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So, watching Captain Marvel was awesome and made me feel super happy and strong!
The only bit I felt conflicted over was that part at the end where Yon Rogg was like, “I’m so proud of you! Fight me! Prove to me that you can win without powers!” and Carol just blasted him.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love that. It’s exactly what she should have done, and it’s a very satisfying moment for her character. But...
See, I didn’t feel conflicted about it because it was the wrong thing to do or it was emotionally unfulfilling or any of that nonsense. I felt conflicted about it because of how much I related to it. Because he started talking, and I had that moment of, what the hell do you mean you’re proud?! What kind of gaslighting, two-faced rubbish are you spewing now?!
And then he said “Prove to me,” and I was torn between laughing at his obvious, kind of pathetic attempt to make a more powerful foe deliberately handicap herself, the niggling irritation that comes with a man trying to convince you to prove yourself to him when you owe him nothing, and anger at the fact that some part of me felt like Carol had to. That some part of me felt it necessary for her to try and please him, prove herself to him, even though she owed him nothing and he was clearly trying to manipulate her into making herself less than she was again.
Because I know that feeling of constantly having to prove yourself when you’ve already done it a thousand times. That feeling of trying to get a man’s approval of your competence, that if you do more, prove you know more, do it faster, do it better, maybe you’ll finally feel like you belong, like you’re equal and you’ve finally, finally earned your place.
And then she blasted him, and I was so proud of her for doing that, for not falling for his manipulative BS and for knowing her own worth and knowing that she had nothing to prove. But at the same time, I mourned the lack of gaining his approval. I didn’t want to, but I did.
We are so conditioned to need male approval in all aspects of our lives. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of falling head over heels to prove ourselves to some random jerk, of wasting our time and energy to show him that we deserve a place and that we deserve to be heard, sabotaging ourselves in a hopeless effort to get him to confer value upon us.
But the thing is, we already have that value. We deserve to have a place. We have nothing to prove.
And that’s why that moment at the end of Captain Marvel was so powerful, so satisfying. She knew her own worth and didn’t let a man talk her out of it.