Everybody loves a strong heroine these days. Nobody wants to write about a wimp who needs to be rescued by the big, strong hero. In fact, in most books that are being written now, the heroine stands up and at least attempts to rescue herself when she gets into difficulties. Only if she’s tried to untie herself from the railroad tracks and failed is the hero allowed to come in and get her loose. And in a lot of books, the hero is only allowed to show up when the heroine is already off the tracks and planning her revenge.

I have no problem with this at all. In fact, I’m absolutely in favor of it. But along with these strong heroines, I’ve begun to see heroines who seem to be strong but who are, in fact, phony. The present a counterfeit version of strength that actually allows the hero to go back to being a good ol’ alpha who takes care of the silly little woman and saves the day. Plus, of course, they’re really annoying.

You can spot this heroine pretty quickly because she’s almost always what the Old Folks used to call a “career girl.” She does something high-powered that provides a fat salary and fancy clothes. Consequently, she’s also a bitch on wheels (apparently high-powered women can be nothing else). She also spouts a sort of pop culture version of feminism, accusing the hero of belittling her or not valuing her skills because of her gender while showing that those skills are in fact pretty worthless in a pinch.

The phony strong heroine gets her comeuppance when she’s up against the villain. She gets into some kind of difficulty from which only the hero can extricate her. She is, of course, not grateful for being extricated. In fact, she frequently bitches at the hero again for his Neanderthal attitudes. The hero responds by becoming even more Troglodytic, but when push comes to shove, he once again extricates her from some other difficulty. This goes on until the hero finally vanquishes the villain. Eventually, the heroine, worn out and defeated, acknowledges that the hero’s version of femininity is actually the correct one.

This annoys me on a whole lot of different levels. First of all, as a feminist (yeah, sister!), I resent seeing an honorable philosophy reduced to a cartoon. And let me tell you—the Neanderthals I’ve run into in real life haven’t been all that endearing. Considering women to be basically inferior really doesn’t constitute much of a turn-on for most of us. But more than that, when you consider the strong heroines popping up all around us who really can at least make a stab at taking care of themselves (see anything recent from Nora Roberts or Linda Howard or Elizabeth Lowell), it’s doubly annoying to see what is basically an eighties heroine showing up at this late date and being held up as some kind of ideal.

So rah, rah for strong heroines. And boo, hiss for the phony kind. When it comes to female strength, let’s accept no substitutes.