Gender in Avatar; The Last Airbender

Avatar: The Last Airbender is unlike any show, animated or otherwise, to come before it, and it is one of the most feminist TV shows ever made. Avatar takes place in a fictional universe comprised of four nations: the Water Tribe (inspired by Inuit culture), the Earth Kingdom (inspired by both pre-Manchu and Qing Dynasty China), the Fire Nation (Japanese culture), and the Air Nomads (inspired by Tibetan monasteries and Sri Lankan Buddhism). Each nation centers around its one element, and certain people born into those cultures have the power to control their culture’s element. The Avatar, Aang, can control all four elements and must defeat the ruler of the Fire Nation, which has been at war with the remaining three nations for over a century. This hit show has hugely influenced an enormous viewership consisting of all genders, so it’s quite excellent that a show so beloved by young watchers has such feminist representation of women.

Although Avatar centers around a male hero (something the show’s creators remedied when they made a sequel series, The Legend of Korra, starring a female title character), the show blooms with amazing female representation. An overwhelming majority of both the heroes and villains are women, spanning an enormous range of character types. Avatar is highly feminist in its portrayal of women for three primary reasons: the diversity within the female cast, the complexity of the female characters, and the agency that these female characters have over their own lives.

When most TV shows feature lots of women, these women tend to look or act very similar to one another. They are usually all white, or at least act white; they are thin and conventually attractive; they dress similarly to each other; they all lead somewhat similar lives. The women of Avatar, however, could not be more different from each other. Some of the recurring characters include an inuit water-bending maternal character named Katara, a blind earth-bending 12 year old named Toph, a fire-bending villain called Azula who slowly descends into utter madness as she tries to usurp the throne, women who fight with metal fans called the Kioshi Warriors, a bubbly circus acrobat turned evil cohort named Ty Lee, and countless other equally diverse and colorful characters. The women in Avatar span numerous races, ages, areas of ability, experience, character, and values. Unlike many other television shows, even shows that feature just as many female characters, the girls in Avatar are not treated as a homogenous group, but as a highly distinct group of people who are only linked by gender and not confined to any type of female stereotype.

Besides just being realistic in diversity, the women of Avatar are also realistic in character. Each female character is just as complex and multi-faceted as the male characters. Katara, a powerful water-bender, fights blatant sexism in order to become a master bender and warrior while still maintaining her chosen maternal/caregiving role over her friends. Toph has the humor and immaturity of a 12 year old while also being mature enough to overcome her disability with her martial art, and is in fact such an incredible fighter that she invents an entirely new form of earth-bending. Many of the female characters, such as Mai and Ty Lee, undergo intense questionings of their own values, evaluating their relationships, loyalties, and allegiances before ultimately deciding which side to be on. Azula, who is arguably the most important villain of the series, is shown battling with her own lust for power and slowly slipping from sanity in a deeply disturbing and complicated character arc. Each female character the show features has realistic feelings, experiences, and complicated moral issues to face. Although some of them have elements of common female stereotypes (Katara as the maternal caregiver, Princess Yue as the virtuous virgin) even these women completely transcend the confines of that stereotype and feature many other complex character traits (as a sidenote, none of the characters in the show seem to fit the role of seductress or sex object).

Lastly, these female characters show an amount of agency arguably unprecedented in a kid’s TV show. Even though Aang is technically the hero, there is absolutely no way he could have saved the world without the brilliance and talent of Katara and Toph, who decide their own adventures, make their own decisions, and teach themselves to be masters at their craft to defeat their enemies. Azula, heir to the throne of the Fire Nation, eventually overtakes her father in villainy and spends the entire series scheming, fighting, and conquering anyone who stands in the way of her reign of terror. Yue gets to make the ultimate sacrifice at the end of her story arc: giving up her own life to transcend the mortal plane, becoming the spirit of the moon. While women in TV often have their lives taken from them or beg for a merciful death, a female character so rarely gets to decide for herself to die for what she believes in.

Avatar is an amazingly well written show, from the rich plotlines to the beautiful animation to the incredibly well developed martial arts, but its fantastic representation of women stand out above all else. In no other popular TV show can one find such a diverse cast of multi-faceted women, all with the agency and ability to decide their own lives. Avatar is an intensely feminist show that continues to teach its young viewers about the capability of women and how to treat them like real people instead of stereotypes.