From Harry Potter and beyond, we need to talk about the male characters we grew up

For many of us, we only had male heroes to look up to while we were growing up but that doesn’t mean that we can’t look at someone like Harry Potter objectively now that we’re older.

Do you really still think that Harry Potter is a great hero? Now that we’ve had years to sit and look at the series as adults, we should be realizing that these heroes come with their flaws. That’s what makes them so great.

Look at someone like Steve Rogers or Tony Stark, they’re both heroes, great figures to look up to, but they also have a lot of faults that result in their egos getting in the way. Harry is no different. The main problem is that, for as long as many of us can remember, our heroes were men.

There weren’t that many women to look up to and even women in the films and comics we were looking at played second fiddle to a man. Now though, we can demand more from our pop culture. We can ask that women and people of color are included, we can all grow and learn how to be better examples for the generation after us.

If that means that a character like Harry Potter has to learn his faults in a very confrontational way, then fine. If it means that we don’t ever ‘feel’ for Bruce Wayne because he’s not the only one to lose his parents, that’s our choice. We can start to objectively look at these heroes because, let’s face it, we have a lot more to look up to now.

Harry Potter, Superman, Bruce Wayne, and more were not exactly the best heroes to look up to but they were what we had. Now though, we can look at them objectively and see where we can make improvements.