Many television shows aimed at children portray clear societal differences between male and female. A stereotypical female is usually pretty, thin, emotional, and often helpless, while males are more aggressive, strong, muscular, and seen as the protector. However, recently more children shows have started introducing stronger and more independent female characters that go against the stereotypical gender roles created by society. One show in particular, Avatar: The Last Airbender, does that quite well, by having several strong female characters in it that show them going against sexist customs in their fictional world and showing that they aren 't weak, helpless damsels in distress that need a man to come and save them. At the beginning
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Both of the characters desire to learn how to “waterbend”, which is the ability to manipulate water, and a skill that Aang needs to learn to be able to stop the Fire Nation 's conquest of the world. In the Northern Water Tribe, the male waterbenders are the fighters and warriors, while the females are simply healers and caretakers, which contrasts with the customs of Kyoshi Island from earlier. Both characters witness this firsthand when they go meet the elderly waterbending master Pakku, who agrees to teach Aang, yet refuses to teach Katara due to her being a girl. The pair try to bypass his refusal to teach Katara by having Aang secretly teach her after dark, but they are caught by an angry Pakku who sees it as betrayal to his tribe 's customs and abruptly refuses to teach Aang anymore. After a couple confrontations and a fight between Katara and Pakku, a surprising past relationship gets brought up that involved him and her grandmother, Kanna, and ends up with him having a change of …show more content…
In the episode, “The Blind Bandit”, the main characters Aang, Katara, and Sokka travel to the town of Gaoling in the Earth Kingdom in search of a masterful earthbending teacher. They learn of an underground earthbending tournament, and Katara presumes it will “just... be a bunch of guys chucking rocks at each other,” which she 's mostly correct about until the “Earthbending Champion” appears, who turns out to be a 12-year-old blind girl known as the “Blind Bandit”. Later in the episode, her and Aang get kidnapped by the group of men who run the underground tournament, and it 's shown that her own father, who didn 't know about her earthbending antics in the tournament, sees her as “tiny and helpless and fragile.” After fighting off the kidnappers and saving Aang, instead of being proud of her, her father becomes even more protective of her, saying that she 'll be “guarded twenty-four hours a day” from now on. This prompts her to defy her father, and run away from home and join the group of main characters. Her character shows that even though she 's visually disabled, she 's not a helpless girl. She ends up becoming extraordinarily skilled at earthbending and shows that her young age and gender don 't stand in her way of becoming
Both of the characters desire to learn how to “waterbend”, which is the ability to manipulate water, and a skill that Aang needs to learn to be able to stop the Fire Nation 's conquest of the world. In the Northern Water Tribe, the male waterbenders are the fighters and warriors, while the females are simply healers and caretakers, which contrasts with the customs of Kyoshi Island from earlier. Both characters witness this firsthand when they go meet the elderly waterbending master Pakku, who agrees to teach Aang, yet refuses to teach Katara due to her being a girl. The pair try to bypass his refusal to teach Katara by having Aang secretly teach her after dark, but they are caught by an angry Pakku who sees it as betrayal to his tribe 's customs and abruptly refuses to teach Aang anymore. After a couple confrontations and a fight between Katara and Pakku, a surprising past relationship gets brought up that involved him and her grandmother, Kanna, and ends up with him having a change of …show more content…
In the episode, “The Blind Bandit”, the main characters Aang, Katara, and Sokka travel to the town of Gaoling in the Earth Kingdom in search of a masterful earthbending teacher. They learn of an underground earthbending tournament, and Katara presumes it will “just... be a bunch of guys chucking rocks at each other,” which she 's mostly correct about until the “Earthbending Champion” appears, who turns out to be a 12-year-old blind girl known as the “Blind Bandit”. Later in the episode, her and Aang get kidnapped by the group of men who run the underground tournament, and it 's shown that her own father, who didn 't know about her earthbending antics in the tournament, sees her as “tiny and helpless and fragile.” After fighting off the kidnappers and saving Aang, instead of being proud of her, her father becomes even more protective of her, saying that she 'll be “guarded twenty-four hours a day” from now on. This prompts her to defy her father, and run away from home and join the group of main characters. Her character shows that even though she 's visually disabled, she 's not a helpless girl. She ends up becoming extraordinarily skilled at earthbending and shows that her young age and gender don 't stand in her way of becoming