Okay, time for some closing ramblings about feminism and Sailor Moon. Gwen Frankenstien reblogged me here. She talks about how people didn’t think Sailor Moon should be her kind of show.

In reality, it SHOULDN’T be my kind of show either. I’m not terribly girly. I like to see people kick each other’s faces in. I  moan at the impracticality of short skirts and high heels. Hearts and flowers and frills and romance do nothing for me, and Sailor Moon is full of that. Not to mention, it can be repetitive, predictable, childish (but that’s not a bad thing) and roughly every episode I wanted to scream “OMG JUST ATTACK ALREADY”.

Sailor Moon is incredibly, incredibly girly, from the MOONLIGHT HONEYMOON THERAPY KISS attacks to the sparkly jewels to the ridiculous costumes to the princesses and the saving the day with the power of forgiveness and love.

I’m not sure how I would have reacted to Sailor Moon when I was younger. I think it would have taken me a while to warm up to it.  I detested anything girly with an unquenchable passion when I was younger.

But you know what? There’s nothing inherently bad about what society deems as “feminine”. It’s just that “girliness” has been demonized by society as inherently “lesser”. That why I hated it so much when I was little- because I didn’t like to be thought of that way. Women are expected to be passive because they are gentle and loving and wear pretty dresses and forgive.

But Sailor Moon uses her girliness to be ACTIVE and POWERFUL.

What makes Sailor Moon unique and powerful is that is took the classic cliches of Prince and Princess fairytale- complete with things like The Kiss of True Love, Forbidden Romance, Tall Dark and Handsome Swordman weds Blonde in Virginal White Dress- and made the PRINCESS and her friends the HERO while the PRINCE, for all his dashing manliness, is frequently damsel in distress.

Instead of demonizing femininity, Sailor Moon shows it’s power. Usagi doesn’t sit passively in her fancy dress, she changes into it when she needs to kick ass. She uses her pure feminine heart to emit a light that either burns monsters to dust or reform them. Emotion and tears are often condemned as “weak, womanly things” - but Usagi isn’t afraid of reveling in her emotions, and the action of crying isn’t so “weak” on her- her crying is SUPERSONIC and can DEAFEN PEOPLE.

I’ll admit to occasionally being frustrated when instead of kicking a villian’s ass, SM reforms it by the sheer power of her sympathy and love because, y’know, I wanted to see some asskicking (this happens a lot less often in the manga, now that I think about it)- but there’s something very powerful about that. Instead of resorting to the masculine idea of “you’re not powerful unless you exhibit brute force” Sailor Moon chooses to make a more lasting change with her “feminine” qualities. This was an idea that appeared early on in Wonder Woman that a sad amount of writers dropped to the wayside- after kicking ass, Diana would reform her bad guys with loving compassion, making her far more effective and unique than other male superheroes. SM takes that idea and runs with it.

Basically, Sailor Moon is the Chick- the heart of the group that is gentle, loving, and nurturing and holds us all together and doesn’t like to fight- and she’s also the Hero. She shows the true power of the Chick when she isn’t sidelined like in all other fiction, and that the Chick isn’t bad for being feminine.

Also, it’s been noted that society lets girls aspire to be princesses, because princesses are in positions of privilege, but not power. A Queen is threatening, a princess is not. This is also subverted in Sailor Moon- we see that Usagi DOES definitively grow up to be Queen, and SHE RULES THE ENTIRE WORLD AND PROTECTS IT with her goodness and love. She personifies power.

At the end of the day, Sailor Moon shows girls not demonize or hate their femininity, or keep themselves passive and in line because of it- but embrace it and use it to kick ass. In the end, it’s girls and their unshakable unity that saves us all. In the end, the most effective person on the planet is the girl who uses forgiveness, The Power of Friendship, love and all things sparkly to subdue her enemies, she does this with a iron will,and she isn’t afraid to use tons of lace and pink and sparklies while doing it. And there’s something incredibly powerful about that.

/tldr