a limit if you want to retain specific feminine traits.  Again, if you want to go with a female bruiser then you can.  My point, that I’m sure many will miss, is that it shouldn’t be the ONLY option for a female brawler.  There has to be a way to have them be both.  I feel like they did that with Scarlet since she retains her poise and femineity, but can shift into a cruder state.  For example:

Oh, that’s her brother screaming because he doesn’t like that she has a violent streak when angered.  Anyway, it’s really this character that made me feel like I don’t see enough female brawlers who can also put on a dress and act like a ‘lady’.  We see male characters who beat up the bad guys and then walk into a party to be charming.  Heck, that’s every male spy outside of a comedy.  I mean, they don’t sacrifice any of their masculinity with either persona.  So, why can’t we write more women who can do the same and not sacrifice all of their femininity?