Katniss Everdeen, Not Your Average Teenage Girl.

While reading the Hunger Games, it was a clear distinction that the main character, Katniss, was not your average girl that movies and books usually portray teenage females to be. The entertainment world has categorized teenage females to be "prissy", obsessed with shopping and boys, and vulnerable. However, Suzanne Collins does not fit Katniss in this category of your average teenage girl. Katniss is portrayed as a fighter, strong boned, and independent. Stated in the beginning of the book, Katniss seems to be in control at her house while her sister looks up to her and her mother is still mourning of the death of her husband. So from the very beginning of the book, we are introduced to Katniss as a independent survivalist that hunts for her family to keep food on the table.

The point that I would like to discuss in this post is the way the media and publicly narrows us, teenage females, how to act by worrying about the way we look, dress and act. Meanwhile, Collins distributes her main character as anything but your average 21st century teenager. Katniss shows her strength in the Hunger Games by being an incredible hunter of animals, showing her skills by shooting an apple in a judge's mouth with an arrow and the list of events where her strength is prevailed goes on. Collins also promotes Katniss to be anything but "boy crazy". Though, Katniss expressed her slight interest in Gale it is not a prime factor that some authors may include in other books. The shows that I have watched portray girls to be concerned with boys and concerned with how they portray themselves around boys. However, Katniss is only herself when she is around Gale, which interested me because that is a different characteristic that has not been apparent in the public. 

Suzanne Collins does a superb job on displaying a different side of a teenage female. She exposed characteristics of Katniss that are different and "unnormal" from what we are portrayed to in public. Hunger Games shows that not all female teenagers need to be looked as "girly", "prissy" "stuck-up", but can also be viewed as a surrealist, independent, growing up young lady.