But almost all the women in really good fiction are real women, not princesses or goddesses but flawed (like me) and therefore interesting.

The Annes and Emilys -- plain, but with imaginations! -- and later the Elizabeth Bennets and Emmas and Dorotheas helped me for a long time to survive a real world wherein women lived lies, where the ideal girl was a cheerleader who acquired a football player for a boyfriend and grew up to marry Father Knows Best.

The real-world feminine models I knew were the fictions, the lies. The girls and women in the novels were much more like me. I don't think that I modelled myself on any one of them, but serious fiction taught me more about truth than my own popular culture and society did. And it was probably the authentic, flawed humanity of the women in those novels that was my first path in to understanding and caring about art.

In real life, we lie all the time. Great fiction is great because it slices through and past the lies. Fiction is much truer than real life.

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Daria: Don't worry. I don't have low self-esteem. It's a mistake.
Jake: I'll say.
Daria: I have low esteem for everyone else.

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Given a choice between these two, I'd still have to go with Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Eprhraim's Daughter Longstocking.

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Originally posted by Rufus Polson:
How about Pippi Longstocking?
Did what she liked, tossed all the big men around, broke all the rules, lived independently! Some of her dialogue with patronizing establishment figures is just priceless!
Astrid Lindgren rules.

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