One of my favorite encounters in the whole game came from a Brotherhood of Steel side mission that had me escorting a young Brotherhood squire into a combat one for educational purposes. When the squire arrived, it was a twelve-year-old girl in full combat gear with a laser rifle slung over her shoulder and an adorable can-do-attitude. She didn’t have a name, and suddenly, I felt like I was leading a post-apocalyptic Girl Scout Troop. Instead of nature hikes, we went on ghoul-killing expeditions and sold roasted Deathclaw instead of cookies.
Hey Bethesda, make this happen as DLC, please.
You know, Peeta’s unconventional masculinity is as relevant for traditional gender subversion in The Hunger Games as Katniss’s unconventional femininity.
It’s a bit annoying to see everyone and their mother praising Katniss for being such a unique action female hero, and then hearing those same people making fun of Peeta for being a weakling and a ‘sissy’.
Yes, Peeta paints sunsets and bakes cookies and frosts cakes. He is sometimes/usually unarmed and needs Katniss’s protection. He needs saving at several points across the story, and eventually he is captured and needs rescuing.
So what? Just as Katniss can be dextrous at archery, an assassin and a leader in combat, while retaining her kindness, humanity and selflessness, Peeta can paint, bake, and not be a traditional male action hero and still be the male lead and romantic hero of the story. He can still be sexually alluring for Katniss and capable of extremely heroic actions, while needing rescue and baking cakes.
And if you can’t see how relevant it is for this story and for a younger generation to understand that traditional and media-approved masculinity is also a social construct/imposition, as restrictive and reactionary as enforced traditional femininity can be, then the joke’s on you.