Women to Admire: Dana Scully
By Tina Wargo
For almost 25 years, Dana Scully has been the television heroine we’ve deserved, and she’s still the one we need right now.
How do I love Dana Katherine Scully, eye-roller extraordinaire, medical doctor, mother to Queequeg and William, platonic life partner to Fox Mulder, FBI agent who fears nothing, questions everything, and still looks that good doing it? Let me count the ways.
Dana Scully, one half of arguably the most popular duo in television history, has been obsessed over by generations of women like few before her. When she first hit the screen in the early 90s, we met a no-nonsense, sharp-as-a-tack young agent who was ready to take on anything.
What really struck female viewers then is what continues to strike us today. Scully wasn’t around to work hard and thrive in honor of her male partner. She was doing it clearly, loudly, and unwaveringly in spite of him.
Scully and Mulder’s will-they-won’t-they-oh-wait-they-definitely-did-they-just-think-we-don’t-know relationship was a major selling point of The X-Files. However, it was their working relationship that made our redheaded heroine stand out against the over-sexualized, desperate-for-love female characters that we had unfortunately gotten used to.
From the beginning, her appearance didn’t matter. Her personal life didn’t matter. Her sexuality didn’t matter. Her interest (or lack thereof) in men didn’t matter. What mattered, and still matters deeply, resonantly, fiercely, was her brain.
As a medical doctor, an FBI agent, and a certainly certifiable genius, Scully’s refusal to hide her brilliance in the face of near-constant “don’t you think you’re being too —-” from men around her gained her instant feminist street cred. It would’ve been simple to write this character off as a bore, a stickler, or, a favorite backhanded compliment from male critics and screenwriters alike, a “cold woman.”
Instead, the nuanced performance of Gillian Anderson and Scully’s endless incredible qualities have managed to keep her from being a “shrew” and, instead, cemented her in the Badass Lady Hall of Fame. Plus, she didn’t just make ripples in the feminist/nerd overlap communities. She affected change in the real, actual medical and scientific communities as well.
In the years following the X-Files’ boom in popularity, there was a noticeable influx of women pursuing careers in STEM fields, particularly because they had seen Dana Scully onscreen and thought, “I can do that.” The Scully Effect, as it came to be known, continues to reverberate today, as women are continually discovering and being inspired by our spooky queen.
If that’s not enough to build a solid case of “representation matters,” then we’re about to have a real live X-File on our hands.
Though we’ve seen solid proof of the everlasting impact Dana Scully has had on women across industries, there’s still the nagging fact that she was never quite treated the way she deserved to be. For the first few seasons, Gillian Anderson was directed to walk a few steps behind David Duchovny. Two years ago, when the show was being revived, Anderson had to actively fight for the same salary offered to her male co-star.
When discussing the behind-the-scenes inequality, Anderson told the Daily Beast, “I have such a knee-jerk reaction to that stuff, a very short tolerance for that shit. I don’t know how long it lasted or if it changed because I eventually said, ‘F*ck no! No!’ I don’t remember somebody saying, ‘OK, now you get to walk alongside him.’ But I imagine it had more to do with my intolerance and spunk than it being an allowance that was made.”
Within the show, it’s a pretty common grievance that Scully may not have always been given the proper care she deserved from the X-Files’ almost entirely male writers. We had to fill in a few blanks in order to fully appreciate and experience Scully in a way that pays respect to her majesty. Then again, at least the blanks were there, on one of the most popular shows on television.
So, how do I love Dana Scully? I love her wholly, truly, and devotedly.
She’s one of the only characters I’ve ever seen that’s made me feel like I can be outspoken and determined, annoyed at incompetence and interested in action, all while not being “too much.” Instead, I’m exactly the right amount.
She’s not afraid to use “No” as a complete sentence. She’s honest and intuitive, ready and able to dispense wit anywhere, anytime.
She’s guarded, but she’s not unkind. She’s not outwardly concerned with how she looks or how people perceive her. She is (as far as we know) a straight, single female, pointedly unconcerned with male attention. She’s not worried about hurting anyone’s feelings in pursuit of what she knows to be true and just.
She doesn’t defer to her male partner, nor to her male director. In fact, she regularly tells them to their faces that they are wrong (or dumb or lazy), and that she has the answers.
Sure, many episodes happen to end with Mulder’s wacky hunches being correct. However, he almost never gets that confirmation without the staunch, scientific help of the real brains (and brawn and body honestly) behind the whole operation.
Scully is a full, true, human woman, and her existence was enough to spark change in generations of women after her.
Though we can watch overtly feminist characters on our screens on the regular, we have yet to see anyone quite like Dana K. Scully.
Next. Women to Admire: Judge Rosemarie Aquilina. dark
So thank you, Dana, for empowering smart women. You’ve shown us that our intuition matters and we can be proud of being right. Plus, you’ve shown us how to perfectly roll our eyes at men who know less and talk more.
I really hope you are immortal because we simply couldn’t do it without you.